Customer Reviews

Dracula's Daughter [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was made 5 years after DRACULA, and as far as sequels go... it's amazingly good and well done. It's a sexy and creepy tale about a mysterious woman who shows up, steals the body of Count Dracula, and then begins to paint portraits of women in terror which are probably inspired by her victims she hunts in the shadows of fog drenched London. Gloria Holden is the titular vampire who makes an impressive turn as a woman torn between wanting to be released from an eternity of bloodlust and finding it impossible to deny her lineage. It moves faster than the 1931 Lugosi film, and it finds a lot of humor in its supporting characters. Don't know why this one is not more popular! But it was remade as NADJA, and by some accounts as SUNSET BLVD. (at least in part)! Definitely a worthy addition to your video collection.

"Dracula's Daughter" is an excellent member of the Universal horror movie canon, even though its fame is eclipsed by Tod Browning's "Dracula," which starred Bela Lugosi. This sequel, released five years after "Dracula," picks up where the earlier film left off, with a mysterious woman appearing in England to claim the remains of The Count. With her hulking manservant in two, Dracula's distaff progeny seduces both men and women, all the while wishing she could be a normal woman. Though not terribly well-known, "Dracula's Daughter" greatly influenced novelist Anne Rice, the recent vampire art-house flick "Nadja," and even "Sunset Boulevard," which strongly echoes some of the themes and images of "Dracula's Daughter."

Gloria Holden has no difficulty convincing the viewer that she is Dracula's daugther, her raven hair and compelling gaze show it quite clearly. A really wonderful supporting cast includes Edward Van Sloan from the original Dracula, Irving Pichel as her very creepy servant, Otto Kruger as Dr. Garth and even a small role for Hedda Hopper. Though considered a B movie it far surpasses many on the A list.

Like 'The Bride of Frankenstein' sequel to 'Frankenstein', this film starts where Dracula ended. Two policemen find Reinfield dead at the foot of the staircase and Van Helsing exiting the cellar where he has just staked Dracula! That is where the story goes into it's own. Dracula's daughter is unique as the Countess wants nothing to do with her bloodsucking father's appetite for blood and has a strange looking henchmen to lure her victims to her home. I found this movie to be both interesting and original. When the Countess utters the familiar line "I never drink......wine, I could almost feel an imaginary wink to the original. Although Holden is no Lugosi(who is?)she plays the part of the reluctant bloodsucker well. This is a very obscure Universal film and it deserves some attention. I am reviewing this film here because I have watched this film from the Dracula Legacy DVD collection. The DVD transfer is very good and it is included with 3 versions of Dracula,Son of Dracula,House of Dracula and a slew of worthwhile extra goodies.

With this familiar cryptic line, Countess Zaleska (Gloria Holden) establishes her credentials as Dracula's slave. Although a sequel, this film stakes out its own turf. The exorcism scene, as Zaleska consigns Dracula's body to the flames in the mist-enshrouded woods, is one of the all-time great moments of Universal's classic horror flicks. Despite her legacy, Zaleska despises her blood lust, and seeks a cure. With Sandor, her peculiar henchman, Zaleska reluctantly searches for victims. When evil is ascendant, she attacks both men and women with equal fervor. The otherworldly segment of the impoverished street girl, Lily, is another outstanding virtue of this movie, from the encounter on the foggy bridge to the grim result. Lily's suffering projects a tenderness that is unusual in a horror flick. Under hypnosis, she articulates her ordeal, but the shock is too much. Holden is beautiful in a cold and aristocratic way that suits the vampire persona. Edward Van Sloan again appears as Van Helsing. Irving Pichel adds a central European refinement to his mysterious menace as Sandor. While Zaleska despises her eternal existence, Sandor lusts after power. Otto Kruger is unsympathetic as Dr. Garth, and Marguerite Churchill's repartee is a lame attempt at sophisticated wit. The hilarious Whitby police constables are more effective comic relief as they guard the coffin containing the defunct Dracula. Abbott and Costello with a British accent. All serious collectors of classic horror flicks need this one for their movie shelf. ;-)

This text refers to the transfer to DVD from the Dracula Legacy Collection

There are several occasions where this film draws from or directly imitates things that had been done before. The spoken introduction of the main character is a direct take on a scene that had been done by James Whale in "Bride of Frankenstein" a year earlier. The makeup for the main character's evil henchman (Irving Pichel) appears modelled after what Lon Chaney Sr. created for the role of the Phantom in "The Phantom of the Opera". Several of the lines used in the original film, "Dracula", are repeated. Several of the clichés that plagued the genre are not only present; they're out in force. Exchanges of dialogue are obviously contrived to make way for (gasp!) shocking moments of melodrama. Victims are very obviously victims well before they meet their fate. The setting and characters for the Transylvanian village got the full Hollywood treatment. As usual the villagers appear to be nothing more than quaint simpletons looking as if they're stuck in the distant past. The cops inspire no confidence. The film's evil henchman is a stock character. As is par for the course he's either deadeye dick or the worst marksman in the world depending on who his target is ...

It's a surprisingly good film though. What saves it is how well it's executed. The pervading atmosphere is genuinely eerie. The quality of the sets the sets is inconsistent but the lighting is (generally very) good. The film is original and breaks new ground (for its time) in as many ways as it copies what came before it. The idea of having the victims of the vampire be from both genders broadened the web of evil such creatures would spread. The seduction of a victim from the same gender as the vampire was daring for its time. It's also handled very tastefully. Nan Grey is superb as the young (and despondent) victim. Portraying the vampire as a victim was a stroke of brilliance. It allowed her to become a sympathetic character as well as a thing to be feared. It also suggested that many things weren't as black and white as might be thought. That's an idea that continues to be used well to this day. (It's also one that should always be given consideration in any area of a person's thinking). The protagonist who emerges as the "hero" of the piece isn't a particularly likeable character. He's pompous, arrogant and overbearing. Generally he appears cold (or completely oblivious) to the needs of the people around him. It's only through his actions that the extent of his caring for others becomes clear. That makes another valid point. The person who will make the sacrifices may not always be the person everybody likes. Gloria Holden and Otto Kruger are excellent in their roles. Their characters are multi-faceted beings that inspire various reactions ranging from empathic sympathy to sheer contempt from their audience. The injection of humour into the film is another nice touch. Inspiration for that may have been taken from James Whale. He understood the close relationship between fear and laughter and used it well. Whether that was the case or not the director of this film, Lambert Hillyer, and its writer David O. Selznick (yes, that David O. Selznick) realized the same thing and used it just as well. The scenes between Otto Kruger and Marguerite Churchill are hilarious and well placed. She is excellent in her role. Her character is as complex as those portrayed by Holden and Kruger but adds an impish and mischievous quality to the screen that makes all of her scenes fun to watch. The comic timing between her and Kruger is splendid. It looks as if these two had some fun filming their scenes. It's just too bad there were no out-takes included in the bonus features (though to be fair there may not be any available).

The transfer to DVD as part of Universal's Legacy Collection is very good. The audio track is in good condition as well. The film is one that's fun to watch. It's far better than what its title suggests. There are incongruities, and many of them. It has weak points and there are some weak characters. Edward Van Sloan reprisal of his role as Van Helsing is one of them. This character is the most doddering image of a hero ever to appear on a screen. It's hard to believe he could lift a stake let alone drive it through anyone's heart. One scene makes a lightning shift from "Dracula's returned!" to "she's back!" without missing a beat. There are more examples of things like this but you get the idea. The film has many strong points as well. Watch those and appreciate a film that was part of its time but ahead of it as well.

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER excels is in setting out a kind of space, a dream space if you like, where melancholy, archetypal anxieties are played out. This is a film full of disturbing inversions and unexpected connections. For instance, the film opens with Van Helsing arrested for murder - the hero/saviour of the Dracula story has suddenly become a villain, a murderer, a lunatic. This brings brilliantly to the surface the subtext of the original story, and Van Helsing is emasculated and sidelined here, his intellectual buffoonery has no place in this tragic tale of sexual dismay.As with the great horror films, DAUGHTER dramatizes an intrinsic conflict, that between desire, which is subversive, transgressive, fragmentary, and the Law, duty, order, wholeness. Desire is signaled as female, passive, hereditary, linked to the body; the Law is male, rational, scientific. But these boundaries aren't as clear-cut as one might think. For instance, both Marya and Jeffrey are hypnotists. Indeed Jeffrey begins the film outside the Law, defending a murderer; when faced with the threat from desire, which transcends uniform identities and sexualities, he aligns himself with the Law, however ineffectual.The diffusion of desire is represented in doubling, e.g., the two women fighting for Jeffrey, but also in alternate homosexuality's - Janet interrupts Jeffrey's homoerotic shooting with his Scottish friend, just as he interrupts her surrender to Marya. Desire is often seen as a threat to life, to wholesome fertility - and yet it is, here, the hereditary force in a world of cold bachelors and desperate virgins. Although Hollywood convention had to be accommodated, Marya is far from being demonized: she is a somnolent, tragic, Garboesque figure, helplessly in thrall to this 'disease' which consumes here, which is only a 'disease' because society says so. Her pained declaration of her inability to refrain confirms as much, and her assaults and their filming suggest themes more fully realized in PEEPING TOM.The film is set in England, despite its American provenance, and in the five intervening years since the Browning/Lugosi DRACULA, there has been the rise of one vampiric force consumed with blood-lust brooding from the East, Nazism. Whether certain connections about Empire and Hitler are just my fancy, I don't know, but it's nice to see the Transylvanians as people for a change, rather than the usual cowering peasants.

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5

Grade: A- 92%

Many films have visualised the conflict between Law and Desire, but few have created such an eerie dreamlike space for it as this movie. There are elements from the other great Universal films - the character comedy from Whale; sexual themes figured in petrified imagery like Freund - but this film's still dread is all it's own, where seeming flaws (clumsy compositions, wooden acting, slow pace) become genuine virtues, and you find yourself sweating for some reason. It doesn't feel like a great film, but it's grip is unmistakable.

Although it lacks the edge of earlier Universal horror favorites, Dracula's Daughter has a finely tuned atmosphere which should appeal to fans of the genre-- as will Gloria Holden, who is unnervingly effective in the title role. Occasionally banned for its fairly obvious lesbian overtones, Dracula's Daughter is the perfect companion for the Bela Lugoisi original.

This film is little known and even less scene. I cannot recall having ever seen it on TV, or at least not for many years and is one of the most ignored Univeral horror films.

Dracula's Daughter is the direct sequel to the 1931 classic although it did not appear until 1936. The film opens mere moments after the events in Dracula as two English constables enter Carfax Abbey and find the body of Renfield lying at the bottom of the stairs after being killed by Dracula. They then see Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan0 emerge from the crypts and admitting to driving a stake through Dracula's heart. A Wax dummy stands in for Lugosi.

Van Helsing is arrested as they do not believe his tale of Vampires. Van helsing contacts an old friend Dr. Garth (Otto Kruger) to aid him. Garth agrees and soon meets a mysterious, dark haired woman who introduces herself as Countess Zaleska. She also seeks Garths aid but she wants release from her curse as a vampire, the daughter of Dracula!

When Garth figures out just what the Countess is he refuses to help but Zaleska and her servant Sandor kidnap Garth's assistant and take her back to Transylvania and Castle Dracula which we get to see again. Zaleska offers to release the woman only if Garth will allow her to turn him into a vampire and to live as her immortal lover.

This was an interesting movie. Gloria Holden as the countess was every bit as mysterious (well almost) as Lugosi with her aristocratic look and penetrating eyes. She was well-cast for the role. The film doesn't have the gothic atmosphere of the original but Director Lambert Hillyer infuses it with more sexuality including a rather strong (for the times) lesbian sequence where Zaleska invites a prostitute to her studio to pose rather provocatively and ends up killing her in a rather sexually charged scene.

Van Sloan is relegated to a rather minor role this time and his scenes are basically at the beginning and end of the film. Irving Pichel plays the very creepy servant Sandor and famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper has a minor role as well. This is really Holden's movie, however. How exactly she is related to Dracula isn't explained but one can surmise that she isn't his daughter in the literal sense since she's mentioned to have died only one hundred years ago while Dracula had been dead for five hundred years. Holden is quite statuesque and mesmerizing in her performance and this is a very underrated sequel.