by Ted Sherman

Created on: September 22, 2008

It would be almost criminal to select the best horror movies of all time without including old Drac and Frank, the guys who began it all. With talkies just a little more than months old, these two landmark horror films, produced in the same year of 1931, set the standard for all to follow:

1. Frankenstein (1931) was the filming of the Mary Shelley classic about a scientist who discovered a way to bring the dead back to life. The result was a hulking monster who scared the hell out of nearby townspeople and every moviegoer for at least three generations. The movie also established a horror film career for a mild-mannered English actor named William Henry Pratt. Appearing on the set with the hulking costume and make-up for his role as the reanimated man, including the squared head and bolted neck, the director of the film insisted that the actor be billed with a spooky name, and thus he became Boris Karloff.

2. Dracula (1931) brought a Hungarian actor first to Broadway to star in the stage version of the Bram Stoker horror tale. However, Bla Ferenc Dezs Blask spoke almost no English. While memorizing the script, his language tutor had Bela pronounce each word with emphasized precision. As a result, the newly-named Bela Lugosi's speaking style became a sensation, and since the film version was released, his funny accent as Count Dracula has been imitated by other horror film actors, kids on the playground and comedians ever since.

The story, as if anyone from age six to 90 doesn't already know it, is about a 600-year-old vampire dressed in a snazzy tux, who sleeps in his coffin during the day and comes out at night. He must constantly wander the earth, to sink his fangs in some unlucky human, usually a beautiful blonde bimbo, to drink blood. By being punctured by the fangs, the victim also becomes a vampire. Sometimes, to get airborne and cover more territory and victims, Count Dracula turns himself into a bat. The only way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through his/her heart, which makes for some very bloody scenes in the score of Dracula movies that followed the original.

3. Pyscho (1960) is a horror classic because of two memorable scenes in Bates Motel conjured up by the master of spooky films, Alfred Hitchcock. The most famous is Janet Leigh being knifed to death in the shower. Even though the film was in black and white, we could imagine all that black stuff swirling around in the bathtub was red blood.

The other horror scene is when creepy nutcase Norman

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