Film Review
The third of Universal's
Dracula
films has come in for a fair amount of criticism on account of the
dubious casting of Lon Chaney Jr. as the vampiric count. Chaney
certainly is not the obvious choice for the part but he does far less
damage to the film than is often reported. With its sophisticated
plot and relentlessly creepy atmosphere,
Son of Dracula deserves to be
considered the best vampire film made by Universal. Indeed, this
could well have been the highpoint in the studio's series of Gothic
horror films if someone other than Chaney had been cast in the lead
role.
This isn't so much a conventional Gothic horror movie as a film noir
melodrama in which the main character just happens to be a vampire. It
has all the trappings of a classic film noir, including, notably, a
seductive femme fatale who ultimately proves to be Dracula's
undoing. In contrast to Universal's previous
Dracula films, this one portrays
vampirism as something that is desired by its leading human
protagonist, an alluring alternative to a life of disease and other
mortal traumas that can only end in an irreversible demise. Here, the
heroine is not a victim, but rather someone who actively desires to
become a vampire, so that she can spend eternity with the man
she has surrendered her heart to. None of Universal's other horror films
offers anything like
the psychological and moral complexity that this one does, so it must
surely rate as the most mature and thought-provoking film in the series.
If screenwriter Curtis Siodmak is to be credited for this film's
narrative sophistication and complex characterisation, his brother
Robert deserves just as much praise for its slick
realisation. A German émigré who had made a
name for himself in French cinema during the 1930s, Robert Siodmak would become
one of Hollywood's most highly regarded filmmakers in the '40s, renowned
particularly for his stylish film noir dramas, such as
The Spiral Staircase (1945) and
The Killers (1946).
Despite its contemporary setting,
Son
of Dracula vividly betrays Siodmak's origins in German
expressionism, with its moody high contrast black and white photography
and creepy shadow-laden sets. Even the exteriors, the
vine-strewn plantation and mist-shrouded swamps, have an eerie
expressionistic feel that is so redolent of the old Gothic horror stories.
The film's striking noir stylisation is complemented by some of the
best special effects to be seen in any of Universal's Gothic horror
films. Of particular note is the convincing transformation of the
vampire bat into Dracula, which is just one of the many achievements of
special effects guru John P. Fulton, who had previously worked wonders
on Universal's
The Invisible Man (1933).
One sequence that is often singled out for praise is the one in which
Dracula's coffin rises from the swamp. The Count then
materialises from a billowing mist and glides across the water towards
his latest female conquest. There is a mesmeric dreamlike quality
to this sequence which powerfully evokes the essence of Gothic romantic
fiction, emphasising as it does the irresistible allure of the vampire
for the heroine who has been seduced by the notion of immortality.
Whilst the film has great strengths, it also some glaring weaknesses,
which are hard to overlook. Perhaps the biggest faux pas is
Dracula's adopted pseudonym. Alucard (Dracula spelt backwards) is
the kind of gimmick you would expect to find in children's comic book,
not an adult feature film. And what does this say about Dracula's
intelligence? Imagine, you are descended from someone whose very
name is reviled across the civilised world, a name that invites
strangers to come up to you and perform serious mischief on your person
with a wooden stake. What do you do to conceal your
ancestry? That's right, you spell your name backwards and
dress up exactly like your loathed progenitor. But
that isn't the worst of it. Not crediting the audience with
enough intelligence to work out the syntactic connection between
Alucard and Dracula, the film has to spell it out to us with the
subtlety of an overbearing pedagogue trying to instil some self-evident
truth into a particularly thick five-year-old. Not once, but
twice, are the letters A-L-U-C-A-R-D shown on the screen, in big bold letters
that are reversed to spell out the name of the vampiric fiend.
Why not go the whole hog and have Dracula stand in front of a
blackboard with a piece of chalk and slowly show us how he arrived at
his ingenious nom de guerre? If you are going to be patronised,
you might as well be patronised by someone who is convinced you are a
drivelling idiot.
The film's other cardinal sin is of course the casting of Lon Chaney
Jr. as Dracula, the only justification for which is that it allows
the actor to complete the quartet of
Universal's Gothic horror icons (a feat that no other actor has
accomplished). (There is also a touch of irony in the fact that
Chaney's father would inevitably have played Universal's
original Dracula had he not died prematurely.) Few would dispute that
Lon Chaney Jr. was superlative as
the werewolf in
The Wolf Man (1941). He
was also pretty impressive as Frankenstein's monster in
The Ghost of Frankenstein
(1942) and the bandaged-wrapped monstrosity in
The Mummy's Tomb (1942). But
Dracula? Made up to resemble Ronald Colman's overweight older
brother, Chaney pretty well does for Bram Stoker's creation what Abbott
and Costello would later do for Mary Shelley's, which is to rob it of
any real menace and authority. Fortunately, Dracula is
pretty well reduced to being a supporting character in this film
and all that Chaney is required to do is to supply a sufficiently
sinister ghostly presence in the background, which he manages to do
reasonably well. Only when he is called upon to speak do
we cringe and wish that Bela Lugosi had been available at the time.
Son of Dracula is the odd-man
out in Universal's series of Gothic horror films. With its
haunting visuals and unusually elaborate plot, it rivals anything else
that Universal made in the horror genre. If only the studio had
gone the extra mile and found a suitable actor to play the part of
Dracula, this could have been a masterpiece - assuming, that is,
someone had had the sense to exorcise that awful Alucard gag.
(Hammer would later use the Alucard gimmick in one of their Dracula films,
Dracula A.D. 1972, but this
film is so dire that this
bêtise
is the least of its failings.) In any event,
Son of Dracula is one of
Universal's more intelligent forays into vampiric lore. After
this, the genre would take a dramatic and unseemly turn for the worse -
until Hammer came along in the late 1950s and made nocturnal
neck-biting the respectable profession it once was.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Robert Siodmak film:
The Spiral Staircase (1945)
Film Synopsis
Katherine Caldwell, the daughter of a Deep South plantation owner, is
hosting a party to welcome her guest, Count Alucard, to America. When the
Count fails to show up, Katherine calls on a Hungarian gypsy
friend, who dies suddenly after warning her of a dark future. Shortly after
Alucard's arrival, Colonel Caldwell dies in
a similar manner. The old man's estate is divided between his two
daughters, Claire receiving all of his liquid assets whilst Katherine
inherits the plantation. Katherine's longstanding boyfriend
Frank Stanley becomes concerned that Alucard is exerting a bad
influence over his sweetheart and, in a heated confrontation, shoots
him with his revolver. To Frank's horror, the bullets pass
through the Count, leaving him unharmed but killing Katherine.
Guilt-stricken, Frank runs off and confesses his crime to the county
sheriff. However, when he calls in on the Caldwell estate later
that evening, Dr Brewster sees that Katherine is alive and well, now
happily married to Count Alucard...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.