Dracula’s Daughter (1936) – Review

You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family, this is a sentiment that the title character of Universal’s Dracula’s Daughter certainly understands in this sequel to the 1931 smash hit Dracula, which deals with a woman trying to escape the shadow of her infamous parentage, of course, being a vampire herself, this goal a bit tricky.

Dracula’s Daughter takes place mere moments after the events of the previous film, where Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) had tracked Dracula to Carfax Abbey and staked him to death, but with the arrival of two Whitby policemen our dear professor, who is now called Von Helsing for some reason, finds himself in a sticky situation as he openly admits to sticking a wooden stake through Count Dracula’s heart, which to your typical law enforcement personal this sounds a lot like murder. Von Helsing is quickly arrested and taken to Scotland Yard where he tries to explain to Sir Basil Humphrey (Gilbert Emery) that he didn’t murder a man but an undead creature of the night, a vampire.

“Next you’ll be telling me that mad scientists are cobbling together corpse parts and resurrecting them.”

Sir Basil tries to take Von Helsing’s status in the scientific community into account but he still has a dead body and a confessed killer on his hands so he points out that “As head of Scotland Yard I must warn you there are only two courses which can be taken, either formally charge you with murder and send you to the gallows or have you committed to an institution for the criminally insane” but Von Helsing quickly rebuts with “In destroying the monster Dracula I performed a service to humanity” which, sadly, is not a great defence if one is trying to prove either innocence or sanity, worse is the fact that instead of hiring a lawyer he enlists the aid of a psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), who was once one of his star students, but as he’s not a legal scholar this proves problematic because having a psychiatrist lead your defence is a good way to land yourself in the looney bin.

“I’d have a better chance of convincing a jury that your Santa Claus.”

While all this is going on Dracula’s corpse is spirited out of the Whitby jail by Dracula’s daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), who after mesmerizing one of the constables, and with the aid of her manservant Sandor (Irving Pichel), she has Dracula’s body tossed on a funeral pyre and performs a bizarre ritual “Be thou exorcised oh Dracula, and thy body long undead find destruction throughout eternity in the name of thy dark unholy Master. In the name of the oh holiest and through this cross be the evil spirit cast out until the end of time,” this is all in the vein attempt at breaking her curse of vampirism, but how a ritual would stop her from being an ageless undead creature of the night is never explained. Needless to say, this ritual does not have the desired results and before you can say “I don’t drink wine” Marya is stalking the streets of London in search of new blood donors.

“Sandor, someday they will invent something called Uber Eats and it will be grand.”

After a chance meeting with Dr. Jeffrey Garth at a society party, the Countess asks him to help her overcome the influence she feels from beyond the grave, hoping modern psychiatry can cure her of vampirism where arcane rituals had failed, but his suggestion of defeating her cravings by confronting them only leads to more death, mind over matter when it comes to the hunger for blood isn’t an easy contest, but things get worse when Garth’s secretary Janet Blake (Marguerite Churchill), who clearly wants to be more than to be His Girl Friday, gets jealous of Marya’s intentions towards Garth and her actions in trying to keep them apart paints a vampire bat sized target on her back. Things come to a head when Marya realizes that hypnotherapy is not going to end her curse and she decides that the next best thing is to transform Dr. Garth into a vampire so he can be her eternal companion, which is a totally logical conclusion, and to achieve this she has Sandor abduct poor Janet so that she can use her as a bargaining chip to force Garth to agree to her plan.  There is an additional complication to this plan and that is the fact that Marya had apparently promised Sandor eternal life and he’s not the sort of person to take rejection all that well, and this does have me wondering “Do vampire servants have Human Resources departments to complain to?”

“Accomplice, to murder and kidnapping and all you are going to give me is a good reference?”

Stray Observations:

• The Dracula in this movie has the inconsideration of not turning to dust when staked, thus resulting in poor Von Helsing having a murder charge hanging over his head.
• Where are Mr. and Mrs. Harker? With Von Helsing being arrested for the murder of Dracula you’d think these two would be witnesses on his behalf but they are inexplicably missing from this movie.
• The comedic and cowardly behaviour of the local constabulary in this film is a clear holdover element from the James Whale entries The Invisible Man and The Bride of Frankenstein, which makes sense when you take into account that Whale was originally intended to direct.
• When Marya hands her cloak to her manservant and tells him “There is blood on it again” leaves one picturing all the mundane yet dark tasks that a servant of a monster must undertake, and whether is there a special dry cleaner they can go to?
• Dr. Jeffrey Garth’s comment that “This is the only woman’s flat I’ve been in that didn’t have twenty mirrors” is the kind of thing that can get you killed if you are in a Dracula movie.
• When the story eventually returns to Castle Dracula there is no sign of Dracula’s Brides, did they hear of his death and take off to parts unknown?
• One of Marya’s victims is a young girl who Sandor lures back to her studio to supposedly “model for her” which is one of the most cliché seduction lines in the history of seduction, only the production code prevented the following scene from getting really interesting.

“Countess Zaleska, are you trying to seduce me?”

It’s no surprise that many cite this film as being loosely based on Carmilla, an 1872 Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the first published British works of fiction to deal with lesbian relationships, sadly, we’d have to wait for Hammer Films to dive deeper into that area of vampire sexuality in cinema. What is not clear is the actual relationship between Countess Marya Zaleska and Count Dracula, while she claims to be his daughter are we to consider this in the traditional biological sense or more that she is a vampire offspring? In the original story, Dracula had three brides so it’s not hard for one to assume that Marya is nothing more than one of his bloodsucking progenies and was not begotten through any act of undead sex, and while the sexual practices of vampires will take awhile to make their way to the big screen it’s clear that Marya wants Garth for more than just companionship.

“Until someone invents a dating app I’m stuck with abduction and emotional blackmail.”

Overall, Dracula’s Daughter is an interesting entry in the Universal Monster filmography as its protagonist is a vampire wishing to escape her curse who falls back on being a monster when things don’t turn out as she’d hoped, with actress Gloria Holden giving us a nuanced and seductive take on the female vampire, on the other hand, Otto Kruger is a less than convincing hero – not helped by the fact that I know him more for playing erudite villains in such films as Hitchcock’s Saboteur and Murder, My Sweet – but he’s even far less impressive when compared to Marguerite Churchill’s whose portrayal of the fiery secretary had me thinking that she should have been the hero and would have also made for even a better love interest for Marya.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand and paint the town red.”

With this film, director Hillyer gives us a luscious and suggestive vampire tale, one that doesn’t need gothic castles and flashing fangs to generate suspense and tension – though we do end up at Castle Dracula it comes across more as an afterthought than anything else – so if you want to take another fun journey to Transylvania this sequel is well worth the trip.

You can check out my other reviews here: Universal Classic Monsters: A Cinematic World of Horror.