Son of Dracula (1943)

Warning: I’m going to spoil one major plot twist of this movie that’s not quite as old as my grandma!

Somewhere in the swampiest part of the US South. The Caldwell family is looking forward to a very special visitor, one Count Alucard (Lon Chaney Jr.). Apparently, “morbid” (actual quote) daughter Kay (Louise Allbritton) met that fascinating man with the oh so clever name while following her occult interests on her European tour. Kay’s long-time fiancée, Frank Stanley (Robert Paige) does fear the worst, though. Might his sweetheart not love him anymore and go for the aristocratic set now? Her mysterious pronouncements that he should trust her “whatever happens” is not the sort of thing to put a guy’s heart at ease.

The arrival of the Count does – of course – mark a bit of doom for the family. Kay’s pet witch – whom she imported and set up in the local swamp – has a fatal encounter with a bat, and soon after, Kay’s dear old dad dies rather mysteriously. As it happens, and to everyone’s surprise but Kay’s, the old man changed his will just shortly before his death. Unlike before, when the run-down family plantation and the family money were to be shared between Kay and her bland good girl sister Claire (Evelyn Ankers) equally, now the plantation goes to Kay alone and the rest of the fortune to Claire, who clearly has gotten the better deal, and reacts utterly confused by the whole affair. But Kay is surely going to marry Frank very soon now, and he’s got money, so things will be okay, right?

Family doctor Brewster (Frank Craven) is very suspicious about all that has happened these last few days, particularly since he actually figured out the good old Alucard/Dracula business right when he read the name, so he starts a campaign of sneaking around and various break-ins. And, boy, does he ever sneak around, probably because all that’s happening goes against every single one of his conservative ideas of propriety, whereas break-ins and attempts at breaking up romances that certainly are none of his business are a-okay as long as the guy committing them is a gentleman. He is, in a word, the Southern Patriarchy come to life. However, he doesn’t manage to hinder Kay from secretly marrying Dracula in the end.

The jilted ex-fiancée Frank for his part, never one to impress the viewer as a picture of mental stability, goes from whiny, to melodramatic, to creepy, to homicidal in very short order thanks to these events. When he tries to shoot Dracula, he seems to kill Kay instead. In truth, she is already one of the Undead.

The funny thing is, neither Dracula – who, by the way, isn’t the original Dracula but apparently really the titular son of or another relative - nor Frank have much of a clue about what’s actually going on. Kay, obviously a woman of strong opinions and a mind that can withstand the vampire mind whammy, has a plan of her own. Like a good femme fatale, she only marries Dracula Jr. for his immortality granting bite and plans to incite Frank to stake him for her, to then vampirize him and spend all eternity with the one guy less fit for such a thing than Dracula. I hope for her sake she’s lying about that last part to motivate Frank properly.

So yes, Robert Siodmak’s Son of Dracula is indeed a Southern Gothic noir movie about Dracula’s son finding his match in form of an awesome femme fatale. It is also actually as wonderful a film as that makes it sound. There’s nothing here on show of the jadedness Universal horror phase two very quickly succumbed too; this feels absolutely like a film made by people who wanted to make this specific movie, and for better reasons than just to cheaply satisfy an audience they didn’t particularly like.

I’ve read some internet grumbling about the casting of Lon Chaney Jr. as Dracula, which I do understand in theory. However, he is actually an excellent choice for the role and certainly is captured at a moment in his career when he could manage excellent performances when giving the right environment. One has to keep in mind, obviously, that he isn’t supposed to be Dracula, but another member of his line, and one, one can’t help but suspect who has his difficulties quite living up to his father’s particular talents while working the same job. Anyone seeing a parallel to anybody here? As a matter of fact, this Dracula is a bit of a fool in the end, but then, that’s the sort of thing Chaney was particularly good at portraying. He’s still a very dangerous and powerful fool, and while Chaney Jr.’s certainly not the picture of the suave vampire, there are a couple of scenes in which he presents a very convincing physical menace, using his height aggressively in a proto-Christopher Lee approach to vampirism that I found very effective.

The true and best villain of the piece is Allbritton’s Kay anyway, and the actress does some fine things presenting a woman with a plan in the body of an early born Southern goth, outmanoeuvring a guy who certainly is rather experienced at that sort of thing himself. It’s always refreshing to find a female character in a Universal horror film who is actually doing something. While it is a bit of a shame the main way for a woman to get into that sort of position was to become a villainess, yet Kay’s such a good villain – whose plan only fails because the man she chose as her helper is such an idiot – I wouldn’t want to exchange her for a heroine. It’s also not difficult to see why Kay turns to complicated masterplans and evil. The men around her are all absolutely horrible in a perfectly infuriating patriarchal way that more or less indirectly declares women like her who don’t fit into their picture of the world to be “morbid” or crazy, always think they know what’s best for them, and when in doubt, do whatever shitty thing they deem “necessary” to keep them down. It’s difficult, if not impossible to think that Siodmak didn’t construct the film this way on purpose, seeing that all male authority figures here are portrayed in ways that support this reading, while Frank is the archetype of the clingy, mentally unstable lover. Sure, things end with the patriarchal order restored, but I don’t think even a second that’s an ending the film would have had without the commercial and cultural pressures of its place and time.

However, even if a viewer isn’t interested in this sort of reading of the film, Son of Dracula is still something special. Siodmak, excellently assisted by the wonderfully creepy production design and sets and George Robinson’s camera that sits at the place where horror and noir intersect, makes a lot of the brilliant idea to set this Dracula movie (the first one after more than half a decade after the also very feminist Dracula’s Daughter) not in backlot Europe but a backlot South that’s just as creepily artificial as the European one, a macabre place of decay, dread and superstition. Southern gothic always shows parallels to the American idea of Europe being a comparable place, I believe, so it’s a perfect fit.

Siodmak holds the good-old-fashioned creepy atmosphere and sense of place throughout. Be it in the wonderful moment when Dracula glides upon the swamp waters to his lover, or in Kay’s visit to Frank in the prison, there’s a feel of the nightmare and the mythical to many scenes here.


Siodmak also avoids some typical Universal problems. The film is well-paced, without the too episodic feel that would dominate the monster mash phase of the studio’s horror output. There’s also no space wasted on comic relief. There’s some dark irony in certain of the situations on display, but otherwise, this is a film meant to make one shudder and think, not to make one laugh. Son of Dracula is very, very good at these things.

In short: House of Dracula (1945)

Erle C. Kenton’s House of Dracula is the last adventure of the classic Universal monsters before they finished their decline in the most traumatic manner possible, by meeting Abbot and Costello. It’s not a terribly good one, as last hurrahs goes, but it’s also not as bad as it could be. At the very least, House of Dracula (a film not at all concerning the house of Dracula, not even metaphorically, of course) is a watchable and mostly entertaining film if you go in with the appropriate lowered expectations and do have a degree of patience and sympathy for this stage of Universal’s development.

The film’s main problem, as always with the monster mash phase of Universal, is a terrible script that is episodic for no good reason, can’t be bothered to make even a lick of sense, and seems afraid of doing anything even vaguely new with its characters. So Lon Chaney Jr. whines, John Carradine’s – bad but not as bad as in his last outing – Dracula maybe has evil plans or not, and Frankenstein’s Monster (this time around Glenn Strange who is no Karloff, nor a Chaney Jr.) wakes up for a thirty second rampage. The more interesting and sort of new elements of the plot and cast, consisting of actually friendly Mad Scientist Edelmann (Onslow Stevens) turning into an alter ego I can only dub Evilmann while his sympathetic pretty hunchbacked assistant Nina (Jane Adams) nearly becomes the film’s heroine, could have made for a nice film of their own – particularly since Kenton suddenly shows himself as a stylish old-style Universal director whenever Evilmann is on screen. Alas, this is late period Universal, so the usual tired creature pool and the Jekyll and Hyde plot rob each other of the screen time they’d need to breathe.

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

The people of the village of Frankenstein finally have their fill of what they identify as The Frankenstein Curse™. Consequently, they build a mob armed with torches and explosives to raze Castle Frankenstein - you know, the building last movie’s Frankenstein gifted to them at the end of Son of Frankenstein. During the course of their demolition project, they free the Creature (now played by Lon Chaney Jr.) from the sulphur pit that wasn’t located below the castle in the last movie but now seems to have teleported there. Ygor (still Bela Lugosi) – despite having been shot dead in the last film, a fact the film adorably shrugs away with a “well, he already survived a hanging” – is rather chipper too, blowing his horn merrily and cackling with evil. So off he goes with his best bud the Creature to find the brother of last film’s Frankenstein, one Ludwig Frankenstein (Cedric Hardwicke), whom he plans to blackmail into improving the Creature. The poor thing, you see, is rather poorly and in dire need of some electric stimulation after the whole sulphur pit affair.

Soon enough, things get a little out of control. How out of control? We very quickly progress from “Make the poor Creature healthy again!” to brain transplants and the dire question whose new brain the creature is supposed to get: Frankenstein opts for the brain of an assistant the Creature has killed, the Creature wants the brain of a little girl (seriously) and Ygor wants his brain in the Creature’s body to rule the country with the power of a hundred men, immortality and his wonderful, wonderful brain! And Ygor might just get what he wants, for Frankenstein’s mentor, partner and secret hater Dr. Bohmer (Lionel Atwill) is rather interested in a job as YgorCreature’s new sidekick.

Given the stage of affairs at Universal at this point in time, it is easy to be positively surprised by Erle C. Kenton’s The Ghost of Frankenstein, a film which seems to take its relegation to the minor leagues of minor budgets in stride. At the very least, unlike a lot of horror films Universal had already started to crap out at around this time, this film does clearly try to entertain its audience, so it lacks the offensive tendency of many a Universal horror film from this era to drag a non-plot from one moment of nothing of interest happening to another, and instead hits a mix of Frankenstein’s Greatest Hits while adding a few weird ideas all of its own, without getting bogged down in decidedly boring romance, comic relief, or simple feet-dragging.

After the mix of craziness and artfulness of Son of Frankenstein, Ghost is of course still quite a let-down, but at least it is an entertaining one. Kenton’s direction certainly isn’t on par with old style Universal at all, but he keeps the pacing vigorous, the film nice to look at and never does anything to embarrass himself. Why, from time to time, he even has a good idea or two. Junior obviously isn’t Karloff, and he certainly does overplay the stiff arms bit terribly, but he really does good work with the minimum of facial expression the – still excellent – make-up allows him; he particularly seems to enjoy his short time as the YgorCreature. In fact I would certainly have preferred the further adventures of this power couple to the business with the Wolfman coming up in the next film. Bela is still pretty damn great as Ygor, hitting a nice mix of cackling evil and a more sensitive side. I don’t believe I’ll ever understand people who say Lugosi couldn’t act – how else would you play a guy who wants his brain in the Creature’s body than as a complete yet somehow charming and pathetic weirdo?

Speaking of weird – and goofy – I’m very happy with the film’s brain fixation that after all finds various people having very peculiar ideas concerning what sort of brain belongs in a monster body. Frankly, I’m rather dubious about the idea Frankenstein’s assistant would thank the good doctor for getting this particular body – “oh hey, I’m not only a hideous creature every torch-wielding mob in Backlot Europe (that’s at least one mob per square kilometre) wants to burn, I’m also in the body who murdered me. Happy days!”. The Creature’s own candidate being a little girl is interesting to say the least, and Ygor’s preference is an awesome mixture of the megalomaniacal and the pathetic, so very much Ygor.

Ghost of Frankenstein is so entertaining, I didn’t even need to mention the – absolutely shoehorned in – titular ghost of Frankenstein (senior), a scene utterly useless yet still one that would probably still have been the highpoint in most of the Universal horrors in their express-decaying era. And if that’s not high praise, I don’t know what is.

In short: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

Boy, do Universal horror films from the monster mash era make me cranky. I’m not even going to get into my usual synopsis here, seeing as the film’s plot is a pretty strained exercise in pointlessness despite the script being written by Curt Siodmak, who really could do better. Not only are character motives utterly incoherent, they’re illogical actions are not even setting up anything that’s all that interesting to watch. It’s one thing to use “It’s in the script!” as a motivation when it at least gets a film somewhere interesting or exciting, but you don’t really need to go into any contortions of this sort when your film isn’t planning on going anywhere of note anyhow.

I suspect it’s that legendary disinterest of the Universal higher ups in using their horror franchises as anything more than an unloved money making machine that’s responsible for how little of interest or dramatic impact is actually happening in Roy William Neill’s – who also could do so much better - film. This certainly is not a film made by people giving much of a crap about making a good movie; to my annoyance, though not to my surprise, it’s not even one terribly interested in at least giving its audience what its title promises. Sure, Frankenstein’s monster (Frankenstein himself being dead and all, and his daughter Elsa alas isn’t a mad scientist because that might have been entertaining) and the Wolf Man do meet, and even have a thirty second fight without any reason the script actually bothers to set up for it in the end, but that leaves us with a film mostly dragging its feet for seventy minutes, particularly once Lon Chaney Jr.’s Larry Talbot leaves beautiful Wales and goes on an odyssey of very little interest.

To add insult to injury, Bela Lugosi’s (whom I love dearly) performance as the Monster that somehow – for a reason the film of course doesn’t bother to explain but just treats as a given – has lost much of its strength is absolutely dreadful, lacking the physical presence as well as the pathos Karloff gave the role. He’s a good aggressive grunter, though.

And you know what? That’s really the kindest thing I have to say about this thing.