A descendant of Dracula(Lon Chaney Jr), using the fake title Count Alucard, is in league with the daughter of a rich plantation owner in a Louisiana swampland called Dark Oats. The daughter is Katherine "Kay" Caldwell(Louise Allbritton, in a creepy performance, eerily photographed throughout the film..she plays Kay as a manipulative sneak, cunning and dangerous)who has a fear of death and is deeply involved spiritually with the occult..she is often referred to, when others are conversing about her, as morbid. Kay's life long love(..and to whom she has been engaged for some time before traveling to Budapest where she actually met Alucard)is Frank Stanley(Robert Paige)and he has to stand uncomfortably idle as his woman marries Alucard trying to figure out what is going on. Kay has concocted a scheme behind Alucard's back..she's merely using him as a tool to gain eternal life as an immortal and will plan to persuade Stanley to murder the Count so that they can live together forever. However, Kay has an adversary in Doctor Brewster(Frank Craven), a friend of the family who knows something is not kosher with the circumstances involving Alucard and Kay. Alucard had bitten Kay's father and upon his death, the plantation was signed over to her exclusively with the other daughter Claire(Universal mainstay Evelyn Ankers, lovely as always)getting the money. When Frank tries to kill, with a pistol, Alucard for what he's supposedly done to Kay, he is shaken when the bullets go completely through the Count hitting Kay. Count nearly kills him before Stanley hits for paydirt luckily making it to Brewster's home. This will set in motion Brewster's calling on help from Transylvania's own Professor Lazlo(J Edward Bromberg)who understands the vampire ways for his own homeland has become a desolate wasteland because of the bloodsucking & death. Will Kay succeed in not only having Alucard killed, but Stanley being her undead lover? <br /><br />Most people who dislike this film hone in on Lon Chaney Jr., but in the film 80 minute running time, he might be in it for fifteen minutes tops. Actually, despite his name carrying the title, it's actually Kay who is the villain of the picture. She stirs the pot and I'm pretty sure was an indirect influence in the death of her own father just because she feared the idea of death. I think this is a more interesting approach and fairly original. Dracula is merely a used tool and the woman, who is normally the innocent victim being stalked, is the one actually pulling the evil strings. I love the idea of having an Universal vampire film set in the Louisiana swampland..one scene has Dracula's coffin emerging from the swamp water! Rarely seen in many other Universal Dracula films, the two vampires of this picture often appear from a vaporous cloud. Atmospheric and moody photography..the script is quite talky so this might put off many.