Director: Robert Siodmak
Cast: Lou Chaney, Jr., Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige, Evelyn Ankers
Have I Seen it Before: Yes, and I have almost no memory of it during my previous march through the classic Universal Monsters canon.
Did I Like It: In my review of Dracula’s Daughter (1936) I scratched my head, wondering why they didn’t actually use the main character. Even if Lugosi was unavailable for any number of reasons, they could have recast the role, as it wasn’t like they were hesitant about that in the years to come.
Well, forget all of that. I was wrong.
Chaney is so spectacularly miscast in the part of Dracula. He can’t avoid sounding and looking like he feels real bad about everything he does. That kind of guilt written on his face works for a werewolf, sure, but using it for the visage of Count Dracula never feels right.
The film proceeds with no continuity to the original story (somehow even less than Dracula’s Daughter) but still has the same, bland qualities of those earlier films. It evaporates from the mind almost immediately after the end credits roll, so much so to the point where I am mildly struggling with enough to say about the film to fill full review.
So, it’s with a fair amount of irony that the film’s superb forgettability also yields its greatest weakness. Apparently, those charged with the preservation and maintenance of older films didn’t think much of this third Dracula outing, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film presented so poorly on a commercially available DVD. Large stretches of sound effects are so filled with pops and crackles that the entire film sounds like an ancient radio play written onto a wax drum that had been left out in the sun since V-J day. A scene with a large fireplace is borderline unintelligible. I’m not entirely sure why Universal even bothered to re-release this one. I’m not sure if anyone would miss it.