The Return of the Vampire

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Movie
Original title The Return of the Vampire
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1943
length 69 minutes
Rod
Director Lew Landers
script Griffin Jay based
on an idea by Kurt Neumann
production Sam White
music Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
camera LW O'Connell
John Stumar
cut Paul Borofsky
occupation

The Return of the Vampire (in German: The Return of the Vampire ) is an American horror film from 1943 by Lew Landers . After over a dozen years, Bela Lugosi returned to the screen in a vampire role reminiscent of Dracula, with which he became famous overnight in 1931.

action

Great Britain, early 1940s: Scotland Yard boss Sir Fredrick Fleet reads from the notes of Professor Walter Saunders of King's College, Oxford, recorded during the First World War: A werewolf steps up to a grave and says it is now on the time that the “master” finally emerges from his grave. A hand comes out of the coffin and the accompanying voice asks what happened. The werewolf, apparently the undead's helper, replies that the Master's final victim was taken to Dr. Ainsley had been instructed. The “master” is none other than a kind of reincarnation of Count Dracula operating under a different name.

Lady Jane Ainsley contacted Prof. Saunders. Both speak of the very anemic appearance of a moribund clinic patient. Suddenly the figure attacks Saunders' little granddaughter Nikki. A little later the patient dies, and Saunders spends the night reading all about vampires in a book by a certain Armand Tesla. That Tesla wrote this standard work around 200 years ago. No question about it, the dead must have been bitten by a vampire and then become a bloodsucker himself; this is evidenced by his two bite marks on his neck. Lady Jane doesn't really believe in vampires, but is taught better when she discovers bite marks on Nikki's neck. Saunders and Jane then visit the nearest cemetery and look for a vampire grave or the coffin of the undead. They find what they are looking for and stake the bloodsucker. The werewolf who rushes to the scene can no longer prevent this act and turns back into a human being after the death of the vampire.

All of this was 24 years ago. Saunders has since passed away and his notes are read with interest by the Scotland Yard chief. Sir Frederick tells Lady Jane who is present that he wants to find the body of the man she and Saunders once impaled. If he had actually been human, Lady Jane would face a murder charge. Lady Jane assures Sir Frederick that the man she and Prof. Saunders had redeemed with a stake was none other than Armand Tesla, then 200 years old. His lifelong fascination with vampires was based on the fact that he once became a vampire himself.

In Lady Jane's clinic, the wedding preparations between her son John and Saunders' granddaughter Nikki, who was once bitten by a vampire, are in progress. The Second World War is currently in full swing. Nikki, now a young woman, is doing her military service. Her future husband, John, is a civilian after being discharged from the Royal Air Force due to a war injury . Lady Jane tells John about her meeting with the police chief when Nikki is absent. She was quite sure, said Lady Jane, that Tesla's body would not have crumbled if Scotland Yard tracked him down. This would prove the theory that Tesla is a vampire. John and Jane agree not to tell Nikki about the latest developments so as not to confront her with her childhood trauma when she was once bitten by the vampire herself. When both speak to each other, Jane's clinic assistant Andreas Obry enters the room. He is the man who was freed from his werewolf existence 24 years ago. When Obry learns that the vampire's body is about to be dug up, he becomes very angry.

The Battle of Britain also has an impact on the area around the Ainsley Clinic. A bomb hits the cemetery and exposes several coffins. Some cemetery workers are hired to put the coffins back underground. When they see Tesla's staked body, they pull the wooden stake out of his heart again, believing that it must be a fragment of a bomb. With this the vampire awakens to new life. Lady Jane is announced an important visitor. A famous scientist named Dr. Hugo Bruckner, who is said to have escaped a German concentration camp, will visit the clinic, and Andreas Obry is chosen to do so, Dr. Pick up Bruckner from the ship and bring him here to the clinic.

Obry meets his old man and master Tesla. He fixes his once willing werewolf servant with his hypnotic eyes and makes it clear to Obry, who is in a trance, that only he is responsible for the death of Prof. Saunders. It was time to take revenge on the other impaled lady, Lady Jane. Again under the spell of the resurrected vampire, Andreas Obry promptly mutates again into a werewolf. Tesla orders that the Bruckner to be picked up be killed so that Tesla can slip into his role. Said and done. When Sir Frederick and Lady Jane enter the cemetery the next morning to inspect Tesla's grave, it is promptly empty. With that, Scotland Yard drops the murder charge against the noblewoman. That evening, Lady Jane holds a ceremony in honor of John and Nikki's engagement. Sir Frederick appears with Professor Saunders' handwritten papers and asks Lady Jane if he should give the manuscript to Nikki since she is the professor's granddaughter. Jane takes the manuscript and locks it in a drawer because she doesn't want Nikki to be reminded of her childhood trauma.

Enter Armand Tesla in the role of scientist Dr. Bruckner: A charmer of the old continental European school, he soon casts a spell over everyone, only the professionally suspicious police chief eyed the gallant scientist suspiciously. Lady Jane soon finds out that the drawer with the Saunders papers was broken into and the professor’s papers stolen. Sir Frederick discovers some hair there and pockets it. On the upper floor of the hospital, Nikki finds the manuscript next to her bed and starts reading it. Later she hears Tesla's voice calling for her. She asks who he is, and Tesla / Bruckner, who has magical power over her since he was bitten into her throat a quarter of a century ago, replies that she already knows who. The next morning, John and Jane Ainsley find Nikki lying unconscious on the floor of their bedroom. John is upset when he sees the bite marks on Nikki's neck, but Lady Jane assures him that everything will be fine.

The lady returns to the cemetery and speaks to the cemetery employees. They tell her that they found a body and pulled a huge piece of wood from its heart, which they saw in connection with the German bombing. Now everything becomes clear to Jane. She reports her findings to Sir Frederick, but since he does not believe in vampires, he prefers to pursue another lead and has Jane's clinic employee Andreas Obry shadowed by two plainclothes police officers, Detective Lynch and Detective Gannett. When these two men follow him, Obry mutates again into a werewolf. He escapes them and drops a bundle that he was carrying. Sir Frederick opens it at Scotland Yard and discovers the personal belongings of the real Dr. Hugo Bruckner. His suspicion that the Bruckner he met at Lady Jane's could not be the real Bruckner are hereby confirmed. The laboratory analysis of the hair discovered by Sir Frederick on the opened drawer and tucked in by him has shown that it is wolf hair.

The following night, in her sleep, Nikki subconsciously hears the voice of the vampire calling for her again. He orders her to go to John Ainsley's bedroom. The next morning Lady Jane finds her son John lying on the floor of his bedroom, with bite marks on his neck. Nikki believes she has become a vampire too, but Lady Jane makes it clear that she is convinced that Tesla must have bitten John. Sir Frederick and Lady Jane question Andreas Obry about the Bruckner bundle they found. At that moment, the damned metamorphosed again into werewolf, and before he can be arrested, he escapes. Sir Frederick orders his two plainclothes police officers Lynch and Gannett to follow Bruckner / Tesla, but the vampire escapes as well. Bruckner, alias Tesla, hides in the Ainsley villa and watches from his hiding place as Lady Jane plays the organ. He announces that he wants to take bloody revenge on her. He'll turn Nikki into a vampire and she'll bite her future John. Jane then pushes the sheet music aside and reveals a cross on the organ. The vampire then disappears.

Shortly afterwards, Nikki Tesla hears her calling again. She gets out of bed, leaves her bedroom and goes down the stairs. On the first floor, Sir Frederick and Lady Jane are discussing the existence of vampires again. When they both see Nikki descending the stairs, they follow her. Nikki walks like a sleepwalker to the cemetery, where Tesla and werewolf Andreas are waiting for her. A siren announcing an air raid begins to howl and the bombs fall. While Jane and the Scotland Yard boss seek shelter, Nikki passes out. The werewolf seizes her and carries her to safety, and Sir Frederick shoots him. The wounded werewolf stumbles into an open grave, Nikki still unconscious in his arms. He puts them down and asks the vampire Armand Tesla, who is also present, for help.

Tesla tells Andreas that he doesn't need him anymore and orders him to crawl into a corner and die there. The werewolf struggles into a corner where he discovers a crucifix . He picks it up and transforms himself back into his human form. A bomb hits the middle of the cemetery. When Nikki wakes up, she sees Obry pulling his unconscious lord and master Tesla out of the grave. Dawn has set in and the vampire begins to decompose in the daylight. After Tesla dies, Andreas Obry also dies from his gunshot wound. Sir Frederick and Lady Jane rush back to the cemetery and find Nikki, who tells them that Andreas saved them from the evil bloodsucker. Lady Jane asks Sir Frederick if he finally believes in vampires. He says he's still in disbelief. He turns to the two plainclothes officers and asks them, hoping for confirmation of his rational thinking: "But you two don't believe in vampires, do you?" To his great surprise, Lynch and Gannett reply that they do very well.

Trailer

Production notes

The Return of the Vampire was written in August and September 1943 and was premiered on November 11, 1943. The film was never shown in Germany.

According to the IMDb, production costs were only about $ 75,000, and box office profits were around $ half a million. This made the film a huge box-office success.

Although Lugosi's vampire is reminiscent of Dracula, he was given a different name (probably for copyright reasons).

Reviews

The Movie & Video Guide found the film "a weak attempt to capitalize on Dracula's earlier success" and said that the "closing scene was still memorable".

Halliwell's Film Guide saw the film as an "astonishingly well-made and complexly conceived horror film" and concluded with the conclusion: "It looks good, it just lacks humor".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 1087
  2. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 850

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