Son of Dracula Updates Myths To Expand Franchise
Son of Dracula (1943) is different. It is set in the American Deep South rather than England or – previous home for all vampires – Transylvania. It also features a bulky count, Lon Chaney Jr., who some horror fans claim was miscast. Presumably, these fans prefer the Bela Lugosi version (Dracula, 1931), a slender European monster who looks good in formal black.
The film was part of a studio-planned trend to expand the monster franchise created in 1931 with the releases of Dracula and Frankenstein (see History of Horror).
Robert Siodmak (1900-1973) was the director, a native German who worked in his home country, France and the US during a 40-year career in film. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for The Killers (1946), a celebrated film noir that introduced Burt Lancaster. Slodmak reportedly took the Dracula job as a $150 per week studio system director.
The film revolves around a Southern family, the Caldwells, focusing specifically on two sisters, Kay and Claire. Kay Caldwell – played by Louise Allbritton — is the “morbid” one, which means she is interested in the occult.
She has been traveling Europe to study same, where she meets Count Alucard (Dracula spelled backwards). She has invited the Count to her family’s estate called Dark Oaks. The version of America Count Alucard encounters is a bayou swamp with alligators replacing hungry wolves.
Alucard proceeds to kill the Caldwell clan’s elderly Papa, Colonel Caldwell, setting up an inheritance for both Kay, who gets Dark Oaks, and sister Claire, who gets the family money. Alucard marries Kay and family problems arise.
On a technical note, the movie features the first onscreen man-into-bat vampire transformation created by John P. Fulton, a special effects master who also worked on the original Frankenstein movie and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). His career highlight was parting the Red Sea in Cecil B. deMille’s The 10 Commandments (1956).
