Son of Dracula

I love Son of Dracula. Love it. But not for the reason of Lon Chaney Jr. as Dracula, but I find it a fascinating watch because of who I think the real villain of the film is...Kay. Dracula is actually, to me anyway, a tool for Kay to use so she could gain immortality and Dark Oaks, the plantation in Louisiana, with a real goal of attaining eternal life for true love, Frank.

The thing is, Kay basically allows her own father (even if he was ill and in a wheelchair, it is her loving father, for heaven's sake) to perish at the teeth of Dracula (cheap humor, I know...) and actually, before this, watched Dracula, in vampire bat form, frighten her witch to death (brought back from Hungary) without much reaction. She knows he's of the undead, that he's a predator who takes the blood of the living for his use, and doesn't care because he can give her what she covets: immortality. She wishes this for herself and Frank; Dracula is just a means to an end. Not just this, though, as she tells Frank later that they'll have to dispose of his friend and her sister because of their threat to Kay's future plans of a marriage without end. She even looks quite pleased as Drac throws Frank to the ground when he confronts them about the visit to the justice of peace. Kay, to me, is the absolute heel of this picture.

Chaney's Dracula is interesting. He's more of a bully. He isn't approachable in the slightest. He only looks at the people in the area for which he now inhabits as a meal. If you are a threat to his betrothal with Kay, or intend to stand in their way of a marriage made in hell, the consequences could be dire. Frank tries, even attempts to kill Dracula, to keep this marriage from coming to fruition (and after his attempt to follow them fails, thanks to a conveniently fallen tree on his car, Frank tells Drac that the marriage will be annulled and he would be on the next train out, quite ballsy of the guy) but it ends with Kay getting shot (bullets just go right through the undead Count) and soon dying (but not before being turned vampire).

My land is dry and desolate. The soil is red with the blood of a hundred races. There is no life left there. Here you have a young and vital race.

Interesting how the film is completely set in modern Louisiana of the 40s and not in some sort of alternate fairy-tale place that doesn't quite exist in a specific time you can identify. Characters concerned for Kay's safety include Frank's best friend, Dr. Harry Brewster (Frank Craven), and her sister, Claire (Evelyn Ankers, who seems to appear in every Chaney movie). Harry calls in an authority on Dracula (his own land in Carpathian Mtns, in Transylvania, was left barren and desolate thanks to Drac), Professor Lazlo (J Edward Bromberg) and learns of the weaknesses and strengths of the vampire. It is established that Dracula must be destroyed or their home will be left dead and drained of blood just as Transylvania was. He's a scourge that must be vanquished. Kay sees Drac as her meal ticket to securing life after death (she had an intense fear of death and was into "occult matters"), also planning to turn Frank into a vampire. Harry and Lazlo know time is of the essence. Certain horror movies want to romanticize Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola and John Badham's are examples), but in Son of Dracula, he's represented as simply evil. He's an animal. No remorse. No guilt. Just a killer.

This particular film is fun in that it actually shows Dracula appear and dissolve into a cloud of vapor. He turns from bat to human form and vice versa. All, of course, back and forth in his whole regalia, cape, suit, and all. I keep dredging this up because it does annoy me a little, even though I realize that we can't see Dracula naked all the time, especially in the classic Universal movies. It's just one of those things I often think about with amusement. The one thing I would have loved to see in a Universal horror film was never given to us: Drac turning into a werewolf hound. We always see him in Son of Dracula as a menace. Using Alucard as his "new name" while in a new country is a lasting part of the movie that keeps its name in the conversation; it is that little touch that can make a difference. Simple but effective. Something also inventive is we see how Dracula's casket rises from the swamp to the surface as Kay looks on with a smile.

Dracula has you marked for death.

I always like how the film stays in the time period, using law and investigation, logic and rationale applied to a movie about a vampire and his short-lived marriage to a "morbid" bride of the undead. It looks like, after Kay is found in a casket, not breathing, that Frank was right about telling the sheriff, Dawes (Pat Moriarity), he killed her, in accident, when trying to shoot Dracula while Harry appears crooked as if concealing the truth from the authorities about his friend.








With Frank imprisoned, Kay visits him, her goal to take a bite and change him into a vampire, a unique development in the film as it proves she's the predator who would threaten all that live in her neck of the woods. Even before Dracula has been "done away with", Kay had already moved on from him to Frank, admitting that this plan for her and Frank had been in place before Daddy Warbucks was bled dry by the Count. It is kind of a dark romance where the forces of evil are exploited for a desired eternal love.

Robert Siodmak is the kind of director perfect for a Universal monster movie. I watched House of Dracula not too long ago, and, as much as I did enjoy for its simple pleasures, but next to Son of Dracula, it is just a monster movie. I think because of Siodmak's skill with stunning tracking shots (those moss covered trees in the swamp forest as the camera follows Frank, either fleeing from Dracula early in the film, or away from the tunnel that led to the spot where the Count kept his casket, superior quality art direction and photography, a visual pleasure that I never tire of year after year) and strong use of noirish lighting, accompanied by a strong plot that fairs well even as it diminishes Dracula's importance to the overall grand scheme of things, Son of Dracula holds up quite well.

I do think some fans, however, will consider the treatment of Dracula a bit disappointing because it seems that the stronger parts went to Louise Allbritton as Kay and Robert Paige as Frank as their complicated romance takes precedence over the vampire's hunting practices. Chaney plays Dracula as a bastard. He's got powers and freely admits that this new country is a perfect hunting ground. He even takes a bite from a child while escaping the sign of the cross utilized by Lazlo in his foggy cloud form. He's a brute, plain and simple. Not much range, though, applied to the character. Not much substance. Some might say it is because Chaney isn't right for the part. It sure as hell beats his Mummy Kharis or Frankenstein's Monster.