Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"It ain't even safe to be dead, anymore!", August 6, 2002
The definitive movie vampire, Bela Lugosi, stars in this entertaining Columbia production. Although mired in a downward career spiral of poverty row clunkers, Bela, ahem, rises to the occasion. Among the familiar vampire cliches, we find a unique character in Andreas (Matt Willis), the wolf man familiar that serves the vampire. This guy looks like Lon Chaney, Jr. in full makeup, but he does not go around howling at the full moon. Instead, he shows great restraint and is quite articulate as he speaks rather than growls. His fiendish appearance tells of the soul's evil and the vampire's spell. After a prologue, that shows the vampire's 1918 horror and dispatch, Andreas escapes the dark side with help from a kindly lady scientist (Frieda Inescort). He falls back into dreadful habits after a WWII bombing raid unearths Bela. The scenes in the London cemetery inflicted with bomb damage are surreal images of foggy darkness and the children of the night. The script suffers from some B picture limitations, but not enough to matter. Lugosi's character, Armand Tesla, is merely Dracula, winking at legal copyright infringements. He catches Nina Foch in his alluring web of unholy desire. The climax in the bombed-out church is done well, and covers a multitude of unlikely plot developments. Character actor and former Mack Sennett star, Billy Bevan, plays Horace, the comic civil defense worker who utters the above immortal dialogue. Some viewers may recognize Bevan as the hapless Whitby policeman, Albert, in Universal's "Dracula's Daughter." Atmospheric sets and a veteran cast add to the enjoyment. Great fun for genre fans and collectors. ;-)
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17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dracula Ressurrected?, July 13, 2000
This is a brilliant, underrated picture, featuring Bela Lugosi playing a real vampire for only the second time in his career. Here, he is aided by a talking werewolf who, although looks a little tatty, has rather more character to him than Lon Chaney's more famous lycanthrope. If you let yourself believe in such concepts, you will probably find this film enjoyable and even a little shocking. Lugosi plays Armand Tesla (basically Dracula under another name), who returns to claim the heroine (played by Nina Foch) after 'marking' her when she was a child. However, the werewolf with a heart eventually turns on him and drags him out into the sunlight, where he melts in spectacular fashion. Original touches, such as the inclusion of the very real (at the time) Second World War, the afore-mentioned werewolf and Miles Mander's final words to the camera, are mixed with traditional fog-bound graveyards, howling wolves and long-caped vampires, and are married together with startling effect. It is well played throughout, especially by Lugosi, who seems to relish the part, and urgently requires reappraisal from horror buffs. It was to have marked the start of a series of Lugosi-vampire films from Columbia, but Universal, worried by the similarities to it and their Dracula films, insisted against it.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly well made with Lugosi in fine form., May 16, 1999
This came out the same year as Siodmak's Son of Dracula and is equally as good. Lugosi does well as Armand Tesla, vampire, who is unloosed during the London blitz and seeks revenge on those who previously "did him in" by attacking their grown up son and daughter. Lugosi projects malevolence in a good performance. Solid work, too from old pros Frieda Inescort and Miles Mander.
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