Universal Monsters Movies Ranked
13. Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) seeks to free herself from her family’s curse of vampirism while attempting to entrance Dr Garth (Otto Kruger) via his secretary Janet (Marguerite Churchill).
Upon first glance a shameless follow-up notably missing its original star, Dracula’s Daughter has a surprising amount going on below the surface for a studio movie of the mid-1930s, particularly in regards to its very credible queer subtext that has been wholeheartedly embraced by fans over the decades.
Edward van Sloan returned as Van Helsing, but when Bela Lugosi didn’t return as Dracula, Universal wisely went in a completely new direction.
This new direction works primarily because Gloria Holden is such a mesmerising presence and her vampire countess isn’t just out to kill everyone or take over the world, but is instead out to achieve her liberation from the man who spawned her.
12. The Mummy’s Hand (1940)
The second instalment of the Mummy series serves as a soft reboot that begins to tell an entirely new story of archaeologists coming into conflict with the priests of Karnak who protect the legacy of Princess Ananka and Kharis, her guardian who was forbidden from loving her and cursed to guard her tomb for all time.
Stephen Somers must have been so influenced by this sequel in particular in his turn of the century reimagining of The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser. This has a very similar tone of knockabout fun, pretty much the same key plot beats, and some gruesome (though dated) imagery, though there are no elaborate chase scenes and this is a very Californian looking “Egypt”.
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11. Dracula / Draculá (1931)
The first official film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” (the Stoker estate took the makers of Nosferatu to court for copyright infringement) sees lawyer Renfield (Dwight Frye) travel to Transylvania to meet Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) to sell him some property in England, inadvertently becoming the vampire’s thrall and assisting him to travel West to find new victims.
The first but by no means the best of the Universal horrors (they were still working out the grammar of the genre and Tod Browning did far more striking work later), Dracula still surpassed technical limitations and some uncertainty over a nascent movie genre to become one of the most instantly recognisable screen horrors.
Studio mogul Carl Laemmle Jr, given the keys to the kingdom by his father, was thrifty and always on the lookout for a way to wring more dollars out of his productions. What better way to do so than to re-shoot your horror at night on the same sets with a Spanish-speaking cast and crew for just that market in LA and south of the border? Somehow the Spanish language version is even more effective, with more interesting cinematography and better (but less iconic) performances.
How dare you put Dracula so far down. We shall have to fight this out in the SecondCutPod podcasts.