The Return of the Vampire
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 69 m, 1944
Directed by Lew Landers. Stars Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort, Nina Foch, et al.

The Return of the Vampire is the third picture to feature Bela Lugosi as a debonair nosferatu (unless you, uh, count his winking cameo in Paramount’s eighth edition of Hollywood on Parade), but despite what some may infer from the title, this is not a sequel to either Dracula or Mark of the Vampire. Lugosi plays Armand Tesla, who is virtually interchangeable with Dracula (a part he wouldn’t be able to openly reprise until Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein; the folks at Universal weren’t too keen on loaning out their monsters, which were enormous cash cows). The name of this almost passable chiller-diller may have something to do with Tesla’s rise from the grave after two decades or better of imposed slumber (a rather on-the-nose interpretation, to be sure), but it’s more likely trumpeting the actor’s return to the sort of role that earned him his popularity with horror buffs. Produced by Columbia Pictures, The Return of the Vampire isn’t a lavish affair like Universal’s Dracula; it’s a B-movie, but it has a much shinier veneer than what we’re used to seeing in those junky quickies Lugosi made with Monogram or PRC.

Tesla, a Romanian scientist turned vampire, has been living the life of Riley in an area of London that’s made up of people with unusually flavorsome blood. (At least I think that’s why he lives there.) In what may be interpreted by the more with-it viewers as an act of vampiric child molestation, Tesla slips into the bedroom of a prepubescent blonde girl, Nicki, and drains her of her purity. This, of course, causes her grandfather, Dr. Walter Saunders (Gilbert Emery), to see red: He and his assistant, Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort), track Tesla down to Priory Cemetery and hammer a spike into his heart. Destroying Tesla somehow releases the curse on his man-wolf helper, Andreas (Matt Willis), who is then hired by Lady Jane to work with her at the local sanitarium. Twenty-five years later, Saunders goes off to meet his maker, leaving behind a manuscript that gives all the particulars on how he and Lady Jane did Tesla in. The manuscript finds its way into the hands of Scotland Yard’s chief commissioner, Sir Frederick Fleet (Miles Mander), who considers charging Lady Jane with being an accessory to murder. (“My dear lady, you simply can’t go around the country driving things through people’s hearts,” he tells her.) But Lady Jane is excused from being the guest of honor at a necktie party when the Nazis bomb the boneyard into the middle of next week, liberating Tesla from his crypt. With the help of his old fuzzy-faced, fang-toothed partner, Tesla forges a new identity: Dr. Hugo Bruckner. But when Lady Jane notices a weird-looking hickey on the now thirtysomething Nicki’s neck, she knows Tesla’s back in town.

Shot in just under a month for two or three bucks, The Return of the Vampire isn’t anywhere near as artful as a Universal spook show, but it doesn’t need to be. Actually, it shouldn’t be. This is the stuff of a penny dreadful, and director Lew Landers isn’t trying to do anything other than offer audiences a trashy good time. Lord knows he has all the right clichés in place, like that mist that forever blankets the grounds of Priory Cemetery. (I think it’s safe to say that Landers and company get a bit carried away with their little smoke machine: When Tesla stops by Nicki’s pad for a late night snack, even the kitchen fills up with fog.) But the editing isn’t as fluid as this photoplay deserves; some scenes aren’t permitted to build—they appear to have been pinched off midstream to help the film reach a more lucrative running time. Even more jarring is the self-reflexive gag that the whole show concludes on: Sir Freddy turns to the camera and asks us if we believe in “all this vampire business.” The breaking of the fourth wall here (which also happened in the last frames of The Amazing Transparent Man and The Ape Man) comes off as patronizing—it’s as if we’re impressionable children who need to be reminded that it’s all just a movie. (The filmmakers needn’t flatter themselves; this thing ain’t that scary.) I am so very grateful that this kind of gimmick—the warning speech before Frankenstein or the paddling of Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed’s curtain call are two of the more shameful examples—went the way of the Hays Code. 

September 15, 2009 

© Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.