Dracula's Daughter Goes Both Ways

I first saw Dracula's Daughter (1936) on television at age twelve, when it made almost no impression on me. It seemed to me stilted and boring. In the years since, I felt as if I saw it many times, because it was always being talked about in horror circles as an example of the homoerotic strain in horror movies. Specifically, it was supposed to be a classic of lesbian cinema. But I never actually saw Dracula's Daughter for a second time until this morning, on Netflix instant viewing, and I was surprised to find that both my previous impressions were wrong. It is not boring, and it is not lesbian. It is lively and bisexual.

First, the liveliness. Dracula's Daughter is well-staged and moves right along, picking up where its predecessor Dracula left off and taking the story in a decidedly new direction. It tells the tale of Dracula's daughter, Countess Zaleska (Gloria Holden), who is also a vampire but aches not to be one. This is an adult story-line, one in which vampirism is like an addiction that the vampire longs to resist, and perhaps at the age of twelve I was not ready to appreciate such a conflict. Holden's performance is strong, as is Otto Kruger's performance as her psychiatrist, Dr. Garth. Yes, this is the first movie I know of in which a vampire has a psychiatrist. The movie is not very scary, but it is creepy and interesting, with good comic relief.

Second, the bisexuality. Much has been made of a sequence in which Countess Zaleska, who is a painter, has her henchman Sandor bring a pretty young woman, Lili, to her studio to pose for her semi-clothed. Zaleska tries to resist the temptation to sink her teeth into Lili's neck, but temptation proves too strong and Zaleska digs in, ultimately killing her. David J. Skal in his book, The Monster Show, notes that this scene is "often cited as a 'classic' lesbian sequence," and taken in isolation, it is.

But Zaleska does not like only women. Her first onscreen victim is a man, and--once she realizes the futility of giving up vampirism--she tries to persuade the male Dr. Garth into joining her forever in the ranks of the undead. Further, she lives with a man--the henchman Sandor--and had previously promised him immortality. Sandor does not like it when Garth displaces him in Zaleska's affections. The movie comes down to being a weird love triangle about two men and a woman, not about two women and another woman.

Thus, as far as her explicit sexual orientation goes, Zaleska prefers men. As far as her taste in food goes, she goes both ways: she will dine from the necks of both men and women. There is a long tradition of viewing vampire attacks as sexual as well as gastronomic acts, and this view is justified, if only because the neck is a sweet spot sexually. In that sense, the moment Zaleska preys on Lili, she is implicitly stating a sexual taste for women as well as men. But since her taste for men is also present, and (at least explicitly) stronger, Zaleska is best considered not lesbian but bisexual.

George Ochoa
Author
Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films

The Edge of Horror

My theory of horror films, discussed at length in my book, is that the primary purpose of horror films is to present a deformed and destructive being. This is obvious in a movie like Frankenstein, where there is a being (here, the Frankenstein monster) who is deformed and destructive and is clearly the focus of the story. But there are numerous cases on the edges of horror where the categorization is not so clear. Such a case is Cronos (1993).

Cronos is widely recognized as horror, both by those who like it, such as Bloody Disgusting, and those who don't, such as PelleCreepy. And it does have a plot that sort of sounds like horror: old man Jesus Gris finds ancient device that confers immortality on its user at the price of transforming him into a vampire. As Gris becomes a vampire through deforming makeup effects, he clearly qualifies as a deformed being. But he is not obviously destructive.

Gris does not kill to get blood; he scavenges blood where he can find it, from a nosebleed or wound. He is kind and generally nonviolent. However, it is clear that he is tempted to get blood more openly--he almost takes it from his beloved granddaughter, but holds back. And he is destroying himself through his addiction to the device; his visible suffering steadily increases as his vampirism gets worse. He is, therefore, destructive in two ways: potentially destructive with respect to others and actually destructive with respect to himself. He is a deformed destructive being whose presentation is the purpose of the movie. That makes Cronos a horror movie, although a peculiarly gentle and offbeat horror movie, in which the monster is almost preternaturally nice.

George Ochoa
Author
Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films

Phagic Nightmares

Many horror movies are based on the idea of the normal characters (the normals) being eaten by the abnormal ones (the deformed destructive beings, or DDBs). These are phagic stories, tales of being eaten. This is true of zombie movies, and partially true of vampire movies, where what is consumed is only a part of the victim, blood. Berserk biota, natural non-human creatures acting strangely, are always munching on humans: sharks (most famously Jaws [1975]), anacondas, piranhas, rats, resurrected dinosaurs, man-eating plants, and so on. Alien monsters, such as the creature in Alien (1979), also seem to have a taste for humans. So do cannibals, such as in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

These movies suggest an insight into the nature of DDBs. Every species that has evolved has to procure food, and most species (aside from most green plants) do it destructively, by devouring some other living thing. Every species that has evolved is deformed with respect to its ancestors: it evolves through deformation. Therefore most species are DDBs, or monsters. Humans are no different. We are monsters to all the animals and plants we eat. A good horror movie would be set in a slaughterhouse, from the point of view of the cow. In fact, that movie was made, with humans standing in for cows: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Horror movies--at least the phagic ones under discussion here--are like recurrent nightmares we have been having since our evolutionary childhood, the prehistoric days when there were many more creatures around that could eat us. Even today, when there is little danger of being eaten, we know that we could be eaten: that we are no less vulnerable to teeth than the animals we ingest. And we know that we survive by eating, giving us cause for both delight and guilt. Unless we ever become indigestible or cease digesting, our phagic nightmares are likely to continue.

George Ochoa
Author
Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films

Vampires and Spiritual Deformity

A spiritual deformity presupposes two things: the existence of spirit, and a form that is the proper type or pattern for spirits. If this form is marred or twisted, you have a spiritual deformity.

The vampire, in his traditional form, is a classic example of spiritual deformity. He is a rebel against God, and this has so twisted him that he does things like drink blood and sleep in coffins. In Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), the rebellion against God is explicit: Gary Oldman rejects God for having deprived him of Winona Ryder. Whatever you may think of Winona Ryder, this rebellion is what turns him into the monstrous Dracula.

Often, the rebellion against God is more implicit. We see it most often in the vampire's fear of crosses. The vampire is cursed of God, and therefore the cross, symbol of the son of God, frightens and burns him.

In our more secular age, it is less acceptable to assume publicly a metaphysics in which God is at the top and his son is just below him. So, to adapt to current tastes, vampires have become more secular. As pointed out in a 2008 blog from the Groovy Age of Horror, the cross no longer scares most vampires the way it used to.

As a result, the vampire has become metaphysically thinned out. You used to be able to count on the vampire as an example of spiritual deformity. Now he might just be someone with fangs and a thing for blood.

George Ochoa
Author
Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films