Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula () (DVD)

Brilliantly dramatic documentary... a wealth of rare footage... will make you feel as if you lived with Lugosi through his triumphs and tragedies. - Greg Mank, author of It's Alive and Karloff and Lugosi

Lugosi and Dracula are inseparable images from the heyday of Hollywood. More than any other actor in film history, Lugosi is the master of the macabre, the king of the vampires, and the cult hero of horror movies. And yet he was also a man who fought in wars and revolutions, who married five times, and who mastered stagecraft and film arts in Hungary, Germany, and the United States. He remained an enigma in Hollywood even as his career dwindled into the weird worlds of drug abuse and filmmaker Ed Wood. And Lugosi's fusion with the famed vampire became more permanent than ever when he was buried in his Dracula cape in 1956.

Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula unravels the truth behind the legendary star by interweaving rare film footage from 1918-1956, home movies, and previously-unseen photographs with narration by Lugosi costar Robert Clarke and Lugosi fan Rue McClanahan. Numerous on-camera interviews span family members, Academy-Award winning director Robert Wise, legendary producer Howard W. Koch, and a host of Lugosi's film costars and personal friends.

The film has won awards and accolades at film festival and theatrical screenings across the globe. Film historian Michael H. Price, author of Forgotten Horrors, has proclaimed that "Gary D. Rhodes' Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula is the first life-story to give Lugosi his generous due, to treat Lugosi as something greater than a martyr, and to mingle an academic thoroughness with an unabashed enthusiasm toward its troubled and majestic subject."

FEATURES:

• 30 minutes of deleted footage
• Filmed interview with Hope Lugosi
• Richard Sheffield filmed interview
• 1932 Lugosi interview
• 1949 Lugosi TV show excerpt
• 1918 Lugosi film fragment

SPECIAL BONUS: 75 minute audio disc featuring rare Lugosi radio performances from the 1940s that have never before been released on compact disc. Costars include the likes of Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard and all audio has been digitally remastered.

• documentary