Is Bela Lugosi’s Dracula Still Hot in 2018?

Vampires are hot, and there’s one legendary blood-sucker who reigns supreme at Halloween. I’m talking about Dracula. Bram Stoker’s terrifying Victorian play made the vampire myth a mainstream obsession, and one Hungarian actor has defined the role forever.
When Bela Lugosi starred in 1931’s Dracula, he wasn’t just considered a horrifying monster, but a handsome sex symbol. That was Lugosi’s thing. He was the Eastern European Valentino, but older, and creepier. When Lugosi played Count Dracula — first on stage, and later in a series of films (which you can hear all about on the podcast You Must Remember This) — he became something of a hot commodity. And Bela Lugosi wasn’t just a sex symbol, but one of old Hollywood’s biggest players. His most notorious love affair was with the very first “It girl” Clara Bow. After they split, he kept a massive nude portrait of her hung up in his house — just so everyone could see. (It’s a high class mack move that makes the exploits of Leonardo DiCaprio’s “pussy posse” seem lame in my opinion.)

But does Bela Lugosi’s personal brand of sex appeal still have a place in 2018? As Decider’s resistant lady horndog, I thought, “I don’t know. Let me watch the original 1931 Dracula and find out.”

While he’s not my type, I can sort of see why so many ladies lost their bloomers for Bela back in the day. As Dracula, Lugosi’s eyes are absolutely mesmerizing, and his cape game is on point. There’s a menace in his body language and absolute lust in his gaze. It’s not that he’s handsome so much as he’s commanding. There’s a domineering charisma that I can see some people falling for. But would Bela Lugosi in 1931 be considered People Magazine‘s Sexiest Man Alive material in 2018? I’m…not sure.
My main issue with Lugosi was that he seemed…uh…a little old? I suppose he looks great for being undead, but I was not surprised to discover that he was 49-years-old when this movie came out. I got a distinct “middle-aged man” vibe from Lugosi, and not in a silver fox Roger Sterling kind of way. I mean this guy should maybe be more interested in dusting the spider-webs in his castle than preying on young virgins. Or, I don’t know, maybe Dracula could get a hobby like home brewing. In my mind, that’s what hot 49-year-olds do; They take responsibility for themselves. They don’t go on all-night raves with sex slaves. So that was my big barrier for “Bela-mania” entry. He just struck me as a decaying man child, and that’s not hot.

That said, the hottest part of this movie — in 2018 terms — is the surprisingly kinky and homoerotic relationship between Count Dracula and Dwight Frye’s Renfield. The Dracula myth usually centers on the vampire’s relationships with Mina Harker or Van Helsing, but the 1931 film’s most potent through-line is the explicit master/submissive arrangement that evolves between Dracula and Renfield. Their meeting sets the plot in motion, and Dracula only crosses paths with Mina, Lucy, et al when he tries to free Renfield from a London sanatorium. Renfield pines for his “master” and declares himself his “slave.” He’s often shown on his knees before Dracula, and it’s worth noting that the film blacks out just before the vampire initially descends on Renfield’s body. So, the subtext is there. Dracula may have been shot in black and white, but its sexual politics are on the spectrum — and that, my friends, is very 2018.

So Bela Lugosi could swing it in our modern times, but he’d be a much different kind of sex symbol than he was at the dawn of the Great Depression.

Watch Dracula (1931) on Starz