Dracula's Daughter

(1936) **1/2

When we think of horror franchises we think of things like Halloween or Friday the 13th. I was amused to see that the horror franchise was alive and well in the 1930s. Dracula’s Daughter picks up 1 second after Dracula ends, except that inexplicably a different actor is playing Van Helsing. As a result of the events that occurred in “Dracula”, Van Helsing is arrested for murder and he immediately seeks the counsel of his psychiatrist friend, Dr. Garth, a former student of Van Helsing. Soon people begin to die and Van Helsing’s greatest fear is realized, another vampire is on the loose. This time the vampire is, as the title suggests, Dracula’s daughter. It’s funny to me that Dracula somehow put the vampire stuff aside long enough to copulate. When Countess Zaleska kidnaps Dr. Garth’s fiancé, it’s a race against the clock as Van Helsing and Dr. Garth travel to Transylvania in an attempt to rescue her.

Not nearly as good as Dracula, Dracula’s Daughter is an okay sequel. There is a number of different sequel directions that people could have taken after Dracula became a huge hit. I don’t think casting a female vampire was the best choice. She is simply not that scary nor very interesting. I can imagine that fans of the original Dracula were probably pretty disappointed once they realized the direction of that this sequel was taking. The story is pretty slow, even for 1930s standards.