The Return of the Vampire | Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort

The Return of the Vampire | Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort | Superb

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The Return of the ...

	The Return of the Vampire Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort Sony Pictures, 2002 average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Bela Lugosi stars as a vampire stalking the streets of World War II London when German bombing releases vampire Armand Tesla (Lugosi) from his grave. Aided by a werewolf named Andreas (Matt Willis) and opposed by Lady Jane (Frieda Inescort) who operates an asylum Tesla goes in search of young ladies to supply him with blood.System Requirements:Running Time: 69 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: NR UPC: 043396078727

Universal horror war tale

The reason I bought this DVD of the movie is because I wanted closed-caption benefits in it unlike the VHS one I own which doesn't have any, and I'm a deaf person who depends on capitioned dialogue & backtrack explanations. I recommend this one as a good viewing of both World Wars in the vampire saga as well as a bnous to hearing-impaired people!

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Superb

This movie is great. It has Bela Lugosi in it so what more can one say. However, in addition to Bela Lugosi, the transfer to dvd is just really, really fine. The picture is just incredible as is the sound. The soundtrack is real too and goes very well with the music. It was composed by the classical composer, Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
What I found most fascinating in the movie was the role of the troubled werewolf and his relationship with those around him. The movie is in large part about the werewolf. There are some great moments when Tesla the Vampire treats the werewolf in a really bad way. Lugosi is so vicious that it is quite amusing to watch because he is just so evil.
After the original Dracula and White Zombie this is my favorite Lugosi film.

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Bela is the fella'

I can't tell you how many times I have watched this movie, but never get tired of it. It is one of the better remakes / spinoffs of the original Dracula ( 1931 ) film. For old movie buffs or people who like good old fashioned entertainment this one is a winner. Great storyline, cast of characters, and Nina Foch is a beautiful added attraction as Drac's love
"interest". Can't go wrong on a 'stay at home' friday night with one. It's even safe for the kiddies to view. Get it !!!!

"Yes, alive, with the blood of his victims."

After appearing in a slew of poverty row features throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s there's slight sense of renewal in seeing Bela Lugosi donning the role of a vampire in the film Return of the Vampire (1944). Oh sure, his character here isn't the same as the one he most famously portrayed in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), but it might as well be...directed by Lew Landers (The Raven, Condemned Women), based on an idea from Kurt Neumann (Kronos, The Fly), the film stars, as I've mentioned, Bela Lugosi (Dracula, White Zombie). Also appearing is Frieda Inescort (The Alligator People), Nina Foch (Cry of the Werewolf), Roland Varno (Women in Bondage), Matt Willis (The Mark of the Whistler), Gilbert Emery (The House of the Seven Gables), and Miles Mander (Tower of London, The House of the Seven Gables), probably best remembered as his role of Cardinal Richelieu from the classic film The Three Musketeers (1939).

As the film begins we learn the year is 1918, and we're in the outskirts of London. Seems a woman, now a patient of a sanitarium run by a woman named Lady Jane Ainsley (Inescort), is suffering from a strange case of anemia, enough so to warrant Lady Jane to call in a colleague named Dr. Walter Saunders (Emery). After reviewing the works of a Romanian scientist named Armand Tesla, an authority on vampires, who's been dead for the past two hundred years, Saunders believes the woman's condition is tied to the supernatural. After Saunder's granddaughter Nicki is attacked, he and Lady Jane seek out the creature and stake it up good. Flash forward about twenty five years and we learn Lady Jane's son John Varno is engaged to Nicki (Foch). As the Jerries (i.e. the Germans) are aerial blitz bombing England (WWII was in full swing by this point), the vampire's grave is unearthed, and later a couple of comic relief types charged with graveyard detail cleanup remove the spike, which, as you can guess, brings the vampire back to life. Oh, by the way, the vampire is actually Armand Tesla (Lugosi) himself. Anyway, with his wolf man minion Andreas (Willis) in tow, Armand poses as a scientist named Hugo Bruckner, a recent escapee of a German concentration camp, to get close to Lady Jane and her family in order to exact his revenge for what went down so long ago, his dastardly scheme involving turning Nicki into pawn to do his bidding (man, vampires sure are a vindictive lot). Lady Jane soon realizes what's going on and enlists the aid of a skeptical Scotland Yard commissioner named Sir Frederick Fleet (Manders) to help her free her family of the curse of Tesla and put an end to the menace once and for all...

I think this film has a number of things going for it, the main being the presence of Bela Lugosi in the role of the vampire. Lugosi, who was in his early sixties at the time (I believe), still possessed a good deal of what he displayed some thirteen years prior in his landmark role of Dracula (charm, allure, magnetism, call it what you will). That's not to say this film is on par with Dracula, because it's not, but it is still a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy old timey monster movies (you know I do). I think the thing that hurts this film the most is the writing. It's not that it's bad, but it just feels so derivative of what came before. A number of aspects to sort of make up for this, including the solid performances, the decent direction, the atmospheric settings, and the overall strong production values (the graveyard bits were especially ookie). The wolf man bit tended to draw a few chuckles from myself as the character spent an inordinate amount of time slinking about, carrying, for reasons not entirely clear, Tesla's laundry bundled up in a paper parcel. I guess when you've spent the last twenty odd years in the ground, your clothes tend to get a bit rank, so it's advisable to always keep a clean outfit on hand. It's unclear why Tesla maintained a lackey in the form of a wolf man, other than it allowed for the inclusion of two monster type creatures rather than one. The wolf man character didn't seem to follow the established structure presented in past films in that his transformation here seemed voluntary, an aspect he could almost control, and not something dependant on the lunar cycles. I was willing to go along with this, but I was slightly annoyed by the fact he was relegated strictly as a lackey, present only to do the bidding of his vampire master. In my mind frame, a wolf man is no one's subordinate, except maybe for his lunar mistress. In wolf form Andreas really didn't seem all that menacing, but more like an oversized yappy dog in search of a treat. Another element I found a little hard to swallow was how quickly the scientific types were willing to buy off on the supernatural as being the cause for a strange, unexplained ailment. I suppose given the fact the film only runs about an hour and ten minutes there wasn't time allowed for them to deal with putting aside their secular leanings in order to accept the mythical, but still they, being Dr. Saunders and Lady Jane, seemed awfully easy to convince, based on so little, at least initially (then again, it is just a movie, so perhaps I shouldn't read so much into it). Taken for what it is, a middling monster movie loaded with atmosphere, the film is a lot of fun, and worth seeing if only to show Lugosi still had it, it being the ability to bring forth, many years after the fact, from a role he literally defined.

The picture on this Columbia/Tri-Star DVD release presented in fullscreen (1.33:1), looks relatively clean and clear, but does display some occasional white specking. The latter didn't bother me much as it didn't seem present throughout, and picture comes off as well as most any have probably ever seen it, bar those who may have been present for the original theatrical release. One noteworthy aspect is the inclusion of a bit of text prior to the opening credits, something apparently missing on previous VHS and Laserdisc releases. As far as the mono audio, it comes across well. There's not much in the way of extras except for subtitles in English, French, Spanish, and Japanese, along with a couple of trailers for the films Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958). The release seems a bit pricey for so seemingly little, but if you're a fan of Lugosi or old timey monsters, then you probably won't mind coughing up the dough to add this to your collection.

Cookieman108

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Return of the Vampire

I have loved this movie for years. With the exception of Dracula, this is one of Bella's best. It has a vampire, a werewolf, and a war. A British lady scientist really gives it to Bella.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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