Dracula

5. "Dracula" (1979)

Frank Langella's "Dracula" traced his bloodlines back to brooding heroes in Gothic novels, sexually magnetic but driven by some dark secret, and to the sensitive yet impossibly virile lovers of the contemporary romance novel. Shipwrecked, this Dracula's first... more introduced in close-up: his slow hand rises from and caresses wolf fur, signaling eroticism rather than evil as his raison d'etre. With his mane of electric black hair, heated gaze, sensual mouth and purring voice, Langella makes every other male in the vicinity look the weak, sexless fool. After he transports Kate Nelligan's independent-minded beauty into molten ecstasy, the lady's ready to follow her passionate soul mate anywhere. (Universal Pictures / Everett Collection)