Such a frustrating disappointment

Highly Overrated But Still Good

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Very well done vampire film with a strong performance by Francis Lederer as the undead nobleman and Norma Eberhardt as the object of his carnal desire.The Count has become not just a blood thirsty monster but a political enemy of the state in his native Romania and has to flee for his...er ..ah .. "life" so to speak. He kills and assume he identity of an artist traveling to America to connect with a cousin. The Count finds the small northern California town she lives in much to his liking. The woman's daughter is both attracted and suspicious of her new"cousin". and he is very attracted to her. His usual living habits and almost hypnotic charm raise some red flags, however, particularly with the young lady's jealous boyfriend. A vampire hunter arrives in the town to investigate the strange circumstances of the artists immigration to the United States. It becomes a taunt and tense race against time. As other review's have pointed out, this basically a remake of Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" and there is nothing wrong with that. Giving the story a supernatural element gives a different slant and makes it very watchable. Lederer has said was not happy playing Dracula but he was certainly effective .His characterization is spot on. It came out about the same time as Horror of Dracula and somehow got lost in the shuffle. Perhaps because it was shot in black and white. Return of Dracula is and entertaining and effective vampire thriller.

Plot-- A European vampire travels to America for fresh feeding grounds. While there he impersonates the relative of an average American family. In the process, he's drawn to the family's spirited daughter who's his assumed cousin. So what will happen now that the suburbanites have a new blood(y) relative with very strange habits.Pretty good little programmer that benefits from interesting premise. Actor Lederer has a strong physical presence but unfortunately doesn't exude the evil of a Lee or Lugosi. Nor, for that matter, does he appear to be trying that hard. Thus his vampire is more a presence than evil. In my little book, it's really actress Eberhardt's charm and expressive range that carries the story. She gets the most screen time, while projecting personality into a rather fuzzily written ingénue part. The location photography of an average American neighborhood lends a touch of realism and is certainly a long way from the usual murky hilltop castle. But note that except for the brief scenes in the cavern, there's little spooky shadow to create mood. But then it's hard to work pervasive shadow into well-lit suburbia. So I guess Dracula needs his castle. Nonetheless, the lack of spooky lighting undercuts a needed mood of evil menace. Also, what's with that color flash of gory blood in an otherwise b&w flick. It's a needlessly disruptive effect that simply calls attention to the fact that this is a movie of uneven effects. Happily, the flick does manage to avoid the hokey, the usual pitfall of cheap horror productions. All in all, however, the 73-minutes may be imaginative but still fails to rise above programmer level.

The same year that British studio Hammer gave us their classic version of Dracula, America produced this far more tepid and forgettable contemporary affair, in which the infamous Count (Francis Lederer) kills European artist Bellac Gordal (Norbert Schiller), assumes his identity, and travels to a small town in California to stay with the dead man's relatives, the Mayberrys. Once there, Dracula proceeds to take a bite out of the family cat, has a suck on sickly blind girl Jennie (Virginia Vincent) and tries to 'turn' Rachel Mayberry (Norma Eberhardt). Meanwhile, European cop/vampire hunter John Merriman (John Wengraf) arrives in town, stakes at the ready.A cheap B-grade drive-in flick, The Return of Dracula is more apple pie and white picket fences than blood red fangs and storm lashed castles, much of the action revolving around Rachel's wholesome relationship with boyfriend Tim (Ray Stricklyn) and her part time job at the Parish Home looking after the elderly and the infirm. Dracula's antics are fairly limited, the Count's only human victim being poor Jennie, who in turn puts the bite on immigration investigator Mack Bryant (Charles Tannen). For most of the time, Drac is hidden away in his room, or in his coffin, which is stowed away in a disused mine (don't ask how he got it there).The film's most effective moments are when Dracula enters Jennie's room in mist form (Rachel having thoughtfully opened the window and removed the poor girl's cross pendant), and a brief moment in colour: the bloody staking of Jennie in her coffin. Unfortunately, the film's shortcomings easily outweigh its positives: a scare-free script; a vampire without fangs (we never see his protruding canines and he leaves no bite marks, leaving us to wonder exactly how he drains his victim's blood); humdrum performances; and a sudden accidental demise for the vampire, clumsy old Drac falling down a pit while backing away from a cross. Doh!

Not a bad Dracula updated adaptation as a man readying for a journey in Romania is killed and his identity stolen(seems to have been a problem even then). He moves in with his "family' only to start wreaking havoc in a small Californian town. The small town atmosphere is carried off fairly nicely in large part to the small town characterizations from the cast - most of whom were either character actors or unknowns at the time. Exception is Francis Lederer as the vampire with a very thick accent, but actually he gives some credibility to the role of the brooding, oft charming, malignant force cast into the lives of these newly found innocents. John Wengraf plays the Van Helsing type and is interesting when on screen yet the part is way too underdeveloped. There is not much for plot here to be honest and the story quickly wraps up in the last third, but director Paul Landres has competence(and a whole television episode list as his resume)and creates some effective scenes. The scene where Rachel is "dreaming" of seeing the vampire in her boudoir and then is wakened quickly by her brother even gave me a bit of a jolt. The acting is okay but pedestrian, and there is not much here in terms of great sets or effects. Nonetheless The Return of Dracula is a nice little film with a different twist to Dracula lore that I found interestingly conceived.