Dracula's Daughter (1936)

Directed by

Lambert Hillyer

Genre

horror film, vampire film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 11m

Rated

16

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 228 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Countess Marya Zaleska is the daughter of Count Dracula and a vampire herself. She tries to escape her curse by destroying her father's body and seeking help from a psychiatrist. When that fails, she kidnaps the doctor's assistant and takes her to Transylvania.

macabremelancholicatmospherictenseslow-burnsombergothiccreepy

What happens

Dracula's Daughter is a 1936 American vampire film produced by Universal Pictures as a sequel to the 1931 film Dracula. Directed by Lambert Hillyer from a screenplay by Garrett Fort, the film stars Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden in the title role, and Marguerite Churchill, and features, as the only cast member to return from the original, Edward Van Sloan – although his character's name was altered from "Van Helsing" to "Von Helsing". Dracula's Daughter tells the story of Countess Marya Zaleska, the daughter of Count Dracula and herself a vampire. Following Dracula's death, she believes that by destroying his body, she will be free of his influence and live normally. When this fails, she turns to a psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Kruger). The Countess kidnaps Dr. Garth's assistant, Janet (Marguerite Churchill), and takes her to Transylvania, leading to a battle between Dr. Garth and the Countess in an attempt by him to save Janet. Ostensibly based on an omitted chapter from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula – published in 1914 as a short story entitled "Dracula's Guest" – the film bears absolutely no resemblance to the source material. Modern sources maintain that the film was instead loosely based on Carmilla, an 1872 Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, which is often cited as the first published British work of fiction to deal with lesbian relationships. David O. Selznick purchased the rights to the Stoker material for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but Universal bought them in 1934, with the rights to revert to MGM if Universal did not begin production by October 1935, a date later extended to February 1936. Universal rushed the film into production in that month, with the script only partially completed, to meet this deadline. The film was first assigned to James Whale, but Universal production head Carl Laemmle Jr. finally hired Hillyer as director. While not as successful as the original upon its release, the film was generally well-reviewed. In the intervening decades, criticism has been deeply divided. Contemporary critics and scholars have observed the film's alleged lesbian overtones, which Universal exploited in some early advertising. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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