Review of The Return of Dracula (1958) by Van R — 12 Jun 2010

No, "Hell Canyon Outlaws" director Paul Landres' "The Return of Dracula" has nothing to do with either the Universal Pictures franchise or the Hammer Film series. Instead, United Artists distributed this Gramercy Pictures theatrical release, and "The Return of Dracula" qualifies as an imaginative but minor chiller on a low budget. Landres and scenarist Pat Fielder, who collaborated earlier on the lackluster movie "The Vampire," have taken liberties with the formula Bram Stoker story while channeling the Alfred Hitchcock serial killer thriller "Shadow of a Doubt" as an American family opens their doors to their immigrant cousin, Bellac Gordal, who is none other than the infamous Count. Interestingly, the filmmakers do not acknowledge Stoker in the opening credits, though the name of Stokerâ??s vampire is mentioned only three times. Dracula rides in a train at one point and later crosses the Atlantic Ocean on an ocean-liner. This is the kind of vampire movie where the undead one can freely enter any place without an invitation. Some vampire lore dictates that the vampire cannot enter a room without the permission of its host. One of the coolest things about this micro-budget effort is the use of dry ice inside the coffins when we gaze upon the vampires. Francis Lederer makes an effectively villainous Dracula with a conspicuous foreign accent. Indeed, nobody ever calls him Dracula to his face and he has no crazy mad assistant. He hails from the Balkans area of eastern Europe. He doesn't dress as lavishly as either Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, but he is not derelict. He likes to materialize out of a cloud of mist and the same is true of the poor girl that he transforms into his vampire bride. This Dracula is also shape-shifter, and he turns into a white wolf at one point. Although â??Isle of the Deadâ?? lenser Jack Mackenzie photographed the film predominantly in black and white, Landres inserts an interesting shot that is in color when our heroes stake a vampire. The last-minute ending is quite ironic, too!

â??The Return of Draculaâ?? opens with the following narration as two cars cruise through the countryside on the way to a cemetery: â??It is a known fact that there existed in Central Europe a Count Dracula. Though human in appearance and cultured in manner, he was, in truth, a thing undead, a force of evil, a vampire feeding on the blood of innocent people, he turned them into his own kind, thus spreading his evil domination even wider. The attempts to find and destroy this evil were never proven completely successful. And so the search continues to this very day.â?? Like Bram Stokerâ??s novel, â??The Return of Draculaâ?? finds our undead protagonist looking for somewhere different to stalk his prey. A half-dozen men led by John Merriman (John Wengraf of â??The Pride and the Passionâ??) climb out of the two cars and enter Draculaâ??s tomb to kill him, but they find it empty! The action shifts to a railway station as Bellac Gordal (Norbert Schiller of â??Sign of the Paganâ??) explains that living in the Balkans stifles his sense of artistic freedom and so he bids his immediate family farewell to board a train to America where he will stay with his cousin Cora Mayberry (Greta Granstedt of â??Nocturneâ??) and her family in Carleton, California. When Bellac enters his coach, he meets a mysterious gentleman reading a Berlin newspaper. Not long after he packs his luggage in an upper berth, he turns to scream as the other passenger assaults him. Director Paul Landres edits Bellacâ??s death scene so that when he screams, the action switches to the locomotive and its eldritch whistle piercing the night with its shriek, the perfect visual and aural metaphor for Bellacâ??s terror. What makes this set-up so interesting is that Dracula later confides to Coraâ??s daughter Rachel (Norma Eberhardt of â??Live Fast, Die Youngâ??) that he left Central Europe because he felt that â??My life has been confined. Thatâ??s why I came here . . . for freedom. I must have it.â?? These lines of dialogue makes â??The Return of Draculaâ?? a Cold War era vampire chiller. Unmistakably, the Count is bailing out of the Balkans because of Communism.