Ol' Bela is back!
Near the close of World War I, vampire Armand Tesla (Bela Lugosi), meets his end when staked through the heart by two members of Britain's upper crust, Professor Walter Saunders (Gilbert Emery) and brilliant scientist Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort). As the undead suckface falls, Andreas (Matt Willis), his werewolf slave, is freed from the curse of lycanthropy and starts anew as lab assistant to Lady Jane. The narrative then skips ahead by twenty-four years and we find ourselves in England during the Nazi blitz in World War II. German bombs decimate the crypt where Tesla lays, and two unsuspecting gravediggers remove the stake from the vampire's heart, believing the corpse to be unusually well-preserved, though apparently transfixed with shrapnel from the bombing. In no time Tesla is at it again, restoring Andreas to his prior state of mind-controlled werewolfery and seeking victim to feed upon. He sets his sights on avenging himself against Lady Jane by putting the bite on her son and on the son's fiancee, but Lady Jane is absolutely not your typical B-movie damsel in distress. She knows vampirism is real, ans she knows how to take care of business, so no pussyfooting around for her...
This Paramount effort came out during the heyday of the Universal monster cycle, and for all intents and purposes it looks and feels like a lesser entry from that run. Though not as smooth and eerie as the character that made him famous, Bela Lugosi's Armand Tesla is pretty much Count Dracula in all ways except for the name, so you'd be forgiven for mistaking this as a proper sequel to 1931's DRACULA.
Tesla's
slave, Andreas, is an unusual take on the werewolf. When in wolf form,
Andreas wears a suit, is perfectly lucid, and speaks articulately. He's
no ravening moors-stalking engine of carnivorous savagery, and instead
comes off as just another flunky, only very toothy and extra-hirsute.
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