Mistresses of the Dark (Part Two) - Dracula's Daughter

Last week we travelled to the glitzy world of the 1970s disco scene in New York with Nocturna, but for today I wanted to track back a little to a movie that was released not long after that first official Dracula movie – 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter, also brought to us by Universal, who would quickly become known for their classic monster movies.

It stars Gloria Holden in the lead as Countess Marya Zaleska, the female descendant of Dracula and of course a vampire. After the death of the Count, Marya believes that by destroying his body she can remove the vampiric curse from herself. She seeks to enlist the help of psychiatrist Dr Garth (Otto Kruger), even going so far as to kidnap his assistant Janet (played by Margueritte Churchill). This leads to a final climactic battle in Transylvania, resulting in a tragic end for our protagonist.

As interesting as the movie is the backstory behind it – after the success of Bela Lugosi’s turn as Dracula in Tod Browning’s 1931 Universal movie, MGM were quicker than Universal to secure the rights to Dracula’s Guest from Bram Stoker’s widow Florence. This excised chapter from Stoker’s original book was supposedly the basis for Dracula’s Daughter, though critics and fans alike have pointed out that it bears more in common with Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla than anything Stoker put on paper.

So, you might be asking yourself, if MGM bought the rights, then how did this movie get released by Universal? MGM did have some legal concerns about the use of Dracula in the title, and the movie was codenamed Tarantula within the company as a result. In the end, MGM only held the rights for a year before they were acquired by Universal in 1934, though production on the movie had to start before February 1936. The film actually started shooting without a completed script just to meet this deadline!

Gloria Holden was by all accounts none too keen to star in the film, having seen Bela Lugosi struggle to break out of the horror stereotype. There were offers made to Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Cesar Romero and Lugosi himself, but none of those parts ultimately transpired. Despite her concerns, Holden would go on to have an active career on the screen, taking in movies like The Life of Emile Zola, Passage to Hong Kong and The Corsican Brothers. Her final credited film role was in 1958’s This Happy Feeling, and she died in 1991 at the age of 87.

What is notable in particular in Dracula’s Daughter is its strong lesbian overtones, which have led to those comparisons with Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Universal even leant into this in some of its marketing, particularly with the slogan ‘Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!’ An implied romantic scene between Marya and Janet, as well as her artist model Lili, had to be downplayed or handled carefully by the studio. Despite this, it is arguably one of the first vampire movies to build in this element, one that would become far more common as societal attitudes and censors became less constrictive.

So which Mistress of the Dark will be our focus for next week? Keep an eye out on the blog to find out…