Dracula

Universal's first sound horror film, adapted from the stage play rather than the novel, which is why so much of it happens in drawing rooms with people announcing what has occurred elsewhere.

It has no music beyond the opening credits, because in 1931 audiences were assumed to find scoring under dialogue confusing. The silence is unintentional and does the film an enormous favour.

The first twenty minutes, in Transylvania, are extraordinary: Karl Freund shot the castle with cobwebs, armadillos and a staircase, and Lugosi plays Dracula as a courteous foreign aristocrat rather than a monster, which is the reading everybody has used since.

Then Renfield reaches England and the film sits down for an hour.

A Spanish-language version was shot at night on the same sets with a different cast and is, by most accounts, the better-directed film.