"Dracula's Daughter"/"Son of Dracula" Double-Feature DVD

My cousin Ralph came over today. We had a good time chatting about all kinds of things.

We also headed to El Pollo Loco for a late lunch and, following that, we headed to CD Trader to rummage around.

The only thing I picked up at CD Trader was a DVD of two of Universal Pictures's Dracula movies. It was two movies in one disc.

I watched both of them tonight. The annoying thing about the disc is that there's no easy way to switch from one movie to the other without shutting down the DVD player first. Going to the "main" menu was impossible. Oh, well. It only cost me $6.99.

The movies:

The first was Dracula's Daughter (1936). The movie picks up where the 1931 Dracula left off. Bela Lugosi, I have read, was signed to do the movie in a prologue, but that was nixed. He was available (and allegedly paid) to play his staked corpse, but Universal chose to use a dummy (that didn't look much like Lugosi) instead.

The Google synopsis:

Although Count Dracula was destroyed by Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), who is now being tried for his murder, Dracula's daughter, the Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), is still alive -- and her father's death has brought her no closer to eradicating her vampiric thirst for blood. When attempts to free herself of the disease fail, she turns to psychiatrist Dr. Garth (Otto Kruger) for assistance, but soon finds herself struggling with the desire to make him one of the undead as well.

The second was Son of Dracula (1943). The movie involves the son of Dracula (named "Count Alucard") played by Lon Chaney, Jr. Chaney was miscast as a Hungarian nobleman, but the movie is entertaining anyway. The plot of the movie involves a woman (Louise Allbritton) seeking immortality for herself and her childhood sweetheart (Robert Paige) by tricking Dracula into making her a vampire. Allbritton is quite alluring in this movie. Too bad her plan didn't quite go the way she planned it. I think there's a goof, though. In standard vampire lore, isn't someone who is bitten by a vampire is generally powerless to turn against the vampire? By the way, "Alucard" is Dracula spelled backwards.

The Google synopsis:

Count Alucard (Lon Chaney) comes out of a lake in his coffin and makes a Southern belle (Louise Allbritton) his bride.

One can always count (no pun intended) on Universal horrors to make for an entertaining evening!