The Return of Dracula (1958)

This is not a sequel to the Bela Dracula. Actual, I re-watched the Bela Dracula and there are only a couple of parts that are great, the castle scene was one. The rest of the movie sucks, in a bad way. I also re-watched the Horror of Christoper Lee's Dracula and that movie also sucks, in a bad way. I have fond memories of watching the Hammer horror films as a kid. But watching now, the best parts are the sets/colors/cinematography and the music. The stories, dialogue, acting are all poor. Christopher Lee's first line in the movie is about, wait for it, cataloging his library. His freaking LIBRARY! Lee's acting, his dialogue are pretty freaking lame. Gary Oldman in the 1992 Dracula was great. Unfortunately, his acting was placed in a garbage cartoon comic movie with lousy actors including Anthony Hopkin, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and others. So, what are we left with. A patchwork of Dracula movies. Non of them great. Maybe Nosferatu the original. The 1979 remake with Klause Kinsky, I could not even watch. Maybe someone someday will make a serious Dracula movie and have Gary Oldman revise the character.Now for this movie, Leave it to Draculas Beaver, the Dracula actor is very good, but his dialogue and the story sucks. The Van Helsing character was good as well. And the girl was decent. All the other characters were just there. Nothing much happens. The movie is in black and white except for 2 seconds of blood, when one of Draculas brides gets staked. That was a nice touch. And when Dracula gets killed at the end that was decent.It's on youtube, so it's free to check out. Rating is a C, or 4 stars. Mostly for the acting. At least better acting that Chris Lee's Dracula. But the story sucked.

It's odd how my reaction to this film seems not to sync with the quality of the film itself. This is a film with great acting, great photography, a nicely evocative story...and it's even got a clever twist in the mythos to keep things fresh.I could see the quality and care that went into every scene. I enjoyed the way Lederer played the count as a world-weary, well- spoken, decadent aristocrat - far more "Peter Lorre" than "Christopher Lee". And I appreciated the subtlety and crispness with which he and the director showed the audience his hidden evil and shifting moods. At some points, Lederer even seems to be acting on a couple levels at once, a surface courtliness combined with a contempt for his future victims that only the audience can see.The actress playing "Rachel Mayberry" was perfect for the part, and she was gorgeous and desirable. And there was hardly a moment of dead air in the movie. I even liked the way the movie wrapped up. Usually one of my complaints with the Hammer "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" films was that they just...stop...short...seconds after the monster's demise. That's what happens here...but it didn't bother me as much for some reason, maybe because the young hero's assertions somehow are just what is needed, and there really aren't any other plot threads to look after.So this was a very well made movie with some killer performances...and yet my reaction was lukewarm. I guess I just prefer my Dracula somewhat more feral, and working over in Eastern Europe, rather than "Leave It To Beaversville" California. Still, if anyone asks, I will tell them this was a GOOD movie.

After a vampire (Francis Lederer) leaves his native Balkans, he murders a Czech artist, assumes his identity, and moves in with the dead man's American cousins.What to say about this film? It has Dracula, but not the same Dracula we know and love. He hates mirrors, stakes and crosses... he dislikes daylight. But he does not look like Bela Lugosi. I guess neither does Christopher Lee, though.There is one second of the film shot in color, and a good choice of shot, too. The picture in general is pretty good, if a bit dark, and it is a shame that the Dracula story was taken by Hammer and this story was forgotten (though we cannot fault Hammer for doing a good job).

"The Return of Dracula" is one of the most surprising and enjoyable vampire films around.**SPOILERS**Arriving in America, immigrant Bellac Gordal, (Francis Lederer) meets up with family Cora Mayberry, (Greta Granstedt) and her children Rachel, (Norma Eberhardt) and Mickey, (Jimmy Baird) and they begin to get reconciled. As they spend time together, they all realize that he keeps incredibly weird hours of the day and acts rather strangely at times. Thinking it just his local custom, she begins to really fall for him and they enjoy each other's company. A series of murders plagues the town, and no one in town can explain them. When European police officer John Meierman, (John Wengraf) arrives to help out, he realizes that the killer is Count Dracula, a vampire who had escaped his clutches earlier and escaped. Using this, he races to stop them from unleashing their plan for the town.The Good News: This was a really surprising and fun entry in the genre. Most of this is due to the film being incredibly more suspense than would be believed. The big ones here are whenever the vampire is on-screen. His emergence from the coffin early in the film is insanely chilling, as the lid creaks open and out spills a large collection of fog from inside. When it clears, a single malevolent hand emerges and slowly open s the lid. There's a lot to enjoy about this scenes, as it's got a little bit of everything in it. There's even a few other good scenes spread throughout the film that are really goof, as the opening train sequence, where the vampire preys on a hapless passenger or the standout sequence where one of the victims confronts the vampire in the living room and after turning away, there's no reflection in the mirror. This is at once a clever way of introducing the final tidbit about the vampire and an excellent play off the photograph taken earlier. The last half-hour of this is the best, as there's several different things going on that just work. From the exploits of the police and their trap at the cemetery to the confrontation in the cave, this produces some really great scenes. The police have the realization that the creature is lose upon the town as they witness a known-dead victim wandering around while the confrontation is spectacular for many different reasons, most notably the final way of getting rid of the creature. It's quite brutal, graphic and definitely violent, which isn't the expected route based on the time and really ends the film spectacularly. The last good point is that it really flows together, as one thing leads to another logically and keeps the films going on strongly. That makes the pace of this quite nice, and manages to make it a really surprising entry.The Bad News: There wasn't a whole lot wrong with this one, and those aren't all that bad to begin with. There's one brief sequence near the end, where the film switches to color during a staking scene, that doesn't really do much. The film doesn't benefit from this, since it's for a two-second clip inside a longer sequence, and it not paying attention, can be easily missed. The other flaw is a weird scene where a victim is lured away into a trap and attacked by a wolf, which is obviously a dog. The flaw is that it transpires near a location full of people, and not hearing the loud sounds of the struggle doesn't make sense. These, though, are the only things wrong with the film.The Final Verdict: This is one of the most pleasingly surprising vampire films and is very enjoyable. Really give this one a chance if you're a hardcore vampire fan or are interested in seeing a rather hidden gem in the genre, while it's hard to not recommend to others.Today's Rating-PG-13: Violence