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The
Return Of Count Yorga
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6
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7 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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The
undead king of early 1970s drive-ins is back... as MGM finally
gets 'round to releasing the popular follow-up to Count
Yorga, Vampire on DVD. Unusual for a sequel (especially
horror films), this one's better than the original.
The dapper bloodsucker (Robert Quarry) was
destroyed at the close of the first film, although the ending
certainly wasn't a happy one for its human protagonists. The
sequel offers no explanation as to how or why Count Yorga once
again stalks the living. Even his hulking mortal servant Bruddah
(Edward Walsh) is back, uglier than ever, despite having been
killed off. In The Return Of Count Yorga
the Count has relocated from Los Angeles to the San Francisco
Bay area, purchasing a huge Spanish-style manor house near an
isolated orphanage. One of the boys living at the orphanage,
young Tommy (Philip Frame), is playing in the woods bordering
Yorga's house
at sunset, naturally
when a bevy of female vampires claw their way up from beneath
the earth of an abandoned cemetery. Tommy flees in terror but
runs smack dab into the Count himself.
That night a costume
ball/fundraiser is held at the orphanage. (A rather pitiful
gala, I might add; all of eight or nine people are in attendance.
Perhaps some of them have very deep pockets.) Count Yorga appears
in full regalia, cape and all, to blend in with the guests,
although another guy dressed as Dracula actually wins the Best
Costume contest. Yorga is immediately smitten with a pretty
blonde teacher working at the orphanage, Cynthia Nelson (Mariette
Hartley), buttering her up with smooth compliments despite the
presence of her fiancι, psychiatrist Dr. David Baldwin (Roger
Perry, who played pretty much the exact same character in the
first Yorga film). The Count also takes the opportunity to grab
a quick snack, biting but not draining one of the other
female attendees. (He eventually adds the woman to his undead
harem.)
Yorga is anything but hesitant
when it comes to his goals, and he wants Cynthia by his side.
So he dispatches his vampire brides to kidnap her. They attack
the Nelson home like rampaging zombies in a George Romero film,
slaughtering Cynthia's parents and vampirizing her sister. The
boy Tommy, who's also at the house spending the night, is not
touched
he's already under the Count's evil sway. Cynthia
is carried to Yorga's mansion where she's hypnotized to forget
the horrific events just witnessed. Telling her that her family
had to leave town suddenly, that she's been placed in his care
to recuperate from a vague illness, Yorga starts laying on the
charm. Meanwhile, the Nelson's mute housekeeper Jennifer (Yvonne
Wilder, who co-wrote the script) discovers the dead bodies and
runs to kindly Rev. Thomas (Tom Toner) at the nearby orphanage.
By the time she returns to the crime scene with the clergyman,
Dr. Baldwin and two police detectives (Rudy De Luca, Poltergeist's
Craig T. Nelson), the bodies have disappeared and all signs
of the attack erased. To Jennifer's astonishment Tommy lies
his little ass off about what happened. He says the Nelsons
left due to a family emergency. The cops don't believe the anguished
housekeeper but Baldwin, concerned about his missing fiancée,
is suspicious. He thinks the new neighbor, Count Yorga, might
know something...
Wildly uneven, The
Return Of Count Yorga certainly
has its share of flaws. Played deadly serious for the most part,
the film takes an unwarranted U-turn into comedy (courtesy of
the wisecracking cops) during the climax. Much of it doesn't
make a whole lot of sense... As mentioned above, Bruddah (who
is human, not one of the undead) is alive and well without any
explanation despite having been killed in the original. And
why are the gals of Yorga's vampire harem buried in that old
graveyard at the beginning of the film? Does Rev. Thomas expect
conversation when he telephones Jennifer
who is mute
to find out what's going on? Why is Yorga so infatuated with
Cynthia? She's attractive, sure, but not All That and a Bag
of Plasma. What does he plan to do with her after spiriting
her to his mansion? He doesn't bite Cynthia; instead he professes
love for her, having wiped out her entire family just to bring
her under his control. Has the Count
a real sadist in the first movie
gone soft?
In the aggregate it doesn't really matter. For a drive-in flick
Return gets the job done with a
greater sense of style (and a slightly larger budget) than its
predecessor.
The story is
basically a retread of the first Yorga film only better staged.
Director Bob Kelljan (the original Count
Yorga, Scream, Blacula,
Scream) establishes a surprising amount of atmosphere using
just a few basic locations and off-kilter shots, making especially
good use of the sprawling mansion subbing for Yorga's lair.
The vampiress' attack on the Nelson home is staged like something
out of Night Of The Living Dead; even
with the dimestore Halloween costumes it remains an effectively
creepy scene. (Absolutely scared the crap out of me as a kid,
in fact.) It's Robert Quarry, of course, who ultimately sells
the film, turning in another solid performance as the urbane,
sardonic title villain. He certainly had the potential to grasp
the vampire baton and run with it as America's answer to Christopher
Lee. Alas, after his second outing Count Yorga would never return.
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Return Of Count Yorga comes to DVD
as part of MGM's latest Midnite Movie releases, the Side
B feature of a double bill "flipper" disc pairing it
with 1970's Count Yorga, Vampire.
Side A's presentation of Vampire
is exactly the same as the single-film edition issued in 2001.
If you don't already own that disc then this double feature
DVD is an excellent value. Return
looks terrific (1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced) with a solid mono audio
mix. The theatrical trailer is included as an extra. EC's rating
of "7" for the DVD factors in its value as a double feature.
9/01/04 |
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