Things That Bother Me About this Movie

i dont think none of those errors are as bad as the one in "bride of frankenstein" where they change the actress who plays Dr frankensteins wife for a younger one who doesnt look anything like the original... i thought they were two different women

sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken

The lack of continuity leads to a bit of confusion at the beginning of the movie. The films are short and were probably presented as double features (that's how the theater where I saw them this week presented them), so it is a problem.

Finally, Dracula's Daughter was made in 1936 after a string of hit horror films from Universal studios in the early 30s. So they should have paid more attention.

I don't think continuity problems detract much from Dracula's Daughter, though. In a lot of ways I like it better than the first film.

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Since it was brought up on this thread, I'm curious - does anyone know what became of the original Carfax Abbey set from "Dracula" (1931) and why it wasn't available for "Dracula's Daughter" in 1936? Had the original set been torn down and reused for some other film?

It does appear they used the old watchtower set from "Frankenstein" (1931) and "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935).

Another minor continuity error between this film and "Dracula" was Edward Van Sloan's appearance. In "Dracula", his hair was close-cropped and the lenses of his glasses were rather thick. In "Dracula's Daughter", his hair was longer and combed back and the lenses of his glasses appear much thinner.

I bought this DVD several years ago and noticed the continuity problems. But I had first seen the film as a teenager more than twenty years earlier on Friday Fright Night when they showed these horror classics just before midnight, and I don't think I thought about it then. This was before cable when I saw it to begin with and I thought it was a fabulous film even with the commercial interuptions. Upon viewing it the second time around, and on digital video disc no less, I was stunned that the film still had the power to move me in the same way more than a generation later.

I'll never forget the scene in the Chelsea studio where the young girl played by the beautiful Nan Grey is bitten by Gloria Holden's Countess Dracula. It still had the same eery/creepy/Gothic quality that all of the black and white Dracula/Frankenstein films have sustained so well throughout the decades. I am so glad that all of those films were made in black and white. It's so much more realistic for the period, and much more convincing for the subject matter.

This is my favorite Dracula film other than my absolute favorite: the 1931 Tod Browning-directed Bela Lagosi classic. (A distant third would be the 1960 technicolor Brides of Dracula (directed by Terrence Fisher) starring Peter Cushing as Van Helsing and the handsome David Peel as a blond, yet aristocratic Transylvanian, baron-type Dracula). Dracula's Daughter was a fine follow-up, and sequels are rarely as well done as the original. This was probably the first great horror sequel in movie history. The acting is superb on all counts. The chemistry between the elegant Holden as the Countess and the heroic Dr. Garth as played by Otto Kruger (who would eventually be typecast playing villains in most of his other films) is sensational considering that their characters are adversaries and do not actually fall in love. A lot of sexual chemistry there.

I also thought that Marguerite Churchill was terrific as Kruger's spoiled, aristocratic secretary and that Irving Pichel was excellent too as the sinister man-servant Sandor. I noticed the second time around that the Scotland Yard man that Van Helsing talks to in the beginning of the film also played the Colonel in the great romantic 1940 tear-jerking classic Waterloo Bridge starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor, which also has an atmospheric Gothic quality about it because it too, like most films of that era, was filmed in glorious black and white.

Another surprise is that the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper plays the society hostess Lady Hammond who introduces Dr. Garth to the Countess, much to the dismay of his secretary Janet Blake (Churchill). Hopper also appeared briefly in the classic Sunset Boulevard, and in his fascinating tome Alternate Oscars film critic Danny Peary details some similarities between Dracula's Daughter and Sunset Boulevard. I don't recall, however, that he mentioned that Hopper was in both films or that both films starred people with the same last name: Gloria Holden and William Holden (who were not related). Hedda Hopper was fine playing herself in Sunset Boulevard, but she was wrong for the 1936 Dracula movie: She doesn't bother to put on a British accent, which was crucial to her character as an English aristocrat. But since she is in the film for only a few minutes, it doesn't spoil the viewing experience. I got annoyed with Robert Taylor in Waterloo Bridge for the same reason, but he was so wonderfully handsome as the blueblooded officer who falls in love with Leigh's ballerina-turned-hooker Myra, that I'm always willing to overlook the discrepancy of his flat Nebraska dialect.

They don't make em' like this anymore. I can't fully express how disappointed I am that the beautiful and talented Gloria Holden never had the opportunity for another great role. The only other really good films she was featured in were The Life of Emile Zola as Madame Zola and, many years later, The Eddie Duchin Story as Tyrone Power's mother. (Novak had the role of the WASP heiress Marjorie Oelrichs, whom the middle-class Jewish Duchin married against her upper-class parents wishes).

Holden was in her late forties and past her prime when she portrayed Mrs. Duchin, and she retired from show-business soon after. But she was only twenty-seven when she played Countess Dracula and it should have been the start of a great career. What a shame. As with the great Elsa Lancaster in The Bride of Frankenstein, I can't imagine any other actress in that part.