Although “modern medical science does not admit of such a creature” as Bela Lugosi's Dracula-or so commonsensical Dr. Seward guarantees to the occultist Van Helsing-this Hollywood-Gothic entry into the vampire canon functions as an enduring B-movie rebuttal to such sentiment. A compendium of lowbrow Victorian fixations, Dracula brings bloodsucking to the country house; mesmerism to the loge; and, in the romance of Harker and Mina, taboo courtship to the sanitarium.