In 1918, Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort) assists in the staking of the vampire, Armand Tesla (Bela Lugosi), which frees his werewolf slave, Andreas (Matt Willis). Twenty-three years later, a German bomb opens Tesla’s grave and the stake is removed, returning him to un-life. He quickly puts Andreas under his thrall, and sets out to revenge himself on Ainsley by attacking her son and his fiancée.
Here is Bela Lugosi as a vampire, that is for all practical purposes, Dracula. Sounds like another Universal classic. But it isn’t. This was Columbia Pictures’ attempt at playing in Universal’s yard, and while it is far weaker than Dracula or The Wolf Man, Universal itself wasn’t putting out anything better in 1944.
That Columbia wasn’t quite up to the task is apparent in the first frames as it’s easy to see we’re looking at a model, not an actual house. The entire project has a cheap, stage-bound look about it. Excess fog is used to cover the corners of the set, with little success.
The plot, what little of it there is, consists of Tesla, popping up far too seldomly, carrying out his rather timid revenge on the family of those who staked him twenty-three years earlier. At the same time, Lady Jane, one of the “stakers,” repeatedly tells Scotland Yard about a vampire while a stuffy Scotland Yard detective, quite rightly, says “pish-posh” to that. The story feels so slight that you may find yourself looking for the prequel or sequel where events unfold and characters are developed.
But this is still Lugosi as a vampire, and that’s a sight to see. At sixty-two, Lugosi’s a bit old for the part, though he looks better than you might imagine. He controls any scene he’s in, and his voice and eyes are as remarkable as ever.
Return of the Vampire (not a sequel by the way—the vampire is returning after being staked at the beginning of the film) brought monster films into the “modern” era, acknowledging WWII and the threat of German attack (a war strangely lacking from the later Universal releases set in the early ’40s). More revolutionary, it presented a strong, intelligent female, not as the victim, but as the primary foe of the vampire.
The best and worst of the film is wrapped up in the character of Andreas. Matt Willis believably portrays the pain of an enslaved man, unable to control his own mind. He also is one of the better evil servants of the classic era. But it is hard to get past his makeup, that makes him look not like a werewolf, but some kind of werehound or weremutt. He’s expressing his anguish, and all I want to do is toss him a Scooby Snack.
If you’re not a fan of classic monster movies, skip Return of the Vampire. But for those of us who think of Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi first when we hear the word “horror,” here is a pleasant reminder of a type of film no longer made.