Daughter of Dracula (1972)

Jesus Franco found himself making a number of Dracula pictures in the early seventies, kicking off with 1970's Count Dracula, which starred Christopher Lee and was written and produced by Harry Allan Towers.  While this film was promoted as being a more faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel (it wasn't), Franco's next stab at the subject was the wild and wonderful Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972), which constituted his take on one of the Universal 'monster rallies' of the forties.  He quickly followed it up with Daughter of Dracula (1972) which, although not a sequel, features a lot of the same cast, (most had also appeared in his The Erotic Experiences of Frankenstein (1972)), most notably Franco favourite Howard Vernon, who repeats his turn as Dracula.  It is also most definitely not a remake of Universal's Dracula's Daughter (1936), but does touch on some of the same themes as that film.  Most notably, it makes explicit the lesbian sub-text of the earlier film.  Daughter of Dracula is a decidedly odd film, even by Franco standards, with the director seemingly unable to decide whether he's making a horror movie, a giallo, a murder mystery or a piece of erotica.  Consequently, the film lurches between all of these genres, never settling on one and thereby depriving the film of any clear sense of identity.  One moment we're in the crypt with lids flying off of coffins, the next we're in the middle of a murder investigation, before diverting into some girl-on-girl action.  Mysterious murder suspects wander around in wide brimmed hats carrying ornate walking sticks before molesting various women, including a nightclub dancer, whose routine is rather arbitrarily crow barred into the film before she expires.

Despite a hugely confusing plot and an uncertain pace, Daughter of Dracula is a very stylishly shot by Franco on some very beautiful Portuguese locations and, in places, is quite atmospheric, with the director largely refraining from his usual use of the zoom lens. (Although he can't resist zooming into a close up of one his leading ladies' pubic hair toward the end).  Also, being a seventies Franco film, it is full of very attractive ladies taking their clothes off, in this case Britt Nicholls in the title role and Anne Libert as her cousin, with whom she engages in various sexual antics after discovering that she is the daughter of Dracula.  This being a Franco film it is, of course, full of bizarre moments, like the way in which the police detective investigating the series of murders in the coastal town where much of the action takes place (plated by Alberto Dalbes, another Franco favourite), seems to conduct all of his interrogations in the lounge bar of the local hotel, with the regular patrons all in situ and chiming in with their observations.  Franco himself appears in the film, playing a larger role than usual, as the Karlstein family secretary, Cyril, who is also some kind of expert on the occult and wanders around mumbling about supernatural evil being at large.  With so many tangled sub-plots, Daughter of Dracula often feels like several different films edited together and it seems clear that Franco has no idea of how to end it in a way that draws all of these plot threads together in a satisfactory manner.  Instead, it rolls to a rather muted ending with Dracula - who really hasn't had much to do, other than lie in his coffin, for most of the film - getting staked (through the head, rather than the heart, for some reason) by Luis Balboo (another Franco veteran).  Overall, Daughter of Dracula is, for all its faults, quite an enjoyable slice of Franco from one of his most prolific periods, with plenty of visual style and -in spite of a low budget - good production values.