In a town off the coast of Spain, women are being murdered and their bloodless bodies left on the beach. A journalist named Charlie (Fernando Bilbao) investigates and discovers that the locals are convinced the killings are the work of a supernatural entity. Meanwhile, the aristocratic Karlstein family gathers at a chapel where the dying Countess Karlstein gives her daughter, Louisa (Britt Nichols), the key to the basement. There, Louisa discovers not only Count Dracula (Howard Vernon) but also her vampirized cousin and lover, Karine (Anne Libert).
The Karlstein family is under a vampire curse. Or maybe they’re not. It’s not always easy to follow this film’s logic. The Countess’s personal secretary (played by the film’s director, Jess Franco) is convinced a curse is at work, but Count Karlstein (Daniel White) appears to be not a vampire but simply a typical self-indulgent aristocrat. (Indeed, it’s sometimes hard to figure out how exactly Dracula ended up in the basement to begin with.) Count Karlstein is also a leading suspect in the murders. He has an alibi for at least one of them, but revealing it would mean admitting he’s been having an affair with Ana (Yelena Samarina), the secretary’s wife…
Yes, this is indeed a Jess Franco film. Even if you didn’t already know, the long, languid (and occasionally out-of-focus) shots of the Spanish beach would give it away. This was one of the eight films Franco shot in 1972, and the storyline has that incomplete feeling that often comes from a rushed production. Franco clearly had a few elements he either wanted or was contractually obligated to include: vampires, lesbians, and decadent aristocrats. A coherent plot doesn’t appear to have been a major concern. Daughter of Dracula has an improvised feel, as if Franco was making the story up as he went along. I suspect that’s exactly what he was doing.
And yet, as was often the case with Franco’s work (especially in the early ’70s), the loose structure and nonsensical plot actually work to the film’s advantage. There’s a dream-like quality to the action, one in which everyone seems to be moving either too slowly or too quickly. The atmosphere of ennui is inescapable. The Karlsteins are an aristocratic family trapped in an inescapable state of decay, and one could argue they’re meant as a stand-in for Old Europe, already being challenged by the ’70s counterculture. That decay is mirrored in Howard Vernon’s world-weary Dracula. Both the Karlsteins and Dracula are creatures from a different age who have found themselves in a rapidly changing Europe. When this film was made, Spain was still ruled by General Francisco Franco, but even he seemed to understand that his time was coming to an end.
Daughter of Dracula is ultimately a lesser Franco film. The version I saw ran a little over 70 minutes and still felt a bit too slow for its own good. It never reaches the decadent heights of Female Vampire or A Virgin Among the Living Dead. That said, Howard Vernon is always entertaining, and the film definitely sprang from the mind of Jess Franco. For better or worse, there was no other filmmaker like him.
