Ah,
The Return of the Vampire. Gee, I didn't know he'd been away!
A nice little film that I've enjoyed since childhood. Low budget, but atmospheric.
Interesting facts:
How to melt a vampire: The disintegration was achieved by a plaster face casting of Bela Lugosi that was duplicated in wax by makeup artist Clay Campbell. Campbell had previously worked in a wax museum before becoming a makeup artist and used the techniques he had previously employed in creating wax effigies - e.g., implanting hairs one at a time with a hot needle so the Lugosi head looked amazingly real in close-up. Unfortunately, the heating element built into the in the plaster skull understructure melted the wax far too slowly to be used in "real time" and the effect was drastically shortened in the finished film. (It worked better in
Raiders of the Lost Ark, but they had to
really speed up the film!) Copies of this Bela Lugosi life-mask can occasionally be found for sale on the Internet. Only two face casts were known to be taken of Lugosi; the one taken in 1955 for
The Black Sleep is believed lost.
![[Linked Image]](https://i.gifer.com/BuXc.gif)
Well, this has been speeded up and "dissolved" together into one continuous shot. It sure didn't look like this in the film - though it's still pretty gruesome for its time, I'd say! (I like the way his ear falls off!)
Yep, Universal Pictures sued Columbia Pictures claiming that the design for Andreas the Werewolf was pilfered from
The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney Jr., filmed two years earlier. Columbia did not prevail, as the design was quite different - and besides, this wolf could talk and never bit anyone - although he did punch a cop during a brawl (or the stuntman did). Clearly a case of Universal barking up the wrong tree.
Reverse image. At some point while editing the film, it was discovered that the shot of Andreas's final transformation from werewolf to human did not match the shots of the actor immediately before and after, so the scene was simply printed in reverse rather than spend money reshooting the entire transformation with the special effects involved. Notice that his mole is on his other cheek and he holds the crucifix in his
left hand for this shot only.
Next week's Svengoolie:
Cry of the Werewolf from 1944, starring Nina Foch (who was Nikki in
The Return of the Vampire).
Signor V.
