Dracula’s Daughter1936

The Review

Every sequel starts with a problem, and this one starts with the biggest problem a sequel can have: the monster is already dead.

When Dracula (1931) ended, Professor Van Helsing had driven a stake through the Count’s heart in the cellar of Carfax Abbey. Five years later, Universal wanted a follow-up — but the rights were a tangle before a single frame was shot. MGM executive David O. Selznick had bought the rights to Bram Stoker’s short story “Dracula’s Guest” from Stoker’s widow Florence in 1933, for a $500 advance against a $5,000 purchase price, and the project was code-named “Tarantula” in correspondence. Selznick’s contract expressly barred him from using any Stoker characters who did not appear in “Dracula’s Guest” — which meant his screenwriter, John L. Balderston, wrote a version that could never have been filmed: Von Helsing returns to Transylvania, overlooks a fourth tomb concealing Dracula’s daughter, she follows him to London as “Countess Szekelsky,” and the whole thing ends with a double wedding. Selznick sold the rights to Universal in 1934 for $12,500 — horror scholar David J. Skal theorizes his real motive was to profit from Universal’s desire for a sequel by tying up the only obvious source material — with one condition: the rights would revert to MGM if Universal did not begin production by October 1935, a deadline later extended to February 1936. That deadline is the reason this film exists at all, and the reason it was rushed into production on February 4, 1936, before the script was finished. The script was not finalized until shooting had been underway for three weeks.

The film that finally got made bears, in Wikipedia’s wording, absolutely no resemblance to “Dracula’s Guest.” The story — an unnamed Englishman visiting Munich, a tomb, a wolf, Walpurgis Night — is not the film’s plot, and never was. Florence Stoker’s preface described the story as an excised episode from the novel Dracula, but scholars are divided on whether it was the excised first chapter, an early draft of a chapter, or a story always intended to stand alone. The film was “suggested by” the story in name only — and modern sources report it was also loosely based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla, the Gothic tale of a female vampire, though the film carries no Carmilla credit. The credit on screen reads “suggested by” Oliver Jeffries — a pseudonym for David O. Selznick himself.

The story the film does tell picks up minutes after the 1931 film ends. Von Helsing is arrested by two policemen, Sergeant Wilkes and Constable Albert, after they happen upon Dracula’s body with a stake through its heart — along with the broken-necked corpse of Renfield — in the cellar of Carfax Abbey. At Scotland Yard, Sir Basil Humphrey warns him the case ends at the gallows or in an asylum. Von Helsing, instead of hiring a lawyer, enlists Dr. Jeffrey Garth, formerly one of his star students, now a psychiatrist. And here is the first thing you need to know, horror lover, before anyone misleads you: Bela Lugosi does not appear in this film. Dracula is dead on arrival. The Count appears only as a corpse — and, after a fashion, as a wax bust molded in Lugosi’s image for the coffin. Edward Van Sloan is the only cast member returning from Dracula (1931), and even his character’s name changed: he is Professor Von Helsing in this film, not Van Helsing. Do not let anyone “correct” it back.

The Countess Marya Zaleska steals her father’s body with her manservant Sandor — mesmerizing the guard, Constable Albert, with her jeweled ring — and burns it on the moor, tossing salt on the pyre, hoping to break her curse of vampirism. It does not work. Her thirst returns, and she resumes hunting, mesmerizing victims with that same exotic ring. After a chance meeting with Dr. Garth at a society party, she asks him to help her overcome the influence she feels from beyond the grave. Garth advises her to defeat her cravings by confronting them. She becomes hopeful that her will, plus Garth’s science, will overcome Dracula’s malevolence. She sends Sandor to fetch her a model to paint. He finds a pretty young woman, Lili, despondent on a bridge, and promises her food, warmth, and money. Zaleska resists her urges at first — and then succumbs, and attacks Lili. Lili survives the attack, and examined by Garth through hypnosis, she reveals enough to identify Zaleska as her attacker — then suffers heart failure and dies.

That is the film’s hinge, and it is worth sitting with. Zaleska is not a monster who revels in what she is. She is a monster who wants to stop, and cannot. Gloria Holden, in her first starring role, plays her with a masklike stillness — a tall, dark, patrician presence in black, her face lit like a statue, her voice low and measured — and the performance is the reason the film survives. Holden was 32 when the film was released, an English-born stage actress who had emigrated to America as a child and studied at New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She reportedly loathed the role: per Wikipedia, citing critic Mark Clark, she was “extremely displeased at having been assigned it,” looked down on horror films, and feared the typecasting that had dogged Lugosi since Dracula. Clark’s verdict, quoted verbatim, is the sharpest thing ever written about the film: “Her disdain for the part translates into a kind of self-loathing that perfectly suits her troubled character.” He was right. The contempt is on the screen, and it is perfect — Zaleska’s self-loathing is the character. Holden died on March 22, 1991, aged 87, remembered above all for this role and for Mme. Zola in The Life of Emile Zola (1937).

Around her, the cast does solid, unshowy work. Otto Kruger, top-billed ahead of Holden, is Dr. Jeffrey Garth — a psychiatrist who treats vampirism as a problem of the will, and who discovers, too late, that the will is not enough. Marguerite Churchill is Janet Blake, Garth’s secretary, with whom he has a playfully antagonistic relationship until he realizes he cares for her. Irving Pichel is Sandor, Zaleska’s manservant — fey, watchful, and the film’s most dangerous supporting presence, a man who serves a vampire because she promised to make him immortal. Gilbert Emery is Sir Basil Humphrey of Scotland Yard, Halliwell Hobbes is Hawkins, Billy Bevan is Constable Albert, Nan Grey is Lili, Hedda Hopper is Lady Esme Hammond, and Claude Allister is Sir Aubrey Bedford.

The craft is where the film quietly earns its reputation. George Robinson’s cinematography gives the film a low-key, fogbound London — cars and streetlamps and drawing rooms, a contemporary setting that contrasts sharply with the Victorian world of the 1931 original — and Lambert Hillyer, a Western specialist who had directed William S. Hart silents and “Wild Bill” Elliott B-pictures, directs it with more visual confidence than his résumé would suggest. Jack Pierce and John P. Fulton worked closely on Holden’s makeup design, combining special lighting with a greyish-green makeup for her final scenes, creating a pallor that contrasts with the normally flesh-toned makeup of everyone else in the scene. Albert S. D’Agostino redressed Charles D. Hall’s 1931 Dracula castle set and built new ones: a London bridge, the moor where Dracula’s body is burned, and Countess Zaleska’s apartment. Heinz Roemheld composed the score. The film was made in a little over a month — roughly five weeks, February 4 to March 10, 1936 — and despite studio orders for a seven-day-per-week schedule, it ran seven days over and $50,000 over budget, at a final cost of $278,380.

The road to that shoot was a mess, and the mess is part of the story. Universal studio head Carl Laemmle Jr. wanted James Whale, fresh from Bride of Frankenstein (1935), to direct. Whale, waiting for Irene Dunne to finish Magnificent Obsession so she could begin his Show Boat, and wary of directing two horror films in a row, convinced Laemmle to buy the rights to a mystery novel instead — and Laemmle agreed only after extracting a promise from Whale that he would direct Dracula’s Daughter next. Whale finished Remember Last Night? on September 14, 1935, went to work on Show Boat, and Laemmle replaced him with A. Edward Sutherland, best known for comedies. Sutherland had as little interest in the film as Whale did and soon left the studio — so Hillyer came on to direct. Whale biographer James Curtis suggests Whale, who had no interest in the project and feared his commitment might cost him control over Show Boat, encouraged R. C. Sherriff to submit ever more wildly unacceptable versions in hopes of getting himself off the film. That is Curtis’s suggestion, not established fact — but the versions Sherriff did submit were unacceptable enough on their own. The earliest opened with three scenes set in the 14th century centered on the Dracula legend, then switched to the present day: two engaged couples visit Transylvania, one man is found insane, the other missing, and Von Helsing tracks the missing man to London, where he is in thrall to Dracula’s daughter, the Countess Szelinski. The British Board of Film Censors rejected it on August 28, 1935 — saying in part, per Wikipedia citing Robertson, that Dracula’s Daughter “would require half a dozen … languages to adequately express its beastliness.” The Production Code Administration was harsher still. PCA head Joseph Breen reported the script “contains countless offensive stuff which makes the picture utterly impossible for approval under the Production Code.” A second draft in October was also rejected, a third followed three days later, and a fourth on November 10. All remained unacceptable. On January 14, 1936, producer E. M. Asher advised Breen that the Sherriff script would not be used and a new script would be built from scratch. Garrett Fort submitted a draft in January and a second in February; Fort’s February draft, as revised by Charles Belden in March, seems to be the version shot. It was viewed and passed by the PCA in April. Fort is the only contributor to receive screen credit, with Stoker.

The casting that did not happen tells you how different this film could have been. Initially, Lugosi and Jane Wyatt were set to star. Universal also announced Boris Karloff and Colin Clive would appear, and that Cesar Romero would play Dr. Garth — with Lugosi as Dracula and Wyatt as Lili. Lili was eventually played by Nan Grey because Grey was a blonde, giving contrast to Holden’s black hair. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Universal had sought Herbert Marshall for Sandor before casting Pichel. None of them appeared — except, after a fashion, Lugosi as the wax bust. Some sources report Lugosi was paid as much as $4,000 for his abortive involvement, but the only confirmed record of any financial arrangement is a letter in which Lugosi consents to the use of his likeness at no cost to create the wax bust. Both halves are printed here, because only one of them is confirmed.

The censors did not stop at the script. Breen took special notice of the scene between the Countess and her model Lili, writing: “This will need very careful handling to avoid any questionable flavor.” The day before the scene was to be shot, Universal’s Harry Zehner asked Breen to read a draft of it. Breen replied, verbatim:

“The present suggestion that … Lili poses in the nude will be changed. She will be posing her neck and shoulders, and there will be no suggestion that she undresses, and there will be no exposure of her person. It was also stated that the present incomplete sequence will be followed by a scene in which Lili is taken to a hospital and there it will be definitely established that she has been attacked by a vampire. The whole sequence will be treated in such a way as to avoid any suggestion of perverse sexual desire on the part of Marya or of an attempted sexual attack by her upon Lili.”

In February 1936, Asher, Fort, and Zehner met with Production Code officials, where Universal was asked that the Lili posing scene be written so that no suggestion was made that Lili was nude, or of “perverse sexual desire on the part of Marya or of an attempted sexual attack by her upon Lili.” Per Rick Worland’s book The Horror Film: An Introduction, as quoted by SlashFilm, Breen attempted to dilute the film’s existing queerness, especially the Lili scene. The finished film nevertheless passed the PCA in April 1936, and the Lili scene survived in diluted form — which is why later critics argue about how much subtext remains.

And here is where an honest host has to be careful, because this film’s reputation now rests on a reading that the film itself never states. Dracula’s Daughter marked the first time the lesbian vampire trope was incorporated into a film — the trope existed in literature, in Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and, per Wikipedia, Coleridge’s 1797 poem Christabel — but the film never states that Zaleska is a lesbian, the PCA fought to remove any such suggestion, and scholars disagree on how overt it is. Every claim in this paragraph is attributed, because that is the only honest way to write it. Vito Russo, in The Celluloid Closet (book 1981, revised 1987), noted that Universal highlighted Zaleska’s attraction to women in some original advertising, using the tagline “Save the women of London from Dracula’s Daughter!” — and cited Zaleska as an example of the presentation of the “essence of homosexuality as a predatory weakness.” The Zaleska–Lili scene was included in the 1995 documentary film adaptation of Russo’s book. Harry M. Benshoff, in Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (1997), reads Zaleska and Sandor as a queer couple — his book’s Plate 3 caption calls them “butch female vampire and fey manservant” — and discusses the film within his argument that classical horror encodes homosexuality through strict gender hierarchies. Some reviewers of the day picked up on it and condemned it, including the New York World-Telegram, which noted the Countess’s tendency to wander around “giving the eye to sweet young girls.” Others missed it entirely, including the New York Times, which advised readers to “Be sure to bring the kiddies.” The modern split is just as wide: Entertainment Weekly describes the Countess–Lili encounter as “so hot it’s impossible to imagine how it ever got past ’30s censors,” whereas Time Out London finds only a “subtle suggestion” of lesbianism. Horror scholar David J. Skal notes the scene has come to be seen as a “classic ‘lesbian’ sequence, although of a decidedly negative stripe.” One modern reviewer argues the lesbian angle is overstated — Zaleska, in this reading, really does appear to be in love with Jeffrey, and the heterosexual union may be what she thinks will cure her “disease.” The scholarship is not unanimous, and this review does not pretend otherwise. What is documented, both halves of it, is the paradox: Universal exploited the subtext in advertising while the PCA forced the scene itself to be diluted. That contradiction is the story.

The critics of 1936 mostly got it. Frank S. Nugent’s New York Times review ran on May 18, 1936, under the headline “‘Dracula’s Daughter’ Makes Her Debut at the Rialto and Proves She’s a Chip Off the Old Block” — a solid, somewhat tongue-in-cheek review, citing the film’s “blood-curdling events,” calling Holden “a remarkably convincing bat-woman,” and concluding the film is both “quite terrifying” and “a cute little horror picture.” Variety also praised the production and Holden’s performance in particular. Despite the critical approval, the film did not have the same box-office success as the original — one modern review puts it more bluntly, that it “failed to find an audience at the box office and faded into obscurity for several decades.” No gross figure is printable, and this review will not invent one.

The later criticism is sharply divided, and the division is the most interesting thing about the film’s afterlife. Entertainment Weekly (video-release review, Steve Simels, December 11, 1992) called it “one of the most satisfying vampire pictures ever made,” praised Hillyer’s visuals as “lush, evocative, and suffused with just the right gothic chiaroscuro,” said Holden “absolutely drips patrician eroticism,” and concluded it is better than Lugosi’s original Dracula. Ryan Cracknell (Apollo Movie Guide) echoed the praise for Holden but found the film “doesn’t hold up so well today,” citing slow pacing and “long bouts of over-the-top dialogue,” comparing it to “reading a textbook.” Michael W. Phillips Jr. concurred, calling it “a marked improvement on the original film, [but] still a bit of a snooze, relying too much on forced comedy and not enough on suspense or fright,” praising Holden and Pichel but finding the rest of the cast weak.

The film’s place in history is larger than its reputation. Dracula’s Daughter was the last in the first cycle of Universal horror films reaching back into the 1920s. Publicly, Universal said a British ban on horror films would cut too deeply into revenue. Per the scholarship Wikipedia cites, the real reason was that the Laemmle family lost control of Universal just before filming wrapped: Junior Laemmle had borrowed $1,000,000 on November 1, 1935, from J. Cheever Cowdin and Charles R. Rogers, and when the loan was called in March 1936, Universal could not repay it. Standard Capital assumed control on March 4, 1936, and Rogers replaced Junior as head of production. Rogers did not like horror films and shut down horror production following this film’s release, to focus on fare like Deanna Durbin musicals. Universal did not return to the horror genre for three years, until Son of Frankenstein (1939). This film, a sequel about a woman who cannot escape her father’s curse, is also the film that closed the studio’s first horror era — and the studio’s stated reason was not the real one.

None of this is to say the film is flawless, and a host who loves you would not lie to you. The script is talky, and the talk is not always good — Cracknell’s “reading a textbook” crack stings because it is partly true, and the middle sags while Garth and Zaleska circle each other in drawing rooms. The forced comedy, mostly from the Scotland Yard end, lands flat more often than not, and the film’s mild atmosphere means it never frightens the way the 1931 original does. Some of the supporting cast is weak, as Phillips noted, and the film’s ideas are bigger than its execution: it wants to be a tragedy about addiction and inheritance, and too often it settles for being a polite drawing-room mystery with a vampire in it. These are real flaws, and they are the reason this review stops short of the top mark. But the flaws sit next to something no other Universal film of the era has: a woman at the centre of the picture who is neither a victim nor a villainess in the usual sense, but a person fighting a curse she did not choose — and a performance, by an actress who did not want the part, that turns contempt into tragedy. That is why the film survived its decades of obscurity, why it was revived by admirers from the 1970s on, and why it still matters.

Its legacy runs in quiet channels. Horror author Anne Rice named Dracula’s Daughter as a direct inspiration for her own homoerotic vampire fiction, and named a bar “Dracula’s Daughter” in her Vampire Chronicles in the film’s honor — sources disagree on which of her novels carries the tribute, so no single title is named here. Ramsey Campbell, under the pseudonym “Carl Dreadstone,” wrote a novelization entitled Dracula’s Daughter, published in 1977. Some observers have suggested the film served as an inspiration for Sunset Blvd. (1950), noting similarities between the outlines of each film — a suggestion only, never stated as fact. Michael Almereyda’s Nadja (1994) has been described as an “unofficial remake” of Dracula’s Daughter. And as a one-line modern footnote: Universal’s 2024 film Abigail was initially mooted as a new version of Dracula’s Daughter but bears no similarity to the 1936 film, and Dracula is not named on screen. Zaleska does not return in any later Universal film — the next Dracula film, Son of Dracula (1943), is a standalone story — and she remains, ninety years on, the only daughter the Count ever had on screen.

Spoiler Section

Stop here if you have never seen it. The Countess keeps her secrets for first-timers.

The cure fails, and the failure is the film. After Lili’s death, Zaleska gives up fighting her urges and accepts that a cure is not possible. She kidnaps Janet Blake, Garth’s secretary — with whom he has a playfully antagonistic relationship, and for whom he now realizes he cares — and takes her to Transylvania. Her intent: to transform Garth into a vampire to be her eternal companion.

Garth follows, and agrees to exchange his life for Janet’s. Before he can be transformed, Sandor shoots Zaleska through the heart with an arrow — as revenge for her breaking her promise to make him immortal. Sandor then takes aim at Garth, but is shot dead by a Scotland Yard policeman, who — along with Von Helsing — has followed Garth from London. Zaleska is destroyed. Janet is freed. Garth survives.

Get the ending right, because it is the detail most often garbled: Sandor does not die by arrow. Zaleska does. Sandor is shot dead by a policeman. Zaleska is not staked. There is no wedding, no surviving vampire, and no sequel hook. Dracula’s line is finished with this film until Son of Dracula (1943) — and Zaleska herself never returns.

One more scene worth knowing, for the way it has been described ever since: the scene in which Zaleska holds the captive Janet has been described, by a source cited by Wikipedia, as “the longest kiss never filmed” — Zaleska “hovers lovingly over Janet … hovers … and hovers … slowly descending to kiss the recumbent Janet …” until interrupted by Garth’s arrival. No kiss occurs on screen. The description is attributed, not claimed — and the fact that the scene is still argued about ninety years later tells you everything about what the censors were afraid of, and what the film was trying to say anyway.

Trivia

• Lugosi never appears. The Count is a corpse, and after a fashion a wax bust molded in Lugosi’s image. Edward Van Sloan is the only cast member back from 1931.
• It is Von, not Van. Van Sloan’s character is spelled “Von Helsing” in this film and “Van Helsing” in the 1931 original. The change is deliberate — do not “correct” it.
• The film was code-named “Tarantula.” Selznick used the code name in correspondence while negotiating the rights.
• Whale was supposed to direct, then Sutherland, then Hillyer. Whale wanted Show Boat instead; Sutherland, a comedy director, left the studio; Hillyer, a Western specialist, got the chair.
• Breen read the Lili scene the day before it was shot. His letter demanding the nude posing become “neck and shoulders” is quoted verbatim in the review above.
• Holden loathed the part. She was, per Mark Clark, “extremely displeased at having been assigned it” — and Clark’s verdict is that her disdain “perfectly suits her troubled character.”
• The tagline sold what the censors cut. Universal advertised with “Save the women of London from Dracula’s Daughter!” while the PCA forced the scene itself to be diluted.
• The $4,000 that may never have been paid. Some sources report Lugosi was paid as much as $4,000 for his abortive involvement; the only confirmed record is a letter in which he consents to the use of his likeness at no cost.
• It closed the first Universal horror cycle. The studio blamed a British ban; the real reason was the Laemmle family losing control of the studio in March 1936. Universal made no horror for three years, until Son of Frankenstein (1939).
• Anne Rice named a bar after it. The film inspired her homoerotic vampire fiction, and a bar called “Dracula’s Daughter” appears in her Vampire Chronicles.
• Ramsey Campbell novelized it. Under the pseudonym “Carl Dreadstone,” in 1977.
• It has been called an “unofficial remake” — in reverse. Michael Almereyda’s Nadja (1994) has been described as an unofficial remake of this film.

Where to Watch

Streaming rights shift — check your service before you settle in.

• Streaming with a subscription: None in the US at time of checking
• Rent or buy: Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, Fandango at Home

The Verdict

Dracula’s Daughter is the Universal sequel that dared to be something else entirely: not a monster movie, but a tragedy about a woman who inherits a curse she never asked for and discovers that willpower, psychiatry, and even burning her father’s body cannot lift it. Gloria Holden’s performance is extraordinary — cold, luminous, and quietly furious — and the film’s fogbound London, Robinson’s cinematography, and the sheer strangeness of its premise carry it a long way. It is held back from the top shelf by a talky script, a mild atmosphere, a sagging middle, and comedy that too often lands flat. It frightens less than the 1931 original, and it knows it. But it thinks more than the original, and it feels more — and ninety years on, it is the Universal sequel that still has something to say, about inheritance, about desire, and about what happens when the cure you want most is the one thing you can never have.

Go back to the moor. The fire is still burning, the salt is still hissing, and the Countess is still standing there, watching her father’s body turn to ash — and wondering what is left of her.

3.5 out of 5 ravens.