MovieChat Forums > Dracula's Daughter (1936) Discussion > How could Dracula have a daughter?

How could Dracula have a daughter?

posted 20 years ago by GroovyDoom
32 replies | jump to latest

This was never really explained in the movie, but at one point Countess "Zaleska" reminisces with Sandor about remembering her mother singing to her in her cradle and the "fluttering of wings", while Sandor reminds her it was the wings of bats, etc. So...I guess she was a vampire baby? This brings up all sorts of silly scenarios like, do vampires reproduce sexually? If a baby is born a vampire at what point do they "grow up" and stop aging? And what about the three "wives" that Dracula has in the first film, was Gloria Holden supposedly lurking around the castle too?

I like the movie but this idea seems a little too far-fetched to me.

[–] brucepantages-1 20 years ago

Your question is one of many that this movie conjures up. In order to search for her "roots" you would need to venture into the areas of sex and sexuality that were impossible to even approach by 1936. The intrusive and officious Joseph Breen went so far as to "reconstitute" the Production Code when he read some of the lurid ideas the studio originally had for this film...including scenes of Countess Zaleska viciously torturing her female victims. Breen blanched at such suggestions of "perverted sexual desire." Had he gotten his way, the Draculas would have been little more than a somewhat Goth version of "Leave it to Beaver," complete with a lamp table between their "twin coffins." Hollywood photographer, Mark Vieira, goes into much more detail in his excellent book, "Hollywood Horror, from Gothic to Cosmic" complete with pictures and text. However, to answer your question regarding how vampires reproduce, don't you think they would do it much the same way as everyone else - perhaps with a just little more fervor? I mean, "immaculate conception" seems almost out of the question here. With those three wives to support, I doubt the Count would have stood for that for one second.

[–] fucasimoni 19 years ago

There seems to be a contradiction about when she became a vampire. The conversation with Sandor shows she was a vampire (or at least vampirish) as a girl. But then, in the very last scene, someone comments about how beautiful she is and Van Helsing says that's because she died when she was beautiful "one hundred years ago."

[–] GroovyDoom 19 years ago

This is true! I never made that connection. I love the movie, but the idea makes me giggle a little bit, especially the part about bat wings fluttering over her cradle or something like that.

[–] Doctor_Mabuse 19 years ago

The simplest explanation is that Count Dracula sired children by his Countess, or one of his concubines, before he died and became a vampire. Dracula is so iconic as the King Vampire that it's easy to forget that he was once human.

John Carradine, who played the role onscreen in House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (among other films) used to close stage performances of Dracula with a little curtain speech:

"If I'm alive, what am I doing here? And if I'm dead, why do I have to wee-wee?"

If Count Dracula had ever been able to wee-wee, it seems a safe assumption that he possessed, at least in life, the proper biological equipment with which to do so and therefore most likely a functioning reproductive system as well. This would account for Countess Marya Zaleska, Count Alucard (Son of Dracula, 1943) and perhaps such illigitimate offspring as Count Yorga.

Doctor_Mabuse

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] MystMoonstruck 12 years ago

That's from "Nocturna" (1979)!

Also from "Nocturna"...
"I don't even have my own fangs anymore. But in the old days, in my time of youth, I had magnificent fangs. All the ladies would say I was hung like a walrus!"

*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***

[–] floating_jetsam 17 years ago

If she died 100 years ago (as an adult), and Dracula had died 500 years ago, then Dracula merely 'created' her vampire state. He is her 'creator' as a vampire, and thus her father (figure).

She is not the actual offspring of Dracula, but her being a vampire is a product of him.

[–] TorontoJediMaster 16 years ago

I think there are one of two possible explanations.

One, is that she was a biological daughter of Dracula, from before he became a vampire. After he was turned into one, he turned his daughter into one as well.

Two, she was perhaps a more distant descendant of Dracula who was born around the beginning of the 19th century. As an adult, her vampirized ancestor, Dracula, turned her into a vampire herself. That would explain Van Helsing's line about her dying a hundred years before.

[–] ffordegroupie 18 years ago

perhaps he stole a baby and raised her with his brides (one of them being her "mother"), then made her a vamp? or mebbe he had a woman enslaved like he did renfield and then vampirized her baby?

[–] eugene1001us 17 years ago

The film was only loosly based on Stoker's short story "Dracula's Guest" which featured a "Countess Dolingen" who may (may not) have been related to Dracula.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Zayode 15 years ago

Vampires can't have kids. They're DEAD! They don't 'wee-wee' either, John Carradine was just being funny. The only way this scenario makes sense is if Dracula had a family before he became a vampire. In vampire legends the vampire always attacks his loved one's first. In Bram Stoker's book it never mentions Dracula having children but Dracula does bring several coffins filled with his native dirt to England with plans to bring all of his vampire 'friends' soon after so it's possible some of them were his immediate family. But no one should worry so much about how plausible these vampire films are, they are VAMPIRE films after all...

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] wwkentucky 15 years ago

<< How could Dracula have a daughter? >>

Well, Timmy, when a daddy vampire and a mommy vampire love each other very much.....

[–] joystar5879 13 years ago

Perhaps she was the daughter of a woman that Dracula attacked. Someone like Mina...who survived. Dracula was destroyed, but the taint remained... dormant, and passed down through an unknowing mother and born in the normal way.

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