Dracula's Daughter was the first sequel to the original Dracula film. I didn't even know the film existed until passed the turn of the century when DVD collections were being released and included that film. My first assumption was that it was so bad that Universal kind of hid it away and then tacked it onto the DVD to make it seem like there was more of an epic collection there. To use an example of what I am talking about, I remember finding an Alien and Predator DVD collection at a store, and it included every single Alien and Predator movie with the two AVP films as well. And my first thought was "That's a pretty nifty set...except for the fact that I only like 3 of the movies in the whole collection".
Anyways, Dracula's Daughter is a bit odd as it picks up right where Dracula left off, with Van Helsing being questioned about staking Count Dracula and being arrested for his murder! (Harker and Mina are nowhere to be seen to serve as witnesses in his favor). The time period is a bit off here as the first film seems like it was set in the late 1800s, like the novel, but this movie (the immediate sequel) seems to be set in what was then modern times, with airplanes and telephones being used in the plot.
However, inconsistencies between sequels was more forgivable back then given that this was before home video, online streaming, and even before these movies showed up on television, so audiences couldn't be expected to remember every single detail of a movie they saw 5 years earlier.
Overlooking those problems, I actually found the film to be quite enjoyable and it was a pleasant surprise. Gloria Holden plays the part very well, and as some have pointed out, she actually hated playing the role due to the typecasting it was bound to cause, and some critics have speculated that this real distaste for the role actually enhanced the self loathing that the character is supposed to have. And it was interesting to see a monster in one of these movies that tries to cure herself of being one, a full half decade before The Wolf Man would be released. Also, as a female monster at the center of the film, it helps it to stand out. And interestingly, with her targeting female victims, that brings themes of homo-eroticism, which for the time period, seems rather shocking and unexpected, and it helps the film to stand out.
I think this film gets overlooked because it doesn't have any of the big names in it (Lugosi, Karloff, Cheney, etc.), but Holden carries the film well, and its enjoyable to watch for fans of these movies. It isn't one of the best, but its worth a look.
- As for She-Wolf of London, when I first saw it, I was actually hoping for the same thing in that it would be a neat entry that is often over looked. At first, I was kind of digging it. The original script for the famous Wolf Man was to leave the transformation into a wolf ambiguous, and was supposed to be more of a psychological thriller. I thought that's what this movie was doing, and it actually kind of worked. Was this woman going crazy? Was she imagining things, or was she really turning into a werewolf and attacking people? Unfortunately, the explanation for the events of the film is so unbelievably underwhelming, that it ruined the entire film for me.