Monsters and Matinees: It’s all in the family for monster kids

Living up to your family legacy can be tough.

You can spend your life trying to meet the high expectations of your parents or following in the family business that is often at the expense of your own dreams.

As tough as that is for humans, think about the difficulties for monster kids like Dracula’s son and Frankenstein’s daughter. In the film world, they’re held up to the iconic characters and movies that came before them. That’s a steep uphill climb.

You most likely know films like Son of Frankenstein (1939) with Boris Karloff and Dracula’s Daughter (1936) that was so well-regarded it has entire book written about it. But I’m here to talk about four other films that may not be as well known, nor as impressive but they give it their all. (Two from Hammer are much better than expected.) Their lineage is traced to Dracula, Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper and Dr. Jekyll.

Son of Dracula (1943)

This was the third Universal film in the Dracula series, following the timeless original and Dracula’s Daughter. Son of Dracula has solid pedigree with Lon Chaney Jr. (though he was billed without the Jr. for this film) in the title role, Robert Siodmak (The Killers) as director and a story by his brother Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man).

Count Dracula, going by the name of Alucard to fool everyone, travels to New Orleans on the invitation of lovely young Katherine Caldwell (played by Louise Allbritton), one of two daughters of an elderly plantation owner. (The other is Claire played by Evelyn Ankers of The Wolf Man.) Katherine, who has an interest in the occult, became mesmerized by The Count on a visit to Budapest, but we won’t know the full reason for that until a “wow” moment late in the film. The Count (I’m going to call him that instead of Dracula/Alucard) also has his own reasons for leaving his home country for this new land of America.

Within hours of The Count’s arrival, Katherine’s father is found dead in his room with two strange little marks on his neck. They draw the interest of family friend Dr. Brewster (Frank Craven) although he doesn’t know what to make of them. He was equally puzzled earlier when he saw a luggage tag for Count Alucard and realized it spelled Dracula backward. That’s because Dracula is not a name known in the United States – yet.

A personality change in Katherine, especially her obsession with The Count, is a growing concern to those closest to her, including long-time fiancée Frank (Robert Paige). Yes, we have a human/vampire love triangle.

Son of Dracula looks like a Universal film – moody black and white cinematography with shadows, for starters. Chaney is a handsome, yet stoic Count. There’s none of the mysterious other worldliness of Bela Lugosi, nor should we expect there to be.

The first half of the film is slow moving, then it suddenly picks up the pace. There will be a quickie wedding, an innocent will descend into near madness and there will be a lesson in Vampires 101 for the American newbies.

The story finally reveals character motivations, too, making my head spin in a good way. Now we know what’s going on with Katherine and why The Count left his homeland giving us something to think about – and care about.

In the end … Nothing will compare to the original 1931 film and that shouldn’t be surprising. Still, there are nifty scenes like a coffin rising out of the water and the shock when Dr. Brewster finds Katherine in her bedroom that is as jolting as nearly anything I’ve seen in a horror film. I also loved the unexpected hero of the film and was emotionally touched by the end which I did not anticipate.

Dracula story stand-in … Professor Lazlo (J. Edward Bromberg) plays the Dr. Van Helsing-type who is called in to explain everything.

Special note: Don’t confuse this Son of Dracula
with the 1974 film of the same name. The later movie is a musical starring
Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson and a host of other rockers. The plot is about Count
Downe (Nilsson), the son of Count Dracula who has been murdered. Merlin (Starr)
and Baron Frankenstein (Freddie Jones) want to groom him to take over for dad,
but the younger count has fallen in love and wants to be mortal. Directed by
Freddie Francis

Frankenstein’s Daughter (1956)

If we’re talking in terms of blood ties, Frankenstein’s
Daughter is a misleading title.  The two
– yes two – young women in the film who are the subjects of experiments gone wrong
are not related to the infamous Dr. Frankenstein. But there is a Frankenstein
grandchild in the mix, so we do have family ties. (I know the question you are
asking: Why isn’t it called Frankenstein’s Grandchild? I don’t know.)

Dr. Carter Morton (played by Felix Locher) lives
in a lovely house with his teen niece Trudy (played by Sandra Knight, the
future Mrs. Jack Nicholson). Along with his assistant Oliver (Donald Murphy),
the doctor conducts altruistic experiments to stop disease in the home’s handy
first-floor laboratory. Meanwhile, Trudy hangs with her cute boyfriend Johnny
(John Ashley) and their friends Dave (Harold Lloyd Jr.) and Suzie (former
Playmate Sally Todd).

Unfortunately, Dr. Morton’s well-meaning formula comes with a side effect of brief disfigurement. At first, it’s minor things like buck teeth and bushy eyebrows, before it devolves into full facial distortions and body contortions. It gets ugly fast, but the experiments go on because a surprise Frankenstein heir wants to restore the family name by completing granddad’s work.

“They were geniuses!” you’ll hear the heir exclaim (no
spoilers here on who it is).

Meanwhile, the white-picket fence California community is living in fear of a monster in a negligee. One newspaper headline screams “Woman monster menaces city!”

That doesn’t stop crazy teens from having a pool party with a live band.

In the end … The film is from director Richard E. Cunha, known for his quickie low-budget films that were labeled his “six-day wonders.” It never rises about that ultra-low budget, but it entertains by playing more like a 1950s teen hot rod film with kissing, cars and dancing.

Frankenstein story stand-in… The pitiful but devoted gardener Elsu (Wolfe Barzell) has a long history with the family, and is our Fritz/Igor character.

Extra: I recommend watching this from the 2021 special edition DVD from The Film Detective which comes with bonus features. Here’s a link to my previous story about Frankenstein’s Daughter for Classic Movie Hub.

Hands of the Ripper (1971)

The title reads like a slasher film – which it is – but it really should have “daughter” in the title since it is about the daughter of Jack the Ripper. Bonus: It’s from Hammer and comes not only with the studio’s patented Victorian ambiance, but the unexpected element of the Ripper communicating from beyond the grave.

Anna (played by Angharad Rees) was only 2 when she watched her father – the Jack the Ripper – kill her mother. Now 17, Anna is living with a phony medium who uses her to fake communication with dead relatives of grieving families. She’s very good at faking it – or is she? Nope, that’s dear old dead dad talking her into being like him. She just needs a childhood memory from that tragic night, something as simple as the flames of a fireplace, to be triggered into killing.

That sounds like I gave a lot away, but I didn’t because this film puts everything out there right away. There’s no guessing what’s going on or who is doing what. We know right away about the voice, the triggers and what it all does to Anna. Yet it doesn’t lessen the shock value.

Anna is taken in by this film’s version of the well-meaning but ill-advised doctor, Dr. Pritchard (played by Eric Porter). He’s studying Freud and thinks by psychoanalyzing Anna that he can get in the mind of a killer, save her and make history at that same time. That can’t go well.

In the end … This is vintage Hammer with the ornate Victorian setting of the grand house, the uniquely colored blood, plenty of bodices and the dramatic music with two settings (romantic and dramatic). The supernatural twist of the dead Ripper communicating with his daughter is excellent and adds a unique element to the many other Jack the Ripper films.

Ripper story stand-in … None needed because we’ve got the real deal in dad, AKA Jack the Ripper.

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

In this Hammer film, handsome young Dr. Jekyll (Ralph Bates) is researching an antivirus to save the world, but it’s been slow going with years of study to come. When a colleague mentions Jekyll will be dead before he succeeds (nice friend), he switches gears to create an anti-aging formula that will give him more time. The magic ingredient, he believes, will be female hormones.

He harvests female organs from cadavers until that supply runs out and he’s forced to kill to continue his experiments. (One of Jekyll’s multiple wars with himself is whether sacrificing a few to save the many is the right moral choice.) Jekyll succeeds in his experiments, but at the cost of creating a murderous alter ego, as happened in Robert Louis Stevenson’s original 1903 novel. This time instead of Mr. Hyde, it’s a Mrs. Hyde who is as lethal as she is beautiful. (She’s played by the sensual Martine Beswick.)

In the end … This film benefits from that interesting twist of having Hyde be a woman. It creates an ongoing tug-of-war between Jekyll and Hyde about sexual identities and the classic battle of good vs. evil. We also get a new take on the Jack the Ripper story which adds another element.

Dr. Jekyll story stand-in …. Jekyll’s friend Professor Robertson takes on the role of Hastie Lanyon, the friend from the novel. Instead of a fiancée, Jekyll develops feelings for his new upstairs neighbor Susan Spencer (Susan Broderick).

– Toni
Ruberto for Classic Movie Hub

You
can read all of Toni’s Monsters and Matinees articles here.

Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at
The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever and is a writer
and board member of the Classic
Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo
chapter of TCM Backlot and led the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs.
She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the
spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can
find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto.