Unlike FRANKENSTEIN's sequel, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN which was even better than the superb original, this sequel to DRACULA is awful. It's like they went out of their way to ensure that everything that could be done to make a film as staggeringly boring as possible was done.
The story makes no sense, the dialogue manages to sound both mundane and ridiculous at the same time and the characters are the dullest, greyest bunch of non-entities you could imagine - if you had no imagination that is.
Gloria Holden really embraces the undead vibe by basically playing a corpse without any character whatsoever. Her method of conveying the inner torment of whether or not she wants to expunge herself of the vampire within or indeed whether she has this condition or whether it's all in her head is achieved by doing an hour and a half staring contest. As for the rest of the cast, they're so utterly grey I can't be bothered wasting words on them.
Surprisingly this film did actually have a director. Lambert Hillyer was his name - no, never heard of him either. How he manages to ensure there's zero atmosphere, tension, creepiness or engagement must have taken some effort. I've seen ANGEL so am fully aware that there's a large population of undead and zombies living in America so maybe Mr Hillyer was himself one of the undead, maybe he was Lambert Simnel who died 400 years earlier and was catering for the brainless zombie market?
The terribleness of this picture can be attributed to two things: money and poor management. Spurred on by the success of his BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Carl Laemmle, owner and head of production of Universal wanted to do the same with DRACULA. He wanted his star director James Whale to make it but Whale's plans were too expensive for the struggling studio so instead a budget director was brought in along with budget actors, budget sets and a script which seemed to be cobbled together by anyone who owned a typewriter. For some reason Universal decided to allow James Whale to spend all the studio's money - which mainly consisted of loans, on SHOWBOAT. Within a couple of weeks of the release of these two pictures Universal was in receivership and Laemmle no longer had a studio. Universal of course lived on but for the next several years just making low budget fillers and serials such as FLASH GORDON (OK, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN wasn't too bad but that benefited from having a decent actor - Basil Rathbone). At least the new management wouldn't impose on us any more pretentious garbage like DRACULA'S DAUGHTER again.
The story makes no sense, the dialogue manages to sound both mundane and ridiculous at the same time and the characters are the dullest, greyest bunch of non-entities you could imagine - if you had no imagination that is.
Gloria Holden really embraces the undead vibe by basically playing a corpse without any character whatsoever. Her method of conveying the inner torment of whether or not she wants to expunge herself of the vampire within or indeed whether she has this condition or whether it's all in her head is achieved by doing an hour and a half staring contest. As for the rest of the cast, they're so utterly grey I can't be bothered wasting words on them.
Surprisingly this film did actually have a director. Lambert Hillyer was his name - no, never heard of him either. How he manages to ensure there's zero atmosphere, tension, creepiness or engagement must have taken some effort. I've seen ANGEL so am fully aware that there's a large population of undead and zombies living in America so maybe Mr Hillyer was himself one of the undead, maybe he was Lambert Simnel who died 400 years earlier and was catering for the brainless zombie market?
The terribleness of this picture can be attributed to two things: money and poor management. Spurred on by the success of his BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Carl Laemmle, owner and head of production of Universal wanted to do the same with DRACULA. He wanted his star director James Whale to make it but Whale's plans were too expensive for the struggling studio so instead a budget director was brought in along with budget actors, budget sets and a script which seemed to be cobbled together by anyone who owned a typewriter. For some reason Universal decided to allow James Whale to spend all the studio's money - which mainly consisted of loans, on SHOWBOAT. Within a couple of weeks of the release of these two pictures Universal was in receivership and Laemmle no longer had a studio. Universal of course lived on but for the next several years just making low budget fillers and serials such as FLASH GORDON (OK, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN wasn't too bad but that benefited from having a decent actor - Basil Rathbone). At least the new management wouldn't impose on us any more pretentious garbage like DRACULA'S DAUGHTER again.