How bad is it? It's a rather poor comedy.
Should you see it? Only if you need to see every Bela Lugosi film.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds."
Monday, June 9, 2014
My Son, the Vampire (1952)
aka Vampire Over London, aka Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire
How bad is it? It's a rather poor comedy.
Should you see it? Only if you need to see every Bela Lugosi film.
Arthur Lucan played the drag character of Irish washer woman Old Mother Riley 15 times in films (this was the last), roughly one per year since 1937. The film didn't get released in the U.S. for 11 years, when it got a new title and a theme song by Alan Sherman (I saw the original British version and heard Sherman's song separately), but it still didn't work with American audiences, as most of the humor was very British. In this, Bela Lugosi plays a man who thinks he's a vampire, but is just a criminal with a dissembled killer robot that gets misplaced. His plans get disrupted by the unintentional meddling of Mother Riley. I was surprised how much of the shop scene looked like a scene in "Down Among the Z Men," the film that gave this blog its title.
How bad is it? It's a rather poor comedy.
Should you see it? Only if you need to see every Bela Lugosi film.
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This is a hard movie to get through (it took me four tries). It is, however, quite well made, with good sets and lighting. Some settings reminded me of a Hammer film, not too surprising considering that the production designer was Bernard Robinson before he became a key team member at Hammer.
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