Dracula's Daughter - Reception and Influence

Reception and Influence

The New York Times gave Dracula's Daughter a solid, albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheek, review upon its release, citing the film's "blood-curdling events" and noting that "Gloria Holden is a remarkably convincing bat-woman" in concluding that the film is both "quite terrifying" and "a cute little horror picture." Variety also praised the production and Holden's performance in particular. Despite critical approval, Dracula's Daughter was unable to duplicate the box office success of the original.

Recent reviews of Dracula's Daughter are sharply split. Entertainment Weekly, reviewing the film following its video release, called it "one of the most satisfying vampire pictures ever made". Describing director Hillyer's visuals as "lush, evocative, and suffused with just the right gothic chiaroscuro" and noting that "Gloria Holden, as the reluctant vampire protagonist, absolutely drips patrician eroticism", EW concludes that this film is better than Lugosi's original Dracula.

Ryan Cracknell of Apollo Movie Guide, while echoing the praise for Holden's performance, nonetheless found that the film "doesn't hold up so well today". Citing what he sees as slow pacing and "long bouts of over-the-top dialogue", Cracknell compares the film to "reading a textbook – not the most exciting thing in the world, but it does provide insights into and perspectives on the foundation of early horror movies and how many similarities carry over into movies half a century and more later." Michael W. Phillips, Jr. concurs, calling the film "a marked improvement on the original film still a bit of a snooze, relying too much on forced comedy and not enough on suspense or fright." Phillips again praises Holden's performance and also Pichel's portrayal of Sandor, but finds the rest of the cast weak.

Horror author Anne Rice has named Dracula's Daughter as a direct inspiration for her own homoerotic vampire fiction. She named a bar in her novel Queen of the Damned "Dracula's Daughter" in honor of the film. Author Ramsey Campbell, under the pseudonym "Carl Dreadstone", wrote a novelization of the film also entitled Dracula's Daughter that was published in 1977. A juvenile fiction version, written by Carl R. Green, William R. Sanford and Howard Schroeder, was published in 1985. Some observers have suggested that the film served as an inspiration for Sunset Blvd., noting similarities between the outlines of each film. Michael Almereyda's 1994 film Nadja has been described as an "unofficial remake" of Dracula's Daughter.