Boo! (1932 film)

Did You Know?

• Universal had obtained a print of Nosferatu in 1929 during negotiations for the rights of Dracula, this print initially being one among several confiscated for destruction by the demand of Florence Stoker.
• The short film's copyright was renewed in 1960.

Plot

The film opens with a man, played by Morton Lowry, reading the novel Dracula. A narrator announces that they will present their own formula for cheap entertainment—a nightmare—and advises the viewer to eat a real lobster, drink milk, and work up a chill. The man falls asleep. The scene shifts to a cellar, edited from Nosferatu, where caretaker Hutter (Gustav von Wagenheim) is locking up ghosts for the night. He discovers a coffin containing Dracula (Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck). Hutter tries to leave but keeps returning; unable to sleep, he rests in a hammock. Dracula rises, sucks Hutter's blood, and then goes to sleep for a hundred years—until Congress does something about the depression. The action moves to a laboratory, edited from Frankenstein, where a Doctor (Edward Van Sloan) works on the Monster (Boris Karloff). The Monster awakens, kills the Doctor, and later meets Dracula, becoming afraid of him. Annabelle West (Helen Twelvetrees) appears, but the Monster is present. A man tells Helen she has no business in the same nightmare as Dracula; Dracula pulls him behind a bookshelf. The Monster studies Dracula's methods. Helen sees a man who keeps falling down, then faints when the Monster appears. Dracula, needing money for his income tax, steals Helen's jewels. Helen wakes up screaming, ticklish on the neck, and tells a young man what happened. The young man wants to see a ghost but is caught and has his blood sucked. Helen cannot marry because Dracula gets any man she talks to, leaving her a widow every fifteen minutes. Dracula chases a woman, recognizable by the fourth toe on his left foot. The Monster chases Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), who is about to be married. She is terrified, but the chase turns into a game of follow-the-leader and then ring-around-the-rosy. Elizabeth tells the Monster she cannot play anymore because she must get married.