Product Description
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Dracula's Daughter: Picking up where Dracula left off, Dr. Von
Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), thinking he has rid London of all
vampires, is instead arrested for murder. Meanwhile, the
beautiful and mysterious Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden)
appears in London seeking the understanding Dr. Garth (Otto
Kruger), Von Helsing's psychiatrist. A mysterious sequence of
events leads Von Helsing and Garth to set off to Transylvania
after the elusive countess and to rescue Garth's beautiful
fiancee (Marguerite Churchill) in this classic thriller. Son of
Dracula: Lon Chaney, Jr. dons a cape as Count Alucard (that's
Dracula spelled backward), the bloodthirsty son of the famous
Transylvanian vampire. And when a beautiful Southern girl,
Katherine (Louise Allbriton), invites him to the U.S., they both
set out to satisfy their unquenchable thirst for human blood with
nocturnal killings of unsuspecting neighbors and relatives.
Despite the heroic efforts of her fiance, Robert Paige, Katherine
falls under the spell of the evel Count in Son of Dracula,
director Robert Siodmak's excursion into the horror genre.
Bonus Content:
Disc 1 - Dracula's Daughter:
* Trailer
* Production Notes
* Cast and Filmmakers
Disc 1 - Son of Dracula:* Trailer
* Production Notes
* Cast and Filmmakers
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Dracula's Daughter This cut-rate sequel to Dracula, sans Bela
Lugosi, turns out to be an unexpectedly sleek and stylish movie.
Gloria Holden, tall, dark, and continental, is the aristocratic
title character fighting her nature and seeking a cure for her
affliction. A sympathetic psychiatrist, Dr. Garth (Otto Kruger),
encourages her to "face her fears," but when she lures a pretty
young streetwalker to her room to model for a painting, the
temptation of her y offering proves too much to overcome.
Edward Van Sloan reprises his role as Van Helsing, held by the
for the murder of Count Dracula (the film opens on the
final scene from Dracula) but released in the nick of time to
help Garth, now at the mercy of the bitter and vindictive
vampire. Director Lambert Hillyer makes the most of his low
budget, with austere, angular sets and an almost abstract sense
of the foggy city night. Holden's mysterious face and tall,
willowy body make her an even more striking vampire than Lugosi,
and Irving Pichel's offbeat servant is like an American gangster
with the breeding of a European aristocrat: thick and thuggish,
but always proper. The script falls into the usual rut of
Universal's later horror films, losing the mood in the busy plot,
but the smooth style and Holden's dignified performance lift
Dracula's Daughter above most Universal sequels.
Son of Dracula It was perhaps inevitable that, after playing the
Wolf Man, Frankenstein's monster, and the Mummy, Lon Chaney Jr.
would round out his horror resumé with a turn at the great
bloodsucker himself (not, as the title would suggest, his son).
Looking dapper and dignified under the cape, if not exactly
threatening, Chaney plays Count Alucard (that's Dracula spelled
backwards), a mysterious Carpathian summoned to America by a
"morbid" heiress (Louise Allbritton). Eric Taylor's script is
rather clunky, but the story (by horror spet Curt The
Wolfman Siodmak) is often quite clever, playing like a
supernatural twist on a psycho-thriller. Allbritton's frustrated
fiancé Robert Page accidentally "kills" her while trying to shoot
Alucard (who imperiously stands up to the hail of bullets) and
then goes stark raving mad as he watches the dead rise to life
and the living disappear in wisps of smoke and morph into creaky
stage bats.
Future film noir legend (and Curt's brother) Robert Siodmak (The
Killers) does wonders with the swampy, misty Deep South setting
despite his obviously threadbare budget, transforming the usual
clichés into moments of inspired melodrama. Only the clumsy
antics of the skeptical cops and the plodding exposition spouted
by an old Carpathian doctor (he just happens to be the local MD)
get in the way of this moody minor horror gem. --Sean Axmaker