I saw this with a marvellous piano accompaniment that really did showcase the delights of silent cinema and the talents of a pianist who can play, non-stop, for seventy five minutes. Though Bela Lugosi takes top billing as the eponymous character, I felt the film really belonged to his assistant "Renfield" - enjoyably portrayed here by Dwight Frye. He is just an innocent estate agent who arrives at Castle Dracula only to find himself quickly enthralled to his new boss who is determined to come to "Carfax Abbey" in England with his trio of wives, and to wreak some good, old-fashioned, havoc! It's poor "Mina" (Helen Chandler) who is soon on his radar and it falls to her paramour "Harker" (David Manners) and accomplished vampire-hunter "Van Helsing" (Edward Van Sloan) to try and save the day before they are all transformed into blood-suckers. Lugosi is a wooden as a washboard in this film, but the constant shining of the light onto his eyes does manage to convey quite a potent sense of menace as his meticulously dressed count munches his way through the wee small hours. The flying bat on a string is not as daft as you might expect, indeed the whole visual impact of this film - though certainly basic - proves quite effective when the score does most of the heavy lifting. This is a story that has always benefitted from being shot monochrome, and ninety-odd years on, is still a cracking watch in a cinema.