20 Most Badass Female Horror Characters Ever

Yes, Dracula has a daughter. This 1936 sequel to Dracula follows Countess Marya Zaleska, another sympathetic villain for whom her vampirism is a curse. She wants nothing more than to be human, hoping burning Dracula's body will free her. It doesn't work, though, and so she must reluctantly continue her quest for blood.

The character is just as enigmatic and haunting as Bela Lugosi's Dracula, and Gloria Holden's performance is truly underrated. What's also really interesting about Dracula's Daughter is that Countess Zaleska is one of the very early lesbian characters in cinema. There's a scene where she seduces Lili where it's especially blatant, and in fact the Production Code Administration said this scene must not imply "perverse sexual desire on the part of Marya." What a different time this was.

Still, it's pretty obvious in the final cut of the film, and Universal even played this aspect up in some of the marketing with the tagline, "Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!" Just the willingness to portray a gay character in a horror film at a time when Hollywood was incredibly strict with that sort of thing makes this character really important and historic. 

And aside from that, she's also just a really compelling and interesting person, somehow making this potentially unnecessary sequel to Dracula work quite well.