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The Return of the Vampire
Release Date	January 1, 1944
Genre	Vampires in Movies Horror
Director	Lew Landers Kurt Neumann (uncredited)
Screenwriter	Griffin Jay Randall Faye 9additional dialogue)
Stars	Bela Lugosi Frieda Inescort Frieda Inescort Miles Mander Roland Varno Matt Willis
Studio	Columbia Pictures

The Return of the Vampire is a 1944 movie starring Bela Lugosi.

Columbia decided to create a horror film to compete with the success Universal was having. Hiring Universal vampire star Lugosi to play a vampire seems like a good step. Adding a werewolf made sense: Universal had recently made Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. However, writer Griffin Jay and director Lew Landers managed to bring a few twists to the movie.

The first interesting element was to set it in the (then) present day and allow current events (World War II) to play a significant role. Secondly, they took advantage of the mythology. If vampires are immortal, the story can be set in more than one time frame.

Summary

Part 1 takes place in 1918, when the vampire (Armand Tesla, played by Lugosi) is detected and defeated. Rather than a wooden stake, an iron stake through the heart ends the reign of terror. It also ends the spell he has over his assistant, who is cured of being a werewolf.

Part 2 jumps forward to the next war. An air strike by the Nazis unearths the vampire. Workers who find him think that the stake is a piece of shrapnel, and remove it. The vampire recovers. The werewolf reverts. The vampire assumes the identity of a scientist, and the terror begins again.

Cast

• Bela Lugosi as Armand Tesla
• Frieda Inescort as Lady Jane Ainsley
• Nina Foch as Nicki Saunders
• Miles Mander as Sir Frederick Fleet
• Roland Varno as John Ainsley
• Matt Willis as Andreas Obry