Villain(s)  Vampire

Actor(s):  Lon Chaney Jr., Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige, Evelyn Ankers

Brief Description  Son of Dracula (1943) is a classic American horror film directed by Robert Siodmak, written by his brother Curt Siodmak, and starring Lon Chaney Jr. as Count Alucard. It is the third installment in Universal Pictures' Dracula trilogy, following Dracula (1931) and Dracula's Daughter (1936). Blending Southern Gothic atmosphere with film noir aesthetics, the movie relocates the famous vampire from Europe to a plantation in the Deep South of the United States. Despite the title, the plot strongly implies that Count Alucard (which is "Dracula" spelled backward) is actually the original Count Dracula himself seeking a new lineage. The film takes place at "Dark Oaks," a grand plantation in the American South owned by the wealthy Colonel Caldwell. His daughter, Katherine "Kay" Caldwell, is heavily obsessed with occultism, death, and achieving immortality. During a trip to Hungary, Katherine encounters the mysterious Count Alucard and invites him to visit her family estate.

Plot:
The Arrival: Alucard arrives in the U.S., but mysterious events immediately take root. Kay's gypsy fortune teller, Queen Zimba, warns her of a pending doom before she is mysteriously found dead.

The Murders and Marriage: Shortly after, Alucard kills Colonel Caldwell. Kay inherits the massive estate and abruptly dumps her long-time boyfriend, Frank Stanley, to marry the Count in a secret nighttime ceremony.

The Twist: Frank confronts the newlyweds and shoots Alucard in a fit of rage. The bullets pass harmlessly through the vampire and strike Kay instead, seemingly killing her. Horrified, Frank flees and confesses to the local physician, Dr. Harry Brewster. When Brewster visits Dark Oaks, he finds Kay completely fine and conscious, but Frank is locked up by the police anyway.

The Master Plan: Kay visits Frank in his jail cell in the form of a bat. She reveals that she never truly loved Alucard; she married him solely to get bitten, gain eternal life, and then kill him. She wants Frank to destroy Alucard so that Frank and Kay can spend eternity together as immortals.

The Climax: Frank escapes custody and tracks Alucard's coffin down to an old drainage pipe. He sets the coffin on fire, leaving Alucard exposed. As the sun rises, the vampire crawls out but is destroyed by the daylight. Frank then returns to the plantation to find Kay's sleeping body. Knowing she is cursed, he chooses to burn her coffin as well, releasing her soul and ending the vampire nightmare.

First On-Screen Bat Transformation: Son of Dracula holds a historic place in cinema as the very first movie to show a vampire physically transforming into a bat on screen using animated optical effects. The movie popularized the visual effect of a vampire transforming into a plume of mist or smoke to drift through windows and across landscapes.