THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (1943) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (1943) 

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. 

RETURN OF THE APE MAN (1944) (Olive Films Blu-ray Review)

RETURN OF THE APE MAN (1944) 

Label: Olive Films
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated 
Duration: 61 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (1.33:1) 
Director: Philip Rosen 
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Ftank Morna, George Zucco, John Carradine, Mary Currier

Synopsis: Directed by Philip Rosen (Murder by Invitation), Return of the Ape Man stars Lugosi as Professor Dexter, the doctor who put the mad in mad scientist. On the verge of restoring a recently unearthed simian from its frozen sleep, Dexter’s plans for the apesicle will have chilling consequences when he sets about transplanting a human brain into his frozen find. With unwitting (and unwilling) help from fellow scientist Professor Gilmore (Carradine), Dexter hopes to unravel the mystery of the “missing link.” Return of the Ape Man also features Michael Ames (From Hell It Came), Judith Gibson (Bluebeard), Ed Chandler (The Ghost and the Guest) and Ernie Adams (Invisible Ghost)

In Return of the Ape Man (1944) we have two scientists, Professor Dexter (Bela Lugosi, Island of Lost Souls) and Professor Gilmore (John Carradine, House of Seven Corpses)who are obsessed with the science of suspended animation. At the start of the film they have kidnapped a local hobo with an aparent reputation and frozen him for solid several weeks. They're in the process of reviving him with a secret serum and sure enough he wakes up and hops right off the table none the worse for wear, they throw him five bucks and he wanders off none the wiser!

With that success they set their aspirations even higher - they head to Antarctica to seek the frozen corpse of a pre-historic man! Month later and on the verge of giving up on the expedition the men discover a long buried cave after an avalanche reveals it, and wouldn't you just know it, within it is the frozen corpse of a Neanderthal, whom they ship back to their lab, and set about thawing and re-animating - and it works, natch!

However, both scientist are displeased and unimpressed by the weak-minded caveman, somehow just reanimating a thousand of years old corpse was not enough, and Dexter sets about looking for a more contemporary victim whose brain he can transplant into the body of the caveman. This new endeavor upsets his partner Gilmore, who had no problem abducting winos for experimentation, but draws the line at straight up murder - even if it's in the name of science, what a cad! Of course this falling out leads to a double-cross and Dexter gets his brain, from you know who, but his smarter ape man cannot escape his homicidal urges of his primate brain, and goes on a neck-snapping rampage through the city with a damsel in distress thrown over his shoulder for good measure. 

Oh man, what a stinker, Carradine and Lugosi played their fair share of mad scientists in a number of awful 40's and 50's movies but few were as rote and anemic as this black and white slice of z-grade mediocrity from Monogram pictures, one of the lowest poverty row studios. This flick is just plain awful, it's not even goofy enough to be fun, this is just plain bad with no redeeming value whatsoever other than the marquee value of Lugosi and Carradine. 

Audio/Video: Return of the Ape Man (1944) arrives on Blu-ray from Olive Films framed in the original full frame (1.33:1) looking grainy and murky, there's rampant speckling, dirt and other image issues such as flickering and poor contrast levels. Not sure what the source for this is, assuming it's a theatrical print from the looks of it, but it's nothing to celebrate regardless of the source. Audio comes by a way of a mono DTS-HD MA track, dialogue is anemic and hard to decipher at times, there's a prevalent hiss throughout, optional English subtitles are provided. There are no extras on the disc, just a generic start-up menu, which is too bad, the only reason I could fathom watching this again would be for some Rifftrax style laughs.

Return of the Ape Man (1944) is a certifiable mad science clunker from the 40's, there's nothing I can say about this yawn-inducing tale of science gone awry that would make me want to watch it again, let alone recommend it to someone else, but if you suffer from that are form of extreme vintage cinema masochism it's now available on Blu-ray from Olive Films.