Son of Dracula (1943)
Directed by Robert Siodmak

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.

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...