I Watch Films: The Return of The Vampire

 

The Return Of The Vampire

In October 1918 (the film is explicit about the date) Professor Saunders and Lady Ainsley tangle with Armand Tesla (Bela Lugosi), a vampire. They get the better of him, staking him through the heart and freeing his werewolf servant Andréas, but not before he sucks blood from Saunders’s granddaughter.

23 years later (the film gives the amount of time passed) Professor Saunders dies and his manuscript of what occurred has gone to Scotland Yard. There the commissioner is concerned that this is a confession of murder. They go to the graveyard but enemy action (it's 1941, WW2 and the blitz are going on in London) has got there ahead of them; Tesla’s grave has blown up, ending the case. However what has actually happened is two comedy gravediggers discovered Tesla, and thinking the stake through his heart* is shrapnel, have pulled it out.

Tesla returns, as promised in the title. Lady Ainsley has taken on Andréas as an assistant. She is also involved in smuggling scientists out of occupied Europe. Tesla takes control of Andréas, re-werewolfing him, and takes the place of one of those scientists, Dr Hugo Bruckner. As Bruckner he attends a party celebrating the engagement of Nikki, Saunders’ granddaughter (Nina Foch who briefly appears in a WAAF uniform but spends more running time in a long flowing nighty) and John, Ainsley’s son (a composer and conductor, the program for his new show, and the film, are very keen to know he served honourably in the RAF until wounded).

After this, cat-and-mouse vampire hunting, with the vampire of course already within the household. There are bombing raids and the plot turns on the war, but life goes on as normal too. The police commissioner seems very interested in solving this one, old murder, when, for example, organising police for air raid precautions and relief, or searching for spies and saboteurs might be thought to be a priority. (The actor, Miles Mander, does bear a passing resemblance to the real Met Police Commissioner of the time, Sir Phillip Game).

Watch This: Bela Lugosi camps it up and there’s a bit of real menace and power in the confrontation scenes, also two comic gravediggers
Don’t Watch This: The appeal to generic goodness falls a little flat now, though perhaps it was better received in 1943

 

* It’s a big metal nail