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ORIGINAL: Dr Lenera

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER [1936]

After Dracula's staked body has been found, the police arrest Van Helsing and refuse to believe what he says. Meanwhile the Countess Marya Zaleska arrives in England, removes Dracula's body and cremates it. She's also a vampire but is trying to fight it, however urged by her scary aide Sandor she sets about vampirising people anyway and the police free Van Helsing to catch her. However Marya has found a psychiatrist Jeffrey who she wants to help her and he starts to be more interested in her than his fiancee......

This sequel to Dracula is, despite the absence of Bela Lugosi, in many ways a better movie and deserves to be far better known. Featuring probably the first [and indeed the last for a very long time] sympathetic vampire, it's a downbeat, low key but really compelling outing, and one that simply oozes with Gothic ambience, so much so that I'm surprised that Goths and the like in particular haven't taken to this movie.  Take the scene where Marya cremates her father's [well, that's cleverly kept in doubt], it's a darkly beautiful tableaux with a real deathly mood. Things starts off slowly with a little too much of a pair of comedy policemen, but as soon as Marya takes Dracula's body from the police station in one of several very unusual sequences, things really go up some notches and stay there, the pace remains leisurely and perhaps never really kicks into high gear but the plot progresses almost logically while still keeping you guessing some of the outcome, the atmosphere is superbly sustained and even the dialogue is excellent, especially the sparking talk between Jeffrey and his fiance. The vampire scenes are mostly no stronger than those in Dracula but there's one extroadinary scene where Marya seduces and bites a woman, which I'm surprised wasn't cut at the time, the lesbian elements are very obvious. Gloria Holden gives a very strong performance as Marya and convincingly portrays a monster struggling against it's real nature and Otto Kruger is a more interesting young 'hero' than usual though Edward Van Sloan's Van Helsing doesn't really seem to do anything until the final third. A minor gem.
8/10

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ORIGINAL: Dr Lenera

THE WOLFMAN [1941]

Upon the death of his brother, Lawrence Talbot returns to Wales upon the request of his father to take his place. He becomes friendly with Gwen a local girl, but when visiting a gypsy camp he is told by a fortune teller he will have a doomed life. Returning, he saves Gwen from a wolf and kills it, whereupon the creature turns back into the gypsy leader. However, Talbot was bitten by the wolf and the next night starts to turn into a werewolf and prowl the countryside at night.......

When Werewolf In London wasn't too great a success Universal rebooted [to use a modern term] the basic idea a few years later. The result is one of their most loved monster movies that after An American Werewolf In London and The Howling is usually considered the best werewolf film. It has a very strong script by Curt Siodmak that seems to use things from folk legends but was actually almost all his own invention, such is it's authority, and a great sense of tragedy that gives it weight. It's also surprisingly restrained, with actually not much werewolf footage at all and not even a proper man-to-wolf transformation [these would be rectified in the next movie!], nonetheless the monster scene have a terrific atmosphere with tons of swirling fog put to good use. I've always found the werewolf makeup though a little weak [Talbot looks like he's wearing a furry hat!] and Lon Chaney's performance a little wooden.  Fortunately he's surrounded by one of the series' best casts including Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy and Maria Ouspenkaya is an unforgettable small role as the fortune teller. Sadly though most of Bela Lugosi's scenes were cut out. The Wales setting is extremely unconvincing but I don't think it was trying to be realistic, many of these films appear to be set in a kind of fantasy world combining various elements from differing locations and even times, sometimes you feel you're in 1920s England, sometimes in 18th Germany!  Not really a masterpiece then, but still an iconic classic.
8/10

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ORIGINAL: HughesRoss

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ORIGINAL: Dr Lenera

THE WOLFMAN [1941]

Upon the death of his brother, Lawrence Talbot returns to Wales upon the request of his father to take his place. He becomes friendly with Gwen a local girl, but when visiting a gypsy camp he is told by a fortune teller he will have a doomed life. Returning, he saves Gwen from a wolf and kills it, whereupon the creature turns back into the gypsy leader. However, Talbot was bitten by the wolf and the next night starts to turn into a werewolf and prowl the countryside at night.......

When Werewolf In London wasn't too great a success Universal rebooted [to use a modern term] the basic idea a few years later. The result is one of their most loved monster movies that after An American Werewolf In London and The Howling is usually considered the best werewolf film. It has a very strong script by Curt Siodmak that seems to use things from folk legends but was actually almost all his own invention, such is it's authority, and a great sense of tragedy that gives it weight. It's also surprisingly restrained, with actually not much werewolf footage at all and not even a proper man-to-wolf transformation [these would be rectified in the next movie!], nonetheless the monster scene have a terrific atmosphere with tons of swirling fog put to good use. I've always found the werewolf makeup though a little weak [Talbot looks like he's wearing a furry hat!] and Lon Chaney's performance a little wooden.  Fortunately he's surrounded by one of the series' best casts including Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy and Maria Ouspenkaya is an unforgettable small role as the fortune teller. Sadly though most of Bela Lugosi's scenes were cut out. The Wales setting is extremely unconvincing but I don't think it was trying to be realistic, many of these films appear to be set in a kind of fantasy world combining various elements from differing locations and even times, sometimes you feel you're in 1920s England, sometimes in 18th Germany!  Not really a masterpiece then, but still an iconic classic.
8/10

But it carries so much atmosphere that modern horrors can only dream of

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ORIGINAL: Dr Lenera

Can't agree more Bill and HR, I 'm usually watching these films on a Sat night after midnight, with the wife asleep,the lights off, the windows open and the curtains blowing gently.  The atmosphere is simply amazing and goes some way towards recreating the time when I first saw these movies as a nipper.  Except for the two or three double whiskies I tend to consume now though........

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ORIGINAL: Dr Lenera

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN

Two men decide to rob of Lawrence Talbot, but he awakes when the moon shines on him and they flee in fright.  Talbot puts himself in an asylum but turns into a werewolf again and goes on the rampage.  On a visit to the gypsy Maleva, she tells him to maybe the diary of  Dr. Frankenstein could hold the key to a permanant death for him.  Pursued by psychiatrist Dr. Mannering, Talbot goes to the village of Frankenstein where his grandaughter Elsa resides and finds in the castle the Monster is still alive though weakened.  Unfortunately Elsa wants nothing to do with him.....

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, the first of several films which would feature more than one monster, is a hugely enjoyable horror romp that isn't really supposed to be taken seriously.  The plot alternates between being ludicrous and being not just well thought out, and there's little continuity between this and Ghost Of Frankenstein, in fact this entry is laughably inept in that respect [though it's silly in all films that the castle appears to look different and be in a different location every time].  The 'normal' characters have behave very oddly,The Monster is shunted to the sidelines and most of the story is about the Wolf Man, nonetheless in some respects this is a better werewolf movie then the first Talbot outing, with far more werewolf action and now a proper transformation. The film moves at a furious pace, only  really stopping for a bizarre musical interlude about half way through, and the final battle between the two creatures, though brief by modern standards, is  very well staged and exciting.  Director Roy William Neill, usually busy making Sherlock Holmes movies, gives proceedings some of that essential atmosphere that was lacking in Ghost Of Frankenstein [especially strong in this respect is the opening sequence], while Lon Chaney is more compelling this time round.  As for Bela Lugosi's heavily criticised outing as the Monster, I think he's actually ok, and his performance is hard to really judge because of heavy cutting that removed the Monster's ability to speak and the fact he was blind [as at the end of Ghost Of Frankenstein]. Apparently stuntman Glenn Strange doubled for the 60 year old actor half the time too.  Certainly no classic and undoubtably pretty ridiculous, this is still one of my favourites of the series from an entertainment point of view.  Great fun.
8/10

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ORIGINAL: Dr Lenera

Though no masterpiece, this has always been a favourite of mine,hence longer review! And possible SPOILERS!
SON OF DRACULA [1943]


8/10

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ORIGINAL: siegfried

I have to agree with you, Doc.
What really lets the film down for me is the miscasting of Lon Chaney. He was a good actor, very effective as the Wolfman, but was just wrong for Dracula.
Still enjoying your reviews.

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ORIGINAL: Dr Lenera

Though no masterpiece, this has always been a favourite of mine,hence longer review! And possible SPOILERS!
SON OF DRACULA [1943]

Somewhere in the Deep South of America, two men wait at a railway station for the arrival of a certain Count Alucard, who has been invited by the daughter of the plantation owner, Kay, who apparently met him whilst on holiday in Budapest.  All that arrive are some crates filled with earth.  Alucard later shows up and starts to lure the infatuated Kay away from her fiancee Frank.  When Kay's father is found with two bite marks on his neck, Frank consults Professor Lazio, who deduces that, since Alucard spelt backwards is Dracula, he could be the king of vampires himself.  Then Frank finds Kay with Alucard and shoots her, but is she really dead........


Sometimes it possible to love a certain movie not so much because of what you think are it's qualities [although the very underated Son Of Dracula has quite a few] but because it holds a strong memory for you and/or was an important part of your film growing-up.  This movie is one of those for me, primairly because it actually really creeped me out when I first saw it at around 8 or 9 years old.  I had the pleasue of viewing most of these Universal horror movies when I was quite young but still just about old enough to appreciate them. They really gripped my imagination but only three of them actually frightened me.  Two of them I have not yet mentioned or reviewed, which will probably seem surprising, but I will do soon!  Son Of Dracula was one, and it's really hard to explain why, but I will always remember feeling very uneasy when I witnessed a bat apparently gnawing at someone's neck [of course you don't see any blood, but it's still a surprisingly unpleasent image for one of these films!] and Frank's undead fiancee Kay returning from the grave to visit him in prison where he's been accused of her murder, firstly her haunting voice whispering to him, then she appearing to move through the bars to be with him. 

It's easy to laugh now, nonetheless Son Of Dracula does have that essential atmosphere in bucketloads that was also a very big part of their previous two Dracula films.  Director Robert Siodmak was an excellent director of film noirs, and brings much of the look and feel of that kind of movie to this one, with great use of shadows and a very downbeat, fatalistic tone.  No one winds up happy at the end and the final image of a burning room, with Kay inside, is unforgettable.  Alucard/Draula may be a vampire, but it's Kay who is the real villain. She ends up using Alucard so she can live forever and have Frank join her for eternity.  She's a classic femme fatale and as played by Louise Allbritton is a fascinating death-obsessed character in the first half and a genuinely eerie vampire in the second half.

Son Of Dracula takes a while to get going and apart from the two leads the cast, with the possible exception of Evelyn Ankers,are forgettable, but it has some striking special effects and individual sequences, such as an early one where Alucard's coffing slowly rises to the top of a swamp, then on the other side fog rises and materialises into Alucard who walks off the water onto the grass. Wonderful Gothic imagery of the kind you just don't see now.  For me the thing that really lets it down is Lon Chaney as Dracula.  He doesn't look the part [though granted, we all probably have differing ideas of what Dracula should really look like], doesn't sound the part and certainly doesn't act the part.  He's not scary, mesmerizing, sexy [so my wife says], urbane, all the things you expect from Dracula.  He's just a beefy guy in a cloak and moustache, and it's hard to believe that he can hold a spell over people.  Also, there's some confusion about who he actually is.  The title says Son Of Dracula, but I always remembered that he was actually Dracula himself.  However, watching it again it appears he's a descendent of Dracula, so quite possibly a great grandson or something.

In the end it doesn't really matter very much, the script has enough interesting elements in it to make up for this. Son Of Dracula was probably intended as just another quickie, but with a considerable amount of care it became perhaps the last truly classic Universal horror and though it does have certain things which hold it back from being up there with the true masterpieces like Bride Of Frankenstein and The Mummy, is still a shining example of what made many of their horror films special.  It also will also have a special place in my heart for scaring me those many years ago.  Though it probably didn't help that, as was sometimes the case,I had snuck downstairs and was sitting right in front of the TV with the sound turned right down so mum and dad wouldn't be woken up! 
8/10