December's 'One of My Favorite Men of Horror' is.....

Bela Lugosi!

 Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (20 October 1882 – 16 August 1956), better known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian-American actor, famous for portraying Count Dracula in the original 1931 film and for his roles in various other horror films.- from Wikipedia page

I first saw this amazing actor when I was a kid... some channel, I forget which, was airing 'Dracula' and I snuck out of bed to watch, hiding in the hallway of our house. It was the perfect place to hide,because,well, the hallway was dark.  Entranced, and at the same time scared out of my mind, I couldn't stop watching.  Dracula was about to bite Mina's neck when I was discovered and sent back to bed.  Of course, the movie gave me nightmares, and I was convinced that Dracula was hiding in my closet. It didn't help that a school chum(sort of chum) tried to tell me that she was bitten by a vampire. I said I didn't believe her and so of course she said, well, I won't show you then.  She was a bit of a bitch.  

It wasn't until the movie 'Love at First Bite' got me over my fear of vampires. Thank you George Hamilton!

However, it should be noted that he didn't just do horror movies, though that is what he is famous for.  He made several films while in Hungary, and then once becoming a US citizen, he did stage plays, until his first US film, 'Silent Command'.  Afterwards, he portrayed Dracula on stage, and thence to his most famous movie role.  Interestingly, he was not Universal's first choice to play Dracula; Lon Chaney was. But due to Chaney's death, before production, the studio went with Lugosi. Afterwards, he was to do horror mostly horror films, until his death in 1956.

Check out this brief clip of him as Dracula, trying to mesmerize Van Helsing:

   

Yeah. He can mesmerize me any time.  Nice. ت

Anyway, you can read more at the Wikipedia page(link above in the quote) or visit his IMDb page

I love a man in a cape.