Dracula Movies to Watch: Invite a Vampire into Your Home This Halloween

You've put up the skeletons and the cobwebs in the windows. You've put the candy treats in the bowl with the grabbing green hand. The pumpkin is carved and lighted. Now, there's plenty of time to scare yourself silly this Halloween while you're waiting for the kids to knock on your door.

It's time for a movie. How do you feel about Bram Stoker's man from Transylvania? Count Dracula's story has been told so many times in the movies it's impossible to watch them all, but you can choose which Dracula you like. Whether you fancy the Count as one of living dead or a suave charmer you can bring home to meet mom and dad, here are six movies about that bloodthirsty European nobleman. Just don't ask him to join you in a glass of wine ...

One of the earliest vampire films, F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) is a creepy, black-and-white silent classic based on the Dracula story. There's nothing charming about this Count, named Orlok. Bald-headed, pointy-eared, snaggletoothed Max Schreck sucks lots of blood from his victims, travels with rats, and has a knack for rising straight up out of his coffin. (Still, this Count has his manners: at one point he asks, "Is this your wife? What a lovely throat.") Once she discovered Murnau was using the "Dracula" story, Bram Stoker's widow tried to get all copies of this movie destroyed. The director changed story names and locations in the film, and the lawsuit was dismissed -- three years later.

Bela Lugosi in "Dracula" (1931) is, of course, so identified with the Count that he was buried in his cape from the movie. This version almost starred Lon Chaney, until Lugosi spent two months negotiating with Stoker's widow (unlike Murnau, this time Lugosi won out). Despite some creaky, stage-like dialogue the movie is very effective, and Lugosi himself is the classic Count Dracula. Yes, he's evil and still has a lot to learn about how to enter a lady's second-floor bedroom without taking the shape of a bat, but he's dashing in that black-and-white cape.