A mustachioed Lon Chaney Jr. takes over the role of Dracula in Son of Dracula, and while people insist he sounds like a foreigner he doesn’t sound like the Dracula we’ve been introduced to before, but perhaps he’s just another incarnation of the same creature.

The Count, under the assumed name of Alucard (come on!) travels to America at the request of Katherine (Louise Allbritton). She’s a beautiful if a little macabre. In fact, in today’s age, she’d probably be a Goth Girl.

She is obsessed with the idea of eternal life, and believes that Alucard aka Dracula may be the key. But she has a plan, she wants Dracula to turn her, and then have her beloved Frank (Robert Paige) kill Dracula, she turns him, and they can spend eternity together.

What are the odds that things are going to go awry pretty quickly for all involved?

While Doctor Harry Brewster (Frank Craven) and Professor Lazlo (J. Edward Bromberg) figure out what is going on… vampires!… no one else in town believes them, but the sheriff is willing to help out these professionals.

When Frank initially confronts the vampire, he inadvertently kills Katherine, but when everyone investigates she’s fine, Dracula’s turned her. So the locals begin to worry Frank is just going insane because she married Alucard instead of him.

Katherine insists that she kill Dracula, but Dracula has his own plans, and there’s going to be a dangerous confrontation for all parties before the story’s end.

This one feels like it’s a little on the cheap side, there aren’t a lot of visual effects, nary a fang in sight, though I do like the smoke effects at work here. The bat is a little goofy, but works in the context of the story.

I like Chaney. I like Chaney a lot, but I don’t think he’s really cut out for the role of Dracula, especially coming on the tails of Lugosi’s iconic turn. He doesn’t have the same menace, and I hate to say it, the charm that Lugosi exuded. Chaney is a wonderful actor, but his wolfman is much better than his vampire.

I’ll give the story credit, it wanted to tell a full story, and it’s a fairly decent one. And it isn’t only sixty minutes long like some of the other Universal Monster entries. This one is just short of an hour and a half.

Next time it’s Frankenstein Meets The Wolf-Man