Just got out my old VHS copy of RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE and watched it again. I found it thoroughly enjoyable. It's great to see Lugosi playing Dracula again (although his name is Armand Tesla here, you can pretty much disregard that particular detail), and he obviously relishes the chance to don the old cape again. The wartime England setting is effective in this relatively fast-paced film, and there's a lot of spooky atmosphere. Frieda Inescort is good as a female Van Helsing equivalent, doing her best to track down the vampire before he ruins the lives of her son and his fiancee (played by a cute young Nina Foch), and Matt Willis is Tesla's werewolf slave, Andreas, who gets a couple of cool Chaney-like transformation scenes. It's a little strange to see Tesla knocked cold by a bomb blast in the final scenes, but when Andreas drags him out into the sunlight soon afterward he decomposes rather nicely. This is a good companion movie to the Dracula Legacy DVD, although it was released by Columbia, and although it's definitely a minor production, it should prove to be a very satisfying viewing experience for fans of classic horror. And it's really fun to see Lugosi hamming it up once again in a part that's as close to a sequel to DRACULA as he was ever allowed to play.
Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.
