Who Was Her Mom?

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER-1936-This "sequel" to Tod Browning's DRACULA (filmed 5 years later)  begins right after Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) kills the count (a dummy substitutes for Bela). Two dimwit policemen arrest the doctor right near the body of Renfield (it looks like Dwight Frye). After Van Helsing explains what a vampire is to the chief of police, a mysterious veiled woman appears at the morgue and Drac's body disappears. Later the woman performs a ceremony and burns the body. She tells her servant Sandor (Irving Pichel) that now the curse of Dracula is broken and she can lead a normal life. Yet later after playing the piano, she goes out and kills a guy then comes back just before dawn to sleep in a coffin.

Enter Jeffery Garth (Otto Kruger), a vacationing psychiatrist and former student of Van Helsing's who's called back to London to defend his former teacher who's charged with murder! The mystery woman turns out to be Countess Zaleska (Gloria Holden) who wants Garth to "heal her mind" and says "I never drink...wine". She kills a young girl (Nan Gray) she brings home to pose for her. There's much mumbo-jumbo about the mind and souls but it seems if she'd just look in the mirror (which she shuns) a lot of time would be saved. Of course she is (or believes she is) the daughter of the infamous late king of vampires. She kidnaps Garth's secretary Janet (Marguerite Churchill; she was in THE WALKING DEAD with Karloff the same year) to force him to make a journey with her. Eventually everyone winds up in Transylvania. But all's well that end's well in the convoluted ending.

Lots of critics harp about the exotic lesbian overtones but I find DRACULA'S DAUGHTER a bore. Director Lambert Hillyer (THE INVISIBLE RAY) does a good job moving the story along but some of it doesn't really make much sense. It's "based" on the short story "Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker and James Whale was the original choice as director. Co-star Pichel was also a director. The unusual looking star Holden was later in Browning's last film MIRACLES FOR SALE.

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