cross-posted from: !bmoviebonanza@lemmy.world
Son of Dracula (1943) is the movie for this Sunday's "monsterdon" watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling!
- Just start watching that movie this Sunday, April 12 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT which is 1am Monday UTC
- and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live text commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon
- I usually open two web browser windows side-by-side on a computer. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something.
How to watch the movie:
- tubi (availability varies by country): https://tubitv.com/movies/565125/son-of-dracula
- fawesome: https://fawesome.tv/movies/10411378/son-of-dracula
- uBlock Origin adblocker on Firefox should work for those tubi and fawesome links
- archive: https://archive.org/details/son-of-dracula-1943_202604
- it's usually streamed on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time
- if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/son-of-dracula
The film is set in the United States, where Count Alucard (Chaney Jr.) has just taken up residence. Katherine Caldwell (Allbritton), a student of the occult, becomes fascinated by Alucard and eventually marries him. Katherine begins to look and act strangely, leading her former romantic partner Frank Stanley (Paige) to suspect that something has happened to her. He gets help from Dr. Brewster (Craven) and psychologist Laszlo (J. Edward Bromberg) who come to the conclusion that Alucard is a vampire.
...
Rhodes declared that initial critical reception to Son of Dracula was "varied".[37] From contemporary reviews, The Hollywood Reporter declared that Son of Dracula was "a topline entry" as a horror film as it was "well made" with "intelligent direction by Robert Siodmak" and that "Chaney's Dracula is an outstanding job, accomplished without the gobs of makeup with which he is generally smeared".[38] Irene Thirer of The New York Post ranked the film as "Fair to good", finding it "is neatly turned out [...] and is certainly guaranteed for goose-pimples—and we might add, laughs".[39] A. H. Weiler of The New York Times found the film as "unintentionally funny as it is chilling" and concluded it a "pretty pallid offering".[39] A review in Harrison's Reports noted that Son of Dracula was "extremely weird, fantastic, and morbid, but because the theme has been done many times, it fails to attain the terrifying impact of the original".[39]
In their book Universal Horrors, Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas stated that Son of Dracula is "often lumped together with the rest of the Universal monster pictures of the '40s in the early years of horror scholarship, it has incrementally been seen as the product of a more sophisticated mindset" and in the canon of Robert Siodmak's career, Son of Dracula was "still regarded as a footnote, a stepping stone to his later highly regarded film noir works".[40] Bob Mastrangelo of AllMovie referred to the film as "strictly minor-league, harmless entertainment that never reaches its potential", finding Chaney was "not doing a very good job" but that "the problems with Son of Dracula are beyond Chaney, as the script never really takes advantage of the juicy potential of the story and lacks the dark humor and beautiful atmospherics that make the best Universal horror films so timeless".[41] Sean Axmaker wrote in The Seattle Times that Son of Dracula was a "moody minor horror gem" that was held back by "clumsy antics of the skeptical cops and the plodding exposition spouted by an old Carpathian doctor".[42]
In an interview with Starlog magazine in 1990, Curt Siodmak reflected on Son of Dracula stating that the film "became a classic through Robert [Siodmak]'s handling of light and shadow. He was wonderful on mood, characterization, atmosphere, the psychology. He could make marvelous scenes. But he couldn't write".
gloomy ambiance of the castle.
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