Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 70 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Full Screen (1.33:1)
Director: Lew Landers
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort, Nina Foch, Miles Mander, Roland Varno, Matt Willis
Return of the Vampire (1943) is notable for featuring Bela Lugosi as a vampire, his first turn as a bloodsucker since Universal's Dracula (1931), a role he wouldn't officially reprise until Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). It's also notable that because Universal at the time owned the copyright on the name "Dracula", so here he is known as Armand Tesla, but let me tell you, when you have Lugosi playing a vampire, it's Dracula, he doesn't even try to mask the similarities in the character, though he does wear a top hat.
Opening in London in 1918 during WW1 the film begins in a spooky looking, fog shrouded graveyard where we meet not the vampire, but his loyal werewolf servant, Andreas (Matt Willis), who interestingly has the ability to speak. The vampire has been claiming lives around town, garnering the notice of Dr. Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort, The Alligator People), who along with her colleague
Professor Walter Saunders (Gilbert Emery, Dracula's Daughter) cannot help but notice the bite marks on the throats of anemic patients at their clinic. The pair track down the culprit to his crypt in the foggy cemetery and drive a iron stake through his heart, killing him and in the process freeing his werewolf servant from his furry lycanthropic curse.
With the vampire dead we move ahead several decades and WW2 is in full effect, during the London bombings by the Nazis the crypt containing Tesla's remains is destroyed and his body disinterred, with a pair of well-meaning but dunderheaded cemetery workers discovering his corpse. Thinking the iron stake is some sort of shrapnel from the bombing they remove it from his corpse, thereby unleashing the vampire, who adopts the identity of a scientist named Hugo Bruckner, ingratiating himself into Dr. Lady Jane Ainsley's good graces, setting his sights in her son John's (Roland Varno, Gunga Din) fiancee Nikki (Nina Foch, Cry of the Werewolf).
Lugosi went on to make some real crap film in his later career, this might be the best of the later stuff that I've seen so far, and even so it's not exactly top tier. That said, it's got some very good atmosphere by way of ghostly looking graveyards and creepy crypts. Lugosi is fine as the bloodsucker, but he's actually not in the film all that much, lacking the intesnsity of his earlier turn as the vampire. We get much more of the werewolf here, which is good because I particularly liked Matt Willis as both the werewolf and his human counterpart. I also enjoyed Frieda Inescort in the lady Van Helsing role of Dr. Ainsley.
While not an official sequel to Todd Browning's Dracula (1931) this is a nice unofficial companion, there;s a lot to enjoy, even if it doesn't live up to Browning's original film. The special effects are pretty cool too, the werewolf looks great with old school dissolve transformations, and there's some gooey decomposition right there at the end that caught me surprise, not too bad at all.
Audio/Video: The Return of the Vampire (1943 arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory presented in the original full frame (1.33:1) aspect ratio in 1080p HD. The Black and white image looks solid for a film of this vintage, there's no specific information about the lineage of the transfer here, but it looks real good. There's some blemishing throughout, white speckling and vertical lines, but overall this looks fantastic, grain is well managed and the contrast is solid. Audio comes by way of a DTS-HD MA Mono track that shows some age by way of minor hiss, which I didn't find distracting at all, optional English subtitles are provided.
Onto the extras we get three audio commentaries, the first with Film Historian Troy Howarth, a second with Author/Film Historian Gary Don Rhodes, and a third with Film Historian Lee Gambin. So far I've only made it through the Howarth track, loved it, he's one of my favorite commentators these days, I'm saving the other pair for a rainy day while doing chores around the house.
We also get a silent 8mm version of the film that clocks in at about 8-min, the quality is pretty shaky and the subtitles can be a bit on the fuzzy side but this is a pretty cool extra for fans of the film. There's also a theatrical trailer for the movie, plus a cool image gallery with posters artwork, adverts, lobby cards and promotional still from the films.
The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, the cover is the same movie poster used by Sony for their 2002 DVD release, the reverse side is an alternate landscape framed movie poster, the artwork on the disc is an excerpt of the reverse-side artwork.
Special Features:
- NEW Audio Commentary With Film Historian Troy Howarth
- NEW Audio Commentary With Author/Film Historian Gary Don Rhodes
- NEW Audio Commentary With Film Historian Lee Gambin
- Silent 8mm Presentation (8 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min)
- Still Gallery (5 min)
For fans of vintage vampire horror there's much to enjoy about The Return of the Vampire (1943), while it's not on par with his early work it's good to see Lugosi as the bloodsucker once more, and the new Blu-ray from Scream Factory looks and sounds terrific, with the bonus of some excellent extras.
