What's your favourite Bela Lugosi movie?

White Zombie's a brilliant film, and I liked him in the Abbot & Costello film too - was it "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein"? I'm not sure. I saw it at a film festival a couple of years back and we were all laughing our heads off. I'd have loved to have seen Lugosi playing Dracula on stage, if only I'd been around in those days.

Lugosi was fantastic! Wouldn't it have been amazing to see him in the role on stage? I think he had an amazingly expressive face, lots of charisma and was perfectly cast in the role. There's a wonderful piece of news footage on You Tube where he is being interviewed in an asylum he went into for treatment and even though he was older and ill, he is a fascinating and charming man.

I think I know the news footage you mean. It's also included as one of the extras on the DVD of White Zombie that I've got. It's a real shame how he ended up, I don't think the Hollywood film industry ever fully realised his talent. You'd think with that gentlemanly manner of his and the exotic accent, he could have carved out a decent niche playing European aristocrats in addition to the horror stuff. He always turned out the best performance he could though, even in the cheapest films he made.

Yes, both Lugosi and Karloff were really good performers, they each had their own unique qualities. Funnily enough, I've not yet seen the Lugosi Dracula. I think my favourite films of his that I have seen are "White Zombie" and "The Human Monster" (aka "The Dark Eyes of London"). He was so good at playing villains. And yet when you see him being interviewed, he comes across as such a gentleman that I could also imagine him being just as good as a children's entertainer if his career had gone down that path instead. Talking of Karloff, a film of his well worth seeing if you haven't seen it yet is one of his last ones, a British film called "The Sorcerors", co-starring Ian Ogilvy. Made about 1970, Karloff plays a basically decent man who gets slowly tempted into villainy.

If you can, I'd recommend buying the Roan DVD of "White Zombie" which was released a few years ago. They've cleaned up the image as much as they could (although the sound's still not brilliant) and it's got a decent set of special features on it. I was mistaken when I said it had the news footage of him coming out of rehab, that's not on it. But it does have a couple of interviews (one from the 30s, which is obviously staged, and a TV interview of him filmed on the ship coming back from his British stage tour of "Dracula" in the 50s). It's also got a trailer and a commentary by an academic by the name of Gary Don Rhodes, so it's a pretty decent package in my opinion. By the way, I take it from your last comment that your DVD player is restricted to one region. Have you checked to see if it can be reprogrammed to take DVDs from any region? A lot of them can quite easily. There are websites that have instructions for doing this. Just type in the make and model of your machine and the words "multi region" into a search engine, and if it is possible there's a good chance you'll find instructions for doing it. That way you can order DVDs over the internet from all over the world and be sure of being able to play them. I live in Britain, but I get a lot of the more obscure movies I like from America.

You have to see Dracula, I love it!! I haven't seen White Zombie (but it's on my list to buy) or the other 2 films. The Sorcerers seems quite hard to find and The Human Monster only seems to be out in Region 1! You're right about Bela being a gentleman. In fact, Boris too, really genuinely nice guys, soft as pussycats and not at all nasty or scary, yet able to chill and terrify audiences as actors.