Movie Info
Movie Name: Son of Dracula
Studio: Universal Pictures
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movies
Release Date(s): November 5, 1943
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Don’t choke me for criticizing you’re portrayal of Dracula!
Katherine Caldwell (Louise Allbritton) invited a strange Hungarian Count Alucard (Lon Chaney, Jr.) to comes New Orleans to visit her father’s plantation. Soon after Alucard’s arrival Katherine’s father Colonel Caldwell (George Irving) passes away under strange circumstance. Katherine secretly elopes with Alucard and is killed when her boyfriend Frank Stanley (Robert Paige) accidentally shoots through Alucard’s body. Katherine is dead but now a member of the undead with Alucard’s help…Now, Frank is claiming he’s murdered Katherine and it is up to police to determine if Acucard is what he says he is.
Wish more movies had fun posters like this nowadays!
Robert Siodmak takes over directing in Son of Dracula and the movie is advanced to “modern day” despite the fact that most of the Universal monster Dracula movies are set in modern times. In Son of Dracula, it implies that events happened earlier…that doesn’t make it clear if this movie is a true sequel to the other Dracula pictures.
The movie in general falls kind of flat. Lon Chaney, Jr. seems to just be going through the motions as Dracula and doesn’t really have much screen presence. It is kind of interesting to see a New Orleans vampire story…since now New Orleans vampires are so popular. Fortunately storywise, they didn’t spend a lot of time with the “hey Alucard is Dracula in reverse”. In fact, Katherine’s character says that Alucard is Dracula…which kind of takes away from the idea that the movie is the “Son of Dracula”.
I get all misty sometimes
The Dracula franchise as a stand alone series reached the end at Universal with the Son of Dracula. Dracula returned the following year in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula in 1945 played by John Carradine. Dracula also became a joke in the Abbott and Costello series (which did have the return of Bela Lugosi). Son of Dracula is probably the weakest link in a chain of movies.
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