Son of Dracula (Blu-ray) (1943)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1943
Running Time	80:16
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Robert Siodmak
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Robert Paige Louise Allbritton Evelyn Ankers Frank Craven J. Edward Bromberg Lon Chaney Jr
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Hans J. Salter

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English DTS HD Master Audio 2.0 mono
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.37:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired French Spanish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Katherine Caldwell (Louise Allbritton) of the Dark Oaks Plantation in southern USA eagerly awaits the arrival of Count Alucard (Lon Chaney Jr), whom she met in Hungary and invited to America. As the train bringing his trunks arrives during daylight hours of course Alucard (which is Dracula spelt backwards) is not on board, although he does put in an appearance that night to suck the blood of and kill Katherine’s father, Dracula’s first victim in America. Katherine’s sister Claire (Evelyn Ankers), their family physician Doctor Brewster (Frank Craven) and especially Katherine’s fiancé Frank Stanley (Robert Paige) cannot understand her fascination with the Count. Doctor Brewster becomes suspicious when his enquiries fail to turn up any Hungarian family with the name of Alucard and he contacts Professor Lazlo (J. Edward Bromberg), a Hungarian expert on the occult, for advice. Frank also becomes suspicious and rightly so; one night he tries to follow Katherine when she goes to meet Dracula, but loses them. He returns to Dark Oaks to be told by the couple that they are now married. During a fight Frank shoots Dracula, but the bullets pass straight through him and kill Katherine, who falls to the floor. Demented, Frank flees into the night and stumbles into Doctor Brewster’s house, telling the doctor what he has done. Doctor Brewster goes to Dark Oaks, to find that Katherine is very much alive.

     Next morning Frank goes to the Sheriff to confess to killing Katherine and is arrested. Doctor Brewster assures the Sheriff that he saw Katherine alive the night before; the Sheriff does not believe him and the group visit Dark Oaks and find the body of Katherine in a coffin in the family crypt. So now Frank is jailed and the Doctor considered an accessory. In jail that night Frank is visited by Katherine, who, of course, is now one of the undead. She tells Frank that she loves only him; she drinks his blood and urges him to destroy the Count so that the two of them can live forever together. Meanwhile Professor Lazlo, who has arrived in town, and Doctor Brewster set out themselves to find Dracula’s coffin and destroy him.

     Son of Dracula, the second sequel to 1931’s classic Dracula, owes nothing to the original story and instead moves the location to the USA for a rather slow paced and twisted love story. The film was directed by Robert Siodmak, who was Oscar nominated for the excellent noir thriller The Killers (1946) with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, but the pace of that film is not evident here. Son of Dracula was based on a story by Curt Siodmak, who had written the screenplay for The Wolf Man (1941) which made a horror star of Lon Chaney Jr, allowing him to step out of the shadow of his famous silent screen actor father. Thereafter Chaney Jr became Universal’s go-to monster actor of the 1940s, appearing as The Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster, five films as the Wolf Man and, in this film, Count Dracula.

     Chaney is a big man with a strong physical presence that worked well as the Wolf Man but as Dracula he is more a brute force lacking the aristocratic foreign charm that, for example, Bela Lugosi brought to the part. Chaney’s Dracula is no aristocrat; he has no qualms about what he is and is prepared to use physical violence to achieve his ends.Louise Allbritton is fine as the female vampire, doing what she does out of a twisted kind of love, while Evelyn Ankers, who was also in The Wolf Man and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), does not have a lot to do, and J. Edward Bromberg as Professor Lazlo is the Van Helsing type character.

     Son of Dracula is a rather standard horror film without any of anguish about being a vampire that was so nicely done in the first Dracula sequel, Dracula’s Daughter (1936). It is dated by a couple of things as well; the Negro servants that everyone seems to have and the repeated dialogue that Dracula has come to America to a young and virile country, as opposed to the deadness of his home. In 1943, when this film was made and Europe was in the midst of war, the significance for American audiences would not be unintentional.

Video

     Son of Dracula is presented in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, in 1080p using the MPEG-4 AVC code.

     Son of Dracula looks great for an almost 80 year old film that was hardly a high profile title. It has been restored and blacks, greyscale and shadow detail are good, the close-ups clean. There is controlled grain and this is a nice clean print without obvious marks or artefacts except for occasional motion blur.

     Clear white subtitles are available in English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish.

Video Ratings Summary

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Audio

     The audio is English DTS-HD MA 2.0 (mono).

     Dialogue was easy to understand. The effects are as expected in a film of this vintage; there are not a lot of them anyway except for flapping bat’s wings, the occasional gunshot or car engine, the crackles of the fire. On the other hand the score, by Hans J. Salter, who received four Oscar nominations and composed scores in many genres, including other Universal horror films including Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Mummy’s Hand (1940), is loud and strident, signalling, for example, the appearance of Dracula with obvious cues. There is obviously no surround or subwoofer use.

     I did not notice any hiss or distortion.

     Lip synchronisation was fine.

Audio Ratings Summary

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Theatrical Trailer (1:37)

     On start-up you are asked to select Dracula’s Daughter or Son of Dracula to watch. The selected film commences without a further menu, but you can use the pop-up menu via the remote to select chapters, subtitles and the film’s unrestored theatrical trailer.

     This Blu-ray release of Son of Dracula starts with the US FBI antipiracy warning. There is a Region A US stand-alone Blu-ray, with only the trailer as an extra. Here the film is released as part of the Dracula: Complete Legacy Collection (see the summary below) which is also available in other regions.

     Made more than a decade after the original and classic Dracula, Son of Dracula is a standard monster horror story with no real connection to the original. It still has some good moments, mostly due to the performance and dark beauty of Louise Allbritton as a women who chooses eternal life as one of the undead. In The Wolf Man (1941), his signature role, Lon Chaney Jr, brought to his performance both physicality and a sadness and vulnerability that is touching and elicits our sympathy. Any such subtlety is not in evidence here as Dracula, which I guess sums up the film as well.

     Son of Dracula looks very good in HD, the audio is the original mono. A trailer is the only extra, although you also get Dracula’s Daughter on the same Blu-ray.

     Son of Dracula is included in Universal’s 4 disc Dracula: Complete Legacy Collection which has Dracula (1931) and copious extras on one Blu-ray, Dracula’s Daughter (1936) and Son of Dracula on one Blu-ray, House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945) on another Blu-ray, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) by itself plus extras on the fourth, a collection that is great value for fans of Universal horror.

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