The Return of Dracula in '50s Horror and Sci-Fi Forum

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The Return of Dracula

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dr gogol	The Return of Dracula	Lead	[-]
May 5 05 5:12 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I just saw this one last night for the first time. After years of reading about it and seeing stills in Famous Monsters. There really is nothing like seeing a film for the first time I almost forgot what it is like to NOT know what will happen next! I really enjoyed it. At first I wasn't buying Francis Lederer as "Dracula" but then again, except for the title, he is never identified as Dracula. The Vampire hunter speculates that he could be a vampire creature "or possibly Dracula himself!" As the movie progressed, I began enjoying Lederer more. There were many strong moments like when Dracula (?) rises from his coffin amid the dry ice and smoke, the resurrection ofhis victim in the crypt and I was especially surprised by the full color blood when the female vampire is staked. I wonder if this was a reaction to the technicolor blood of Hammer's "Dracula"? All in all, a good night with a movie that I will definately visit again.
Joe Karlosi	Re: The Return of Dracula	#1	[-]
May 5 05 5:16 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Glad you liked the film; it's one of my favorites from the 1950s! I love Lederer in the part, and I personally feel he is Dracula. Sad thing is, this title is (was?) owned by MGM, and it's a damn crying shame that they didn't release it for their Midnite Movies Collection before they changed over to SONY. ------------------------------------ "It's MORE ... than a hobby!"
paleoguy	Re: The Return of Dracula	#2	[-]
May 5 05 6:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This very atmospheric monster movie has always been one of my favorites. I think Lederer is probably the best of the under-rated Dracula performers (and yep, I , too, think that he's actually playing Stoker's Master Vampire). It was the first Dracula film I ever saw that showed the vampires in their wolfish guises, and I absolutely love all the swirling mist. Very moody and creepy. For me, the sub-plot of Dracula's attack on the blind girl is what makes this movie a cut above so many others. She's blind...but she can actually *see* Dracula when he wills her to do so. Brilliant! I sooooo want this on dvd! Martin
Tim Lucas VW	Re: The Return of Dracula	#3	[-]
May 5 05 6:37 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	SON OF DRACULA meets SHADOW OF A DOUBT in the EARTH VS. THE SPIDER cave. Nice title sequence.
Bill Warren	Re: The Return of Dracula	#4	[-]
May 5 05 7:18 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	He's not Dracula. He's the son.
dr gogol	Re: The Return of Dracula	#5	[-]
May 5 05 10:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yes, "Shadow of a Doubt", very perceptive! The blind girl episode is very effective. I also found the staking sequence to be unnerving. The fact that the blind girl/vampire knows what is going to happen and is paralyzed as the priest stops to say a prayer is really tense.
dr gogol	Re: The Return of Dracula	#6	[-]
May 5 05 10:25 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Oh yeah, I won this on ebay. It is a very nice quality dvd-r , likely dubbed from vhs. An official release dvd would occupy an honored space on my shelf! I also won a dvd-r of "The Vampire" which I haven't seen yet but seems to be respected in these pages.
Joe Karlosi	Re: Re: The Return of Dracula	#7	[-]
May 6 05 3:40 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	That would have been the perfect double feature DVD - Return of Dracula and The Vampire. Thankfully there are good people out there providing DVD-R's off lasers and VHS prints while the studios don't want the money themselves. ------------------------------------ "It's MORE ... than a hobby!"
MBarnum	Re: Re: The Return of Dracula	#8	[-]
May 7 05 2:33 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I very much enjoyed THE RETURN OF DRACULA also...it sort of seemed like a teenagers vs. the vampire type film..which of course made me love it all the more...THE VAMPIRE I have yet to see, but I have heard good things about it...I would also hope for an official DVD release of both films along with THE WEREWOLF, which is one of the best wolf man movies I have ever seen. A few years back Scarlet Street magazine had interviews with the two leads from THE RETURN OF DRACULA which were very interesting...I had always wondered what had ever become of Norma Eberhardt and the interview answered that question, and more! She was also quite good in the juvenile delinquent film LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG! It is a shame she didn't do more films.
Ted Newsom	The Return (or Curse, if you prefer) of Dracula	#9	[-]
May 7 05 4:57 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I had the pleasure of watching this at a screening arranged by Mike Hyatt about 10 yars ago in the company of Paul Landres' daughter (he was too ill to make it, sadly) and writer Pat Fielder. We all had coffee and pie lady and she said it was very much Shadow of a Doubt, intentionally so. Gotta say, there were a couple of really effective scares in this thing, even in a small 50 seat screening room with less than 20 people.
Ted Newsom	Re: The Return (or Curse, if you prefer) of Dracula	#10	[-]
May 7 05 5:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	A 1971 episode of NIGHT GALLERY, "The Devil is Not Mocked," featured Helmut Dantine as a Nazi general who billets his troops in a convenient old castle, hosted by a charming nobleman (Francis Lederer.) Had the general been more of a movie buff (and been able to see 14 years into the future) and watched RETURN OF DRACULA, he would have realized he and his gang of Nazi thugs were just so TOTALLY screwed...!
TomWeaver999	Re: The Return (or Curse, if you prefer) of Dracula	#11	[-]
May 7 05 7:14 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	<< We all had coffee and pie lady << I'll pass!
Ted Newsom	Re: The Return (or Curse, if you prefer) of Dracula	#12	[-]
May 7 05 8:45 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It was apparently a Jerry Lewis reference. "HEY PIE LADY!!! PIE L-A-A-Y-Y-Y-DEEEE-E-E-E-E-E!!!
DTRobers	Re: The Return (or Curse, if you prefer) of Dracula	#13	[-]
Oct 7 05 6:56 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This has long been one of my favorites. I caught it on television at a very young age and was thrilled by the moody cinematography and what seemed at the time very graphic violence. One thing that bothered me was the "wolf" attack committed by an obvious German Shepard. Yet the more I think about it I wonder if this may not be logical. If the Count can transform into a wolf or a bat then he certainly can pull off a dog. If keeping a low profile in suburban America he would be less obtrusive in the form of a domesticated hound than a wild forest predator. Wait a minute! Could this explain the infamous armadillo infestation of Castle Dracula? The Count, being a visionary sort of vampire, was already looking beyond England to the New World and he and his brides were practicing transformations into indigenous American wildlife. They had worked up past aardvarks and anacondas when... Nah, forget it. Nothing can explain the armadillos.
Ted Newsom	Re: The Return (or Curse, if you prefer) of Dracula	#14	[-]
Oct 9 05 4:45 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	UA films had a brief affair with 8mm and Super8 in the 60s and early 70s. Their little eight page catalogue incuded a blurb for their one-reel condensed version of RETURN OF DRACULA: "Fleeing from the Transvaal, Dracula comes to California disguised as a painter." Well, OK, Dracula wasn't really from South Africa... but the second part of the sentence always cracked me up. "Hey, honey, have you noticed that guy who's painting the house never shows up before sundown? What's the deal? Are we paying him overtime?" When we interviewed Francis Lederer for 100 Years of Horror, I had a photo taken of him holding up a paint roller. He was a clear-headed 95 at the time and went along with the gag. God I wish I had that photo.
Tor havin fun	Re: The Return (or Curse, if you prefer) of Dracula	#15	[-]
Oct 9 05 7:39 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I always liked it too, first saw it at about ten in 1967, and when I mentioned it to Francis Lederer at Cinecon right before he turned 100 he said "Oh, God!" and rolled his eyes! They were showing THE WOMAN MEN YEARN FOR with him and Marlene Dietrich. I had the 8mm release of it, and incorporated the stake-driving scene into a film I made in Las Vegas ("Changing Your Hair and Living in New York"). (it made Ben Hur look like an epic)
Jameson281	Re: Re: The Return of Dracula	#16	[-]
Oct 14 05 6:02 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	[quote]That would have been the perfect double feature DVD - Return of Dracula and The Vampire.[/quote] I suggested that pairing two or three times while I was at MGM, but it never made it to the schedule. (I wasn't in the Home Video department; I was just the resident horror & sci-fi geek they consulted every once and a while.)
Butcher Benton	The Return of Dracula using a clip from The Vampire	#17	[-]
May 8 07 9:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I just noticed that in The Return of Dracula when John Wengraf goes to the local doctor's office to investigate Jenny's death, there is a close-up of the Doctor's sign outside his office home: Dr. Paul Beecher. The shot is an insert clip from The Vampire using the same sign and name of the character played by John Beal in the other movie, made by the same filmmakers.
clore1030	Re: The Return of Dracula	#18	[-]
May 9 07 1:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This was the first Dracula movie that I saw in a theater - on a triple bill with CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE MUMMY (the Hammer version). I was only 8 but it packed a whallop. Saw it again on WOR-TV about a decade later and was still impressed by Lederer's performance and his demise was also a doozy. I would love to see it again.
BijouBob8mm	Re: The Return of Dracula	#19	[-]
May 10 07 8:59 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	*Quote:* UA films had a brief affair with 8mm and Super8 in the 60s and early 70s. Their little eight page catalogue incuded a blurb for their one-reel condensed version of RETURN OF DRACULA RETURN (CURSE) OF DRACULA was my first exposure to the 8mm world of Ken Films/United Arista of Fort Lee, NJ. (And their catalog of sci-fi titles I had never heard of at the time was my first exposure to a number of Republic serials, the little 8mm digests usually using the title given the cliffhanger after it had been cut into feature film form for TV.)
Butcher Benton	Re: The Return of Dracula	#20	[-]
May 11 07 1:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Back in the late 90's, a friend of mine screened his print of The Return of Dracula at a Hollywood studio with Pat Fielder, Gerald Fried, and Francis Lederer in attendance. Paul Landres was reportedly also invited, but was in failing health. At the conclusion of the picture, Lederer, nearly 100 years old and still teaching acting, stood and addressed the audience exclaiming: "That was a GREAT movie".

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