AUGUST 31, 2007
GENRE: CLASSIC, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)
One of the Scotts recommended Dracula’s Daughter after I pointed out how much I loved the part in Herzog’s Nosferatu where Van Helsing gets arrested for murder. I wish he had pointed out that the rest of the movie wasn’t as interesting, or that Van Helsing was needlessly renamed VON Helsing in the film. I like to be prepared.
Instead, DD, as its known to me, is otherwise pretty goddamn slow. There’s some interesting ideas thrown in here and there (not to mention some always welcome lesbian undertones), but there’s too many things copied from the original. There’s still a girl in peril, an aversion to “drinking… wine”, and a town full of folks who don’t seem to mind living in an area with an abnormally high fatality rate.
It’s also pretty lazy. It’s supposed to take place directly after the original, but technology is of the era the film was produced instead of from the period setting of the first film.
Not that it’s a bad film; it’s just there are only so many Dracula movies a man can take in one year. This makes I think 6. Enough I say!
What say you?
Some people dig the classics, and some don't so much, I guess. :) Obviously it's not as good as the original, but I find it a fascinating time capsule, esp. the way it trumps the stuff that made Anne Rice a rich little Christian by something like 50 years. It's not every day you see a lesbian vampire attack in a 30s-era movie.
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty slow, but I still dig it, coming from the female side rather than the male. Before the late 60s-early 70s I can't think of very many vampire movies that took the female vamp as the main character, though that's common as dirt now.