Dracula's Daughter movie review

Dracula's Daughter released in 1936 is a direct sequel to the 1931 classic. This movie starts off with the police finding the bodies of Renfield and Dracula, and Van Helsing, admitting to driving a stake through Dracula's heart. Obviously the police do not believe in Helsing's stories of Vampires. So with Scotland Yard threatening to charge Van Helsing with murder, he calls upon the aide of his friend and psychiatrist Jeffery Garth. While Garth is helping to shape a defense for Van Helsing. The countess Marya Zaleska kills the cop guarding the bodies of Renfield and Dracula and steals the body of Dracula. She tries to destroy the body of Dracula as an attempt to free herself from her curse of vampirism. We later find out that Countess Zaleska is an artist, which Garth meets at a party, he is immediately smitten with her, which spurs this jealousy in Janet his assistant. At the party Garth speaks of the case of Van Helsing, and how a vampire might be someone who psychologically believes that they are one, and that real vampires don't exist, that it is all psychological. Countess Zaleska hearing this requests to speak to Garth alone soon, as she is in hopes that he can cure her from her curse. She later exposes to him that she is Dracula's daughter, and she asks Garth to come with her to her castle in Transylvania, which he refuses, so she kidnaps Janet to force him there, leading up to an exciting climax back in the Castle Dracula. This movie faced many challenges while it was being made, the censors of the time were a lot stricter than they are now, and forced the producers to tone down the lesbian themes, and to make them more ambiguous out of fear that it would encourage deviant sexuality, also the proposed nude scene where the woman was to pose nude for the Countess was also heavily modified, so that she only exposed her shoulders. This movie is a bit ground breaking in that the Countess is openly bisexual, which is NOT something that was acceptable in movies at that time period, though the idea of lesbian vampires in literature date back to Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's 1872 novella Carmilla. In addition to the pressure put on the production by the censors, Gloria Holden, who played the Countess, was not pleased at being cast in a horror movie, as she an other actors and actresses at the time viewed horror movies to be a lower form of film, and basically trash movies. She was also afraid that like Lugosi the role would result in her being type cast and ruin her career, as Lugosi was never able to escape the shadow of his role as Dracula. Her disdain for the role, might have actually helped her to capture the feel of her character who is basically a reluctant vampire who is seeking for a cure, who in the end accepts and embraces her fate. I feel that though nowhere near being on par with its predecessor, that this is in fact a great movie, I like that it pushed the boundaries of what could be done on film, and i feel that the characters were perfectly cast, I especially love Marguerite Churchill as Janet Blake (Garth's assistant), she is so beautiful, charming, and spirited. The lighting and sets are all done perfectly to capture that dark foreboding feeling, I also like that when we enter Dracula's Castle in the end, that it looks and feels like it did in the original. This is a beautiful movie, and very well done. Though the producers and director wanted to get Lugosi, Karloff, and other big horror names at the time, all of which did not end up joining the cast, the movie still ended up being beautifully done, even without those names being tied to the production. Would I recommend this movie, yes absolutely. There is a beauty and magic in a movie like Dracula's Daughter, and I definitely feel that it still holds up as a great classic horror movie, and deserves its place in history. I think that though it doesn't live up to the Lugosi Classic, that it does bring a fresh idea to the franchise and holds up very well on its own.