Review – Return of the Vampire

Bela Lugosi stars in this dreadful Dracula knock-off. The film-makers assume (fairly, I suppose) that we’re all familiar with the vampire sub-genre conventions, so most of the plot is a rapid march-through on par with Danny Kaye’s knighthood ceremony in The Court Jester. Indeed, the innovations here are few. The villain’s sidekick is a werewolf (and a terrier-looking creature at that). The drama takes place during the Blitz, with the vampire unearthed by an air raid and de-staked by a pair of comic relief civil defense workers. And that of course raises a question about whether folks had bigger evils than a bloodsucker and his hairy companion to worry about back in 1944. See if desperate