Dracula brought Universal back from the dead.
In 1931, Carl Laemmle Junior made a bet on the sickness and depravity of the American cinema-going public and made out like a goddamned bandit, turning his father’s ailing, indebted studio into a money-making powerhouse (for a while) and cementing Universal’s reputation as the natural home of American horror cinema.
It is a truth Universally (heh) acknowledged that a studio in possession of a hit must be in want of a franchise and Dracula’s Daughter debuted in 1936, five years after the original.
Likewise, plans for a sequel to James Whale’s classic Frankenstein were being laid even before the movie was released. After the rapturous response of early test screenings, the ending was re-shot to allow for the monster’s survival. Whale was tempted back to direct and proceeded to give as few fucks as an openly gay man in 1930s Hollywood might be expected to give; bupkiss, and by all accounts just decided to have fun with it. He had fun with it, and the result is widely regarded as even better than the original, one of the greatest films of Hollywood’s Golden Age and altogether quite good.
Dracula’s Daughter, by contrast, is primarily known (where it is known at all) as an obscure curio mostly of interest for its queer subtext.
Well, I am also an obscure curio mostly of interest for my queer subtext and I’m going to spoil something right now: this particularl bout of Bats versus Bolts might be a lot more closely fought than you’d expect.
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