Sat 17 Mar 2018
DRACULA’S DAUGHTER. Universal Pictures, 1936. Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden (Dracula’s Daughter), Marguerite Churchill, Edward Van Sloan (Professor Von Helsing), Gilbert Emery, Irving Pichel. Loosely based on the story “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker. Director: Lambert Hillyer.
Not all sequels begin right where the previous one ended, but Dracula’s Daughter is one that does, with Dracula dead, with a wooden stake through his heart, and Professor Von Helsing is custody as the man responsible.
Rather than hire an attorney, Von Helsing chooses a former student, now a well-known psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger). As for Dracula’s body, it disappears from the Scotland Yard morgue and is burned by his daughter Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) in an attempt on her part to rid herself of her father’s curse.
And who does she turn to? The same very earnest Dr. Garth, but as you can imagine, if ou haven’t seen the movie before, her attempts to save herself prove to be utterly in vain. No pun intended.
The casting is well nigh perfect, the production and photography are both top notch, given the limited budget this film most likely had. The combination of stoic weariness and fear that Gloria Holden put into her role was exactly what the movie needed. I don’t think it gave her career much of a boost, though. She made a couple dozen films in her day, but I doubt that anyone remembers her for any of them but this one.
The movie is in some circle widely regarded for its overt suggestions of lesbianism, summed up in a scene where Countess Zaleska, on the pretext of needing a female model to pose for her, requests the young girl to remove her blouse, and she does.
March 18th, 2018 at 1:07 am
Gloria Holden has a memorable part in Test Pilot — running after an ambulance carrying her dying husband, and another, really beautiful moment with Clark Gable in the mortuary.
March 18th, 2018 at 4:19 am
Give Universal credit for thinking outside the coffin, minting the “Vampirism as addiction” trope. In House of Dracula ’45, Dad himself comes looking for a cure.
March 18th, 2018 at 7:51 am
Much is made of the supposed-lesbian angle here, but looking back over the career of directors Lambert Hillyer (BATMAN, THE NARROW TRAIL, THE DURANGO KID etc…) I doubt he knew what a lesbian was.
March 18th, 2018 at 10:49 am
We might even have Gloria Holden herself for the controversy. The camera helped, but it’s entirely possible that it was she who implied the suggestive scene with her acting and expression, creating the unintended moment.
March 18th, 2018 at 5:57 pm
The scene is shot in a dominant/submissive fashion. Just cuz a director worked in another genre doesn’t mean he was ignorant of the ways of the world.
March 18th, 2018 at 6:02 pm
Right on, Bill.
March 18th, 2018 at 6:09 pm
Everyone involved, including the director treat this one as something special and it shows. In many ways it is a better film than the original DRACULA, which for all it’s fine moments is stage bound, and frankly lumbering in pace.
Strictly in cinematic terms it is a better film than the original though no where near as historic.
March 18th, 2018 at 8:43 pm
I’m glad to hear you say that, David. I almost said something very similar in my review, then decided it had been too long since I’d since the original one, and I didn’t know how well I could back it up.
Or in other words, I agree with you!