{"id":83042,"date":"2024-10-31T17:12:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T22:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=83042"},"modified":"2024-10-31T11:13:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T16:13:15","slug":"have-you-seen-the-return-of-the-vampire-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=83042","title":{"rendered":"Have You Seen&#8230;The Return of the Vampire (1943)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By  JOHN BILLINGER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Halloween. A time of watching spooky movies, and if you want a classic black and white spooky movie, this one is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How about this lineup for a horror film: Werewolves, Vampires, and Nazi Bombs, oh my! That\u2019s the basic concept of 1943\u2019s \u201cThe Return of the Vampire.\u201d An old-school horror B-movie? Sure. But it does have Bela Lugosi (in a role not unlike the classic Dracula he\u2019s best known for), and he\u2019s great no matter what he\u2019s in. Oh, and there is a werewolf too. But he\u2019s kind of bland. More of a Jekyll and Hyde type. As for the Nazi Bombs, well, they\u2019re as advertised. Now you\u2019re probably wondering just what is this film about.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, in 1918, during the closing days of WWI, vampire Armand Tesla (played by Bela Lugosi) is stabbed and killed by Professor Saunders and his daughter. Tesla has a werewolf assistant named Andreas, who is soon in the custody of the Saunders family. Over the course of the next 25 years, they basically rehabilitate him, and turn him into a normal citizen. He is no longer a werewolf and not under the power of Tesla. Unfortunately for everyone, during a Nazi bombing raid during the Second World War, the stake is removed from Tesla\u2019s body, bringing him back to life. Andreas soon rejoins his old master, becomes a werewolf again, and it\u2019s up to the Saunders family to put a stop to Dracul-I mean Tesla\u2019s reign of terror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It has been long suggested that this was either meant to be a Dracula adaptation or an unofficial sequel to Dracula. Watching it, you can make some connections. Armand Tesla is obviously Dracula, Andreas is Reinfield, Dr. Saunders is Van Helsing, and so on. Even the title sounds like a sequel or some type of continuation. But no, officially, this is a standalone film. That\u2019s fine with me, though. You get what you want here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Return of the Vampire (1944) - The Vampire Reborn Scene (4\/10) | Movieclips\" width=\"790\" height=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9TIfr9Q-H-c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Bela Lugosi as Tesla the vampire is as great as he was in \u201cDracula.\u201d He didn\u2019t play Drac on film that often. Only twice. He played a similarly dressed character in 1935\u2019s \u201cMark of the Vampire,\u201d but that character was merely an actor pretending, so it doesn\u2019t count. This makes for a good compensation prize for those who want more Lugosi vampire action. The werewolf, as stated earlier, is kind of lame, he\u2019s got more in common with Renfield or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he\u2019s completely serviceable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where this film really shines is in the visuals. All the shots have the gothic atmosphere you\u2019d expect from a Universal film from the same time period. You could probably fool someone into thinking it was a long-lost Universal monster film. It\u2019s that good. Plus, there\u2019s a whole lotta fog. For whatever reason, the director was like, \u201cYeah, this is good, but I want more fog. No, no, no, more. Smoke them out.\u201d It might be a bit over-obsessive, but it adds to the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, if you want a spooky, somewhat hokey movie for the Halloween season, \u201cThe Return of the Vampire\u201d is some good material to watch. It may not be a major classic, but it\u2019s definitely a fun watch, especially for this time of year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By JOHN BILLINGER Tiger Media Network Halloween. A time of watching spooky movies, and if you want a classic black and white spooky movie, this&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":83043,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,3505],"tags":[14808,14981,15973],"class_list":["post-83042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-local-movies","tag-have-you-seen","tag-john-billinger","tag-the-return-of-the-vampire"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Return-of-the-vampire.jpg?fit=512%2C494&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83044,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83042\/revisions\/83044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/83043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}