#Lambert Hillyer

[weirdlookindog]

Gloria Holden in Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

[uspiria]

Dracula’s Daughter (1936) dir. Lambert Hillyer

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[braindeadhistories]

Dracula's Daughter Universal Lobby Cards

archive link

[gatutor]

Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi-Frances Drake "El poder invisible" (The invisible ray) 1936, de Lambert Hillyer.

[thethirdbear]

[cinemphatic]

Dracula's Daughter (1936) dir Lambert Hillyer

[lifeinasmalltowninjapan]

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

🎬 Lambert Hillyer

[schlock-luster-video]

On March 5, 2022, Dracula's Daughter debuted in Svengoolie.

Here's some new Gloria Holden art to celebrate!

[weirdlookindog]

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

[uspiria]

Lobby cards for Dracula's Daughter, 1936.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Dracula's Daughter lobby cards (1936)

[letterboxd-loggd]

Dracula's Daughter (1936) Lambert Hillyer

March 9th 2024

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Dracula's Daughter (Hillyer, 1936)

Like those eight-hour-long crackling fireplace videos, they should make one for Spooky Season. It'll be a monochromatic fog animation. On the soundtrack it'll be wind noises and wolf howls. And I will log it on here with a five-star rating. (Just kidding, I don't really do ratings anymore. But it'll get the heart.)

But until then, Fog Freaks like you and me will have to get your Fog Fix from movies with things like plot and character and interior scenes getting in the way of the Fogginess. Movies like this one, which has some pretty juicy Fog whenever we go outside, especially if we're in a cemetery but even when we walk down the street at night. So if you like your movies nice and Foggy or just need a few more stamps on your Foggy Movie punchcard so you can get your submarine sandwich, this'll do the trick.

Otherwise, this has a lot of stuff for a seventy-one minute movie, some of what what you'd want in a movie called Dracula's Daughter and some maybe less so. There's a lot of comic relief, is what I'm saying, and your mileage may vary on how funny it is. This is a nice reminder that bumbling cops have been a mainstay of horror movies going back almost a century. So the next time you complain about the buffoonish scenes in The Last House on the Left or The Town That Dreaded Sundown, know that they are part of a long and storied tradition. Much more compelling is the comic relief provided by Marguerite Churchill, who messes up the hero's tie and later prank calls him with a German accent.

From a spookier angle, Gloria Holden has a pretty strong presence as the titular Dracula's daughter, who is maybe not as otherworldly as Bela Lugosi when he played her father in the preceding film, but finds sympathetic dimensions to her characters. Smarter people than myself have written about the movie's queer subtext, so I'll direct you to one of them.

I think that this movie suffers from its lead. Whether it be the writing or Otto Kruger's performance, he's a little too stodgy a character to ground something like this. You need someone who can be credibly tempted by Holden and her vampirism, and can hold up his end of the flirtatious antagonism with Churchill, and I don't think this character manages to do either very well.

That being said, if you like Fog or lady vampires or prank calls, you'll have a good time with this.

[gatutor]

Sylvia Breamer-William S. Hart "The narrow trail" 1917, de William S. Hart, Lambert Hillyer.