31 Days of Horror Reviews Day 3: The Return of the Vampire

Day 3: The Return of the Vampire (1936), dir. by Lew Landers

Streaming Availability: Rentable for cheap on quite a few sites

Bela Lugosi's life makes for a very sad story. Watch the movie Ed Wood, you’ll get a crash course on his sad final decades and his bitterness with Hollywood. Despite creating one of the greatest performances in horror history in the original Dracula, Lugosi struggled to find a secure place outside of horror, and eventually, even within it. He was passed over for roles because of his Hungarian accent, because of his age (he’s in his sixties in today’s movie and looks it), and eventually his health problems. Eventually, by the 1950s, Lugosi could not get his calls answered by Universal Pictures. The only work he could find was in independent trash productions like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla or Plan 9 From Outer Space.

However, between Dracula and his B-movie era, Lugosi would still have a number of solid horror movies. He's magnificent as the original Igor in Son of Frankenstein. And we also have today's movie, where Lugosi more or less reprises his great vampire role.

The Return of the Vampire, directed by Lew Landers, is besides Dracula’s Daughter, the closest thing we have to a direct sequel to Dracula. This is clearly unofficial in numerous ways. It claims no inspiration from Bram Stoker’s novel, it shares no character names, and it isn’t even made by Universal, instead it is a Columbia joint. Bela Lugosi is playing a vampire named “Armand Tesla”. Tesla just so happens to dress like Count Dracula and behave in exactly the same ways, but no, completely distinct figures. Please do not be confused. This was not the second time Lugosi would play a vampire on screen, nor would it be the last time. However, if want a dignified successor to his classic bloodsucker performance, The Return of the Vampire is as close as you’ll get.

Before the main plot of the movie begins, we have a brief prologue featuring a super speed-run of the original Dracula story (minus some filed-off serial numbers). In 1918 London, mysterious deaths are occurring, and wouldn't you know it, women are turning up drained of blood. Professor Van Helsing, I mean, Professor Saunders (Gilbert Emery) uses his rational science to defeat the foreign dark magic. He's assisted by Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort). They drive a stake through Dracula, I mean, Tesla’s heart. This saves Tesla’s latest victim Nicki.

Nicki is only a little girl, which is sure shocking. All the sexual overtones of vampires makes this utterly gross in a way I don't like at all. However, I realized this plot construct means Nicki can return in the main plot as a young woman played by Nina Foch, thus becoming the Not-Mina. Still, yuck.

Also, Dracu- Tesla has a Wolf-Man “Renfield”, Andreas (Matt Willis). This is because by the 1940s, just one monster was not enough to draw crowds, you needed at least two. After his master is killed, Andreas returns to human form to become Lady Jane’s sub. This werewolf costume and transformation effect is a pure rip-off from the Universal version, yet not a bad performance.

Anyway, we cut to twenty-five years later. With the return of World Wars also comes the return of Count… you know who. A German bombing blows open the vampire’s grave, which causes two foolish gravediggers to assume the corpse has been defiled in the bombing. After doing the nice thing of pulling the stake out, they unwittingly bring Tesla back to life. Bela Lugosi returns Andreas to his hairy slave form, and then appears in London society under the alias of Dr. Hugo Bruckner, supposedly a scientist escaping Nazi Europe.

Last movie we had a female Dracula, so this week, we have a female Van Helsing, who is Lady Jane. (Professor Saunders has died between scenes, which we're told was Dracula’s curse from beyond the grave.) Lady Jane is a perfectly competent nemesis for Dra- Telsa. Really though, Tesla's defeat is just a massive self-inflected L. By the middle of the movie he’s got Nicki under his thrall, Andreas working for him in secret, and he’s in Lady Jane’s parlor drinking something that isn’t wine – as we know, he never drinks... wine. The vampire could win this right now, but instead blows it. That pesky holy force of goodness once overcame his hypnotism powers too many times.

In a rather elegant touch, after being reborn thanks to a German bomb, Teslacula is also undone by the same awful power. His base is blown up and the Sun’s light paralyzes him. Andreas comes back to his senses long enough to kill his master. Lady Jane hardly defeated her enemy as much as let his plans fall apart on their own.

As for Lugosi, he’s the reason you’re here. He’s still an imposing "Dracula". The Return of the Vampire opens with the werewolf letting the vampire out of his coffin. Even just seen as a shadow on the wall, that classic silhouette has so much power. We get plenty of close-ups on Lugosi’s eyes, which have sadly lost some of their piercing powers during the last ten years. It does feel like Lugosi is doing an impression of himself at times. But even a diminished, older Lugosi is a fascinating figure that can carry a movie.

By the 1940s, the Universal Pictures horror era was already turning into cliché. You can already see it happening here. We open on a spooky graveyard covered in fog, exactly the imagery you’d assume for this period in horror. The Return of the Vampire is not doing anything new either with vampires or werewolves, it never becomes more than a rip-off of older and better movies. But ten years after Dracula, we have a more modern-looking movie, at least. The camera is freer to pan around scenes, cuts are more frequent. The director is not just filming a stage-play, the camera itself is telling the story, even in a small way.

However, if you want to talk about the power of filmmaking, we need to rewind a bit.

Next time we go back to 1932 with a classic German take on the vampire (but not that one), Vampyr.

31 Days of Horror Reviews Day 2: Dracula's Daughter

Day 2: Dracula's Daughter (1936), dir. by Lambert Hillyer

Streaming Availability: N/A (but easy to find if you know which Archives of the Internet to search)

The original Dracula has an abrupt and jarring conclusion. This was not that unusual for the era – “story’s done, get out” is how a lot of movies ended back then. Still, it does feel like a scene is missing. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) has defeated Count Dracula. Mina, rescued from the sexy foreigner, goes up the gothic stone stairs with Jonathan Harker, the heteronormative order of the world restored. However, before they leave, the couple asks “Aren’t you coming with us?” and the Professor responds “Not yet, presently” with no further explanation. We cut to a Universal logo. What was he doing down there?

Five years later, Universal Pictures picked up the story right where it left off with the sequel, Dracula’s Daughter, directed by Lambert Hillyer. We open on two bumbling English Bobbies walking into Dracula’s lair, only to find two dead bodies. They also meet a mild-manner professor calmly explaining he’s murdered one of them with a stake through the heart. Scotland Yard is unsurprisingly doubtful of the story Van Helsing (called “Von Helsing” in the credits for some reason) tells of vampires and heroism, so he's arrested. However, just as peace seems to have returned to London, one of the doofus cops is found dead later that night. And Dracula’s body has disappeared.

Do not get your hopes up. Bela Lugosi and his piercing Male Gaze are not in this picture. Dracula’s corpse is immediately burnt by the new villain of the picture, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), assisted by her stern brute, Sandor (Irving Pichel).

The movie makes a big point to keep some mystery around the Countess. She believes herself to be freed from “Dracula’s curse”, yet Sandor insists she’s doomed towards evil. There’s a great scene between the two where Marya is playing music, and tries to describe a beautiful day with dogs and flapping wings, but Sandor notes the wings are of bats and the dogs are wolves. Once confirmed that her mind is still twisted and bent, she goes off to kill again.

We sadly do not get any extravagant powers like Papa Dracula had. Countess Zaleska never turns into a bat or a night fog. We’re left unsure if this is a psychological compulsion to kill or true supernatural powers. Gloria Holden is a good actress when it comes to playing a cold, mature society woman. But she just cannot bring the same graceful theatricality to the vampire role as Lugosi. It also does not help that her monster costume is just insufficient for the horror. They dress her up in a black niqab to cover her face besides her eyes, and Holden can sure hold up her arm with her magic hypnotism ring well-enough. But the costume has no sharp angles. It is just not a memorable silhouette. At least the Countless makes the same “I never drink… wine” joke as Dadula.

And the mystery is less intriguing than it could have been. There’s a third act reveal that Marya is Dracula’s daughter, and well, who’d have guessed? The movie is spoiled by its own title! If you want intriguing ambiguity with vampirism or dark fantasy, well, Vampire’s Kiss this ain’t.

In general, Dracula’s Daughter is a more conventional movie than the original. For one, it is set in the then-present 1930s, versus Dracula's ambiguous Gothic time period. Dracula’s Daughter does have a score, removing the awkwardness of the first one. The hero characters actually have personality. The protagonist is Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), a respected psychologist drawn into the story by Van Helsing and also by running into the Countess at a social party. Van Helsing more or less disappears from the story, which is disappointing, leaving Dr. Garth open to fall into a love triangle with the Countess on one end and on the other, his fashionable assistant, Janet Blake (Marguerite Churchill). No character in the movie is lacking for personality like the original. Janet and Garth have decently funny screwball comedy banter.

Competent batter will make a scene watchable, but will it make it SCARY? The answer is no. I’m sorry to say. A lot of this movie feels like selling out. There’s something fascinating and unique to Dracula, despite its archaic qualities or maybe even thanks to them. Dracula’s Daughter is just another one of a thousand movies just like it. It is a much easier movie to forget.

Dracula’s Daughter does have something interesting going on, luckily, and that’s the queer undercurrents. This is on display even as far as the trailer, which prominently features the Countess leering towards a young woman with naked shoulders. Lesbian vampire stories predate even Bram Stoker’s Dracula, they feel inevitable for the genre. Queerness is a core element to the vampire concept, vampires being an escape from mainstream society’s ideas of decency. This movie never spells out the issue directly, yet the theming here is not subtle. We have this Countess compelled towards a forbidden lust, desperately attempting a conventional life with a man. Interestingly, that forbidden lust just keeps appearing as Marya devouring beautiful women. (The film spends a lot more time with Countess Zaleska nearly kissing Janet than Dr. Garth getting any, if you're wondering what it finds erotic)

We’re still in the Thirties, however, the queer element is going to be destroyed. Countess Zaleska is murdered by her assistant in almost literally the last second of the movie. Dr. Garth and Janet escape her castle and go home, with again, heteronormativity restored. 

I do not think Dracula's Daughter fully achieves the potential of the Zaleska character. Tragically, as far as I know, she would never again return in the any of other Dracula mythos. There's a lot in this movie that’s fertile ground for a remake. Sadly, there is not quite enough for a reappraisal. 

Also, we'll see plenty more of lesbianism in vampire movies, don't you worry.

Next time: Bela Lugosi unofficially returns to his star-making role in 1943’s The Return of the Vampire.

31 Days of Horror Reviews Day 1: Dracula (1931)

Day 1: Dracula (1931), directed by Tod Browning

Streaming availability: Tubi

The legend of the European Vampire dates back to at least the 1700s. The dead rising to feast on the living is an ancient fear that goes back to the very beginning of our species. For centuries though, people feared a creature they called "vampire". In their imaginations, it had a thousand forms and a thousand faces. 

That is until 1931. After 1931, the Vampire had one face. Even after ninety years of subsequent movies and reinventions of the character of Count Dracula, there is still an Ur-Vampire in popular imagination, one that will never be supplanted. Even now, seventy years after his death, the Ur-Vampire lives on, as immortal as the character he played. When you close your eyes and picture a vampire, inevitably you see one man,  and that is Bela Lugosi.

There were vampire movies before 1931’s Dracula, of course. There were several silent film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel made across Europe. That includes, of course, the silent classic, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. But this vampire movie was uniquely special and had an impact the others did not. The vampire emoji on your phone right now does not depict Max Schreck, it depicts Bela Lugosi. Even Sesame Street's vampire is a play on this icon. Dracula along with Frankenstein a year later, launched the Universal horror boom of the 1930s, the first great era of horror cinema. Dracula captured the vampire myth and solidified it down to one figure with a cape, a widow's peak, a Hungarian accent, and a piercing stare.

With a movie this old, you do need some patience with it. This kind of filmmaking was already ancient even when our grandparents were born. However, Dracula, does hold up. It is legitimately surprisingly how a movie this old can be successful as an unnerving Gothic Horror journey.

There are a few issues, I’ll admit. We’re two years into Talking Pictures, and director Tod Browning does not seem sure how to use sound in his movie other than for dialog and sound effects. You know that famous organ piece that everybody thinks is from Dracula? "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"? Yeah, that's not in this. (I think people are confused since it does appear in Fantasia.) Over the opening credits we get some music from Swan Lake, and later there is some diegetic music at an opera. Otherwise, there is no score. This is legitimately unsettling, especially when Dracula is creeping the streets of London biting women. It's like the soundless space destruction in Gravity, there's an unnatural quality to it.

But that does not stop the movie from dragging in places, especially the third act. As the story becomes less about Dracula, moves away from his spooky castle, and more about the good Londoners, we lose a lot of energy. The heroes mostly lacking in personality. If you’re somebody who mocked Keanu Reeves or Winona Ryder’s attempts at Britishness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, they're doing much better than the original actors. In 1931, they counterparts did nothing to disguise their American accents. The one even remotely interesting exception is the champion of modernity, Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), who is given at some eccentric quirk of charisma.

On the other hand, the simplicity of the effects adds to the movie. Dracula’s bat form is clearly a puppet on strings, it is very silly to modern eyes. Yet, in one sequence we cut from a sleeping Lucy (Frances Dade) over to a flapping bat in her massive open window. And there’s something deeply terrifying about this unreal, immensely large bat framed in the open night, approaching our innocent and doomed heroine. To complete the horror though, we get a close-up on Lugosi lunging towards the sleeping woman. We don’t see fangs, but the empty darkness we see inside his opening maw might be even more disturbing.

In human form though, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula is fully deserving of iconic status. This is one of those rare moments where an actor was born to play a character. He’s such a powerful, theatrical presence that even the hero characters are over-awed by his charisma. Lugosi’s piercing hypnotic stare reminds me of pictures of Rasputin. His clawed-hands make little dances in the air as he reaches out of his coffin. There’s a reason the movie keeps giving him tight close-ups with a light shining on his face, so his eyes can dominate the audience. Much of his dialog has become iconic of the Dracula character itself. “I bid you welcome.” “What music they make.” “I never drink… wine.” This is an actor who can be cute with his little threats and also a horrifying unforgettable silhouette of pure evil.

The underrated incredible performance Dracula has to go to Dwight Frye as Renfield. Renfield in this version has an expanded role from the novel, replacing Jonathan Harker as the one to travel to Castle Dracula. And you want this Renfield on screen more. He’s as terrifying as his master at times, with bulging eyes and gleeful manic energy. In fact, I’d argue Renfield is the main character of Dracula, the character that falls the farthest into evil and humiliation, but still retains some humanity by the end. He's certainly the character with the most dimension.

Dracula is an immensely important classic. Better writers than me have sung this movie's praise and in the future, even better writers will have their take on it. As long as we love movies, Dracula will be with us.

Next time: Dracula’s Daughter, the 1936 direct sequel, and first dip into queer themes - and certainly not our last.

31 Days of Horror Reviews 2022: Master Post!

Do you smell it? Of course you do. The air has grown crisp. The trees grow weary. The coffee reeks of cinnamon and cloves. It is SPOOKY SEASON once again! 

I don't know about everybody else, but I'm in the mood for some blood, some death, and plenty of thirst. The theme for 2022's Spooky Month is VAMPIRES. I'll watch thirty-one classic, underrated, simply really weird vampire movies and report back my findings day by day. We start tomorrow with, what else? We gotta go with one the OGs, the Ur-Vampire movie, Dracula (1931).

Why vampires? Well, personally if I had to become any class of the various cinematic ghouls, they're what I'd pick. Werewolves have many of the same weaknesses but with fewer interesting powers. And no offense, they probably smell a lot worse. Zombies definitely smell worse, yet are much more durable. Still they lack a certain charisma and sensuality and more importantly, are much less intelligent. Vampires are above all else, cool.

Even back to the very beginning of the vampire genre, these masters of the undead were meant to be scary, sure, but they were compelling. They were stars, baby. Count Dracula, in almost every form, is enigmatic and fascinating. Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's classic novel might be Mina's good boy she can take home to Daddy, but he's no Daddy, if you get my meaning. Dracula is a Daddy.

A Nosferatu is a horrible cursed being that threatens the very foundations of polite society. It also comes with a suite of inconsistent yet still pesky weaknesses: sunlight, religious icons, garlic, maybe even running water if you're a really unlucky vampire. You gotta live in a coffin. Maybe you need to drag around the grave soil you were buried in too. You gotta eat people. It seems like a lot of work. Yet, in all these movies, no matter how conservative their morals, no matter how much the explains it away the vampire's power as "mind control", people still are tempted. Good gentlewomen leavie their windows unlocked for Dracula when their men aren't looking. You can hate the vampire, you can be disgusted by the vampire, but admit it, you're just a bit horny for the vampire, aren't you?

Anyway, I have ninety years of vampire fiction to work through from all the over the world. This creature has been reinvented, deconstructed, and reconstructed a thousand times. I want to see the vastness and experience all flavors from Bela Lugosi to Bella Swan.

This post will also serve as the master link to all the reviews for my own convenience starting with Day 1 on October 1st, which is tomorrow:

Searching for a Reason to Survive in 'Cyberpunk 2077'

The original release of a Cyberpunk 2077 will be immortal, even as that trainwreck now no longer truly exists. That stinking trash fire of the game will live on forever in glitch compilation videos and tweets. History will probably not much remember this final version, which is a bit unfair. We should judge games based on their best selves, not their worst. Maybe in a year or two, some critic will dare to write a "Cyberpunk 2077 was good actually" take. But when a game launches this poorly, nothing will erase that initial reputation for total hysterical calamity. 

I did not play Cyberpunk 2077 at launch in late 2020, because I wanted the "real" Cyberpunk 2077, the Platonic Ideal Cyberpunk 2077, or at least the piece of code that could most approximate CD Projekt Red's dream vision for this title. The "next-gen version" of Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed so long you could probably call it the "current-gen version" at this point. It launched suspiciously quietly last month, just days before Horizon: Forbidden West and Elden Ring, two of the biggest games of the year. Most critical attention is still focused on the usual Twitter arguments that accompany any FromSoft title. So, I figured, I should follow my own path. I won't add much to the Elden Ring discourse, but I could try my hand on this old boy. Can a new coat of paint in the new Version 1.5 save this game? Or was it fundamentally broken even under the busted physics and incomplete ideas?

The good news is that this version feels like a completed work. All of the various systems are fully operational. A year of polish and some PS5 horsepower has made a functional product. It is still janky in many ways, but this is no longer a forty-car pileup we can rubberneck in abject horror as we drive by. The jank now is less an unplayable mess and more a lovable scamp of a game trying its best. It's adorably inconsistent. I ran into glitches of all kinds, luckily all of which were solved by simply restarting the game. There still some knee slappers of glitches, such as the time my DualSense controller would not stop snoring loudly. I also had to watch the ending cutscenes with a tutorial message stuck on the screen, a final victory of jank over the forces of polish and stability.

Forget the build-quality, the real question is this: Is Cyberpunk 2077 the game you wanted? Well, not really. Does it lives up to the near-decade of hype? No. Is this the SciFi answer to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, still arguably the gold standard for open world Western RPGs? No. Is it a solid combination of the lawless freedom of Grand Theft Auto and the mechanical freedom of immersive sims? No. If you come at this object demanding that this be The Witcher, or Deus Ex, or GTA, or any translation of the original tabletop RPG, you will be unhappy. Instead, Cyberpunk 2077 is a roughly thirty hour game, depending on your thirst for sidequests, full of pieces that are decent at best, barely acceptable at worst.

It is any fun to play? Well... not terribly so. The driving is awful. Every car feels roughly the same, the braking is always stiff, the acceleration is meaningless, and the music on the radio is universally terrible aside from the one song I really love and have been jamming to for days. The combat segments are full of stiff shooting galleries against uninteresting bullet sponges. I specc'd early on for stealth and hacking to sneak by. This was not out of an honest desire for pacifism or a more creative combat option (that does not exist). I just didn't want to do the FPS stuff, because it sucked. Your role-playing options are frustrating and made meaningless by the story decisions. The sidequests are rarely satisfying, they lack much player agency or moral statement. The greater story sucks too, actually. It is a bad mixture of various 90s SciFi films, and the better Cyberpunk 2077 would be not playing this game, but instead watching those films. (Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days is brilliant and underrated, please track that down.) Your character, always named "V" is probably the biggest issue in the game, and I'll get to why in a moment.

Ultimately, this is all building up to a fantasy that does little to appeal to me. So why even talk about Cyberpunk 2077 at all? I could end it here and say "it works, but it still kinda sucks". However, there is something interesting about this game. It achieves a unique culture, a kind of aggressive ambivalence to your existence, which could have been the jumping off point to a bigger statement. Sadly, it never takes that leap to an actual conclusion. Cyberpunk 2077, however, ends up offering a very different kind of fantasy by the end, one that strangely seems to be in direct opposition to the very fetishes at play in the cyberpunk genre.