DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936)

Starring: Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill, Edward Van Sloan, Gilbert Emery, Irving Pichel, Halliwell Hobbes. Written by John L. Balderston, Charles Belden, Finley Peter Dunne, Garret Fort, David O. Selznick, R.C. Sherriff. Directed by Lambert Hillyer. USA. 71 minutes.

"There isn't anything I wouldn't do to get you to free me of the curse of Dracula. I am Dracula's daughter."

The direct sequel to the (in my not-so-humble opinion over-rated) 1931 Todd Browning Dracula, Dracula's Daughter opens with Dr. Van Helsing (Van Sloan reprising his role from the first film) being arrested for the apparent homicide of Count Dracula and the abduction of the Count's body (represented by a waxy-looking Bela dummy) by a strange woman with a hypnotic gaze. That woman is none other than the title character, the lovely Countess Marya Zaleska (Holden). In a dark, moody scene she disposes of her father's remains in a private cremation ceremony, saddened by her father's second and final death but also exhilirated with the hope that his all too timely demise will once and for all release her from the curse of vampirism.

Seems that poor Marya just wants to be human and live the life of an ordinary woman. But the pasty-skinned Sandor (Pichel), her deranged mortal lackey (no good vamp should go without one), croaks out portents of doom when she dares to venture hopeful thoughts of release from damnation. "I can live a normal life! Think normal things! Even play normal music!" But try as she might, Marya can't help herself from engaging in the typical vampire activities of sleeping in a coffin and quafing human blood. She lures unsuspecting women she finds on the streets back to her pad and, well, sucks 'em dry.

In desperation the Countess turns to  young psychiatrist Jeffrey Garth (Kruger) whom she hopes will free her of her "compulsion" once and for all. Eventually, though, she gives in to despair and adandons her quest for mortality and turns her efforts instead towards turning the shrink into her undead main squeeze, that he might keep her company for the many hundreds of years of loneliness to come. Of course, everything pretty much ends the way you would expect it to in a Universal horror movie, and the nice, boring normal people win out over the gaunt nightcrawlers (I always felt that these movies accurately represented "real life" in that respect).

Like so many of the Universal monster movies the film ends too abruptly and doesn't have the guts to flesh out the characters and ideas out enough, but there IS something rather special about Dracula's Daughter. The real heart of the film is the rather poignant character of Countess Zaleska - not a remorselessly evil bloodsucker like her father, but a reluctant and demon-haunted monster consumed with the hopeless ambition to be human. Holden gives a sad, touching performance that shimmers with a melancholy beauty and eerie elegance, displaying real depth of emotion and undead sex appeal to spare. I just wanted to give the poor spooky gal a big hug, tell her that everything was going to be okay after all, and refer her to my Reluctant Monsters Anonymous support group.

"Hi. My name is Marya."
"HI MARYA!"
"And I'm a blood-o-holic."

Anne Rice has named the film as one of the primary inspirations when writing her benchmark novel Interview with the Vampire , and it was later re-made (with interesting results) in 1994 as Nadja. It's the first time in screen history that a vampire was portrayed in a genuinely sympathetic light. Despite its shortcomings, Dracula's Daughter is a fine example of a sequel that's better than the original and it occupies a unique place in the Universal monster movie stable.

**1/2 Coffins Full of Maggots.

The Baron's Rating System:
* Dead meat, ripe and reeking.
** Moribund, but showing a slight flicker of life.
*** Good n' healthy.
**** Brimming with vitality!