In January 1934 screenwriter John L. Balderston adapted
Bram Stoker’s 1914 short story ‘Dracula’s Guest’ into an outline for producer David
O. Selznick as an intended sequel to Universal’s DRACULA
(1931). Balderston’s original storyline was designed, as he himself said, to
capitalise on the ‘great box office value of torture and cruelty’: Dracula's Daughter was written by Balderston as a S/M dominatrix(complete with whips and chains)who draws the blood of virile young men.
Balderston’s vision of the female vampire was not to be realised in the
film that eventually emerged two and a half years later. In its development
from script to screen, DRACULA’S DAUGHTER would fall to tighter restrictions
placed on screen content by the industry’s regulating body, the Production Code
Administration (the ‘Hays Code’) under Joseph Breen, and to increasing opposition
to the horror film by state and overseas censors. Although the version of
DRACULA’S DAUGHTER that Universal produced in 1936 is now often praised by
keen-eyed critics for its risqué undercurrent of lesbianism, its graphic
content in terms of sex and violence is very much tamer than Universal had
originally planned.
My article in the latest THE DARK SIDE (out August 2nd)reveals the extent to which the PCA and BBFC managed to defang DRACULA’S DAUGHTER!
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