Rish Outfield's reviews
An undisclosed amount of time has passed since Dracula and Dracula's Daughter." But there's a new Count in town, who seems really interested in American soil (and that ain't all, eh ladies?) for some reason. But is he a new Count?
In an incredibly bad bit of casting, Lon Chaney Junior plays the mysterious Count Alucard, which dyslexics will catch before the rest of us.
Cool things of note: Dracula has a moustache in this, just like he did in the novel. The hero burns Count Dracula's coffin so he cannot hide when the night comes to an end. A woman, Kay, gives herself to Count Dracula, becomes a vampire, and visits her old boyfriend, Frank, as an emissary for the dark side. Nice, eerie synthesizer is used, which is bizarre, because I wasn't aware the synthesizer was even invented until thirty years later!
This featured a lot more bat effects than the previous two Dracula films. There is a cool shot of mist rising from a coffin to become Count Dracula. Good transitions from vampire to mist and to skeleton. Effects like these are just great, because of the era they were created in. Today, people would just shrug and say, "Aww, they used a computer," or "They just plugged him into the Matrix machine." But ask yourself how you would do it without today's technology. Not so easy, huh?
The story was written by the director's brother, Curt Siodmak, who wrote all the Wolf Man pictures. Wow, that guy must've been something! Like in The Wolf Man, Chaney is a sad, all-too human, almost pathetic creature– dreadfully miscast as the evil Count.
When all is said and done, Son of Dracula is sort of ho-hummy, but I enjoyed it more than I did Dracula's Daughter."
I'd Recommend It To: Big old-time Universal fans. But not so much the casual ones.
Note: Even though it's called SON of Dracula, there's never any evidence that this is the son of the Count from the 1931 film. On the contrary, it seems clear that this is the same undead Count as in the original, only retitled to cover for the change in actors.
Posted: January 18th, 2002

Total Skulls: 7

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?