Year: 2022

Count Yorga and Blacula, while successfully bringing to (then) modern times a very traditional image of the undead, were kind of the last sputter of the Lugosi-esque Dracula type. After this caped vamps were basically used in comedies like Love at First Bite and Dracula Dead and Loving It. The Count Yorga movies were…

While Dracula was being made safe for kiddies--this is pretty natural, good at Godzilla's trajectory in Japan--others tried to update the concept to make it relevant for the modern, groovy age. Oddly, a few of these attempts worked. In 1970 actor Robert Quarry briefly became a thing by starring in two Count Yorga movies.…

With vampires featured on Sesame Street, they had officially been established as kid-friendly. Saturday morning cartoon/kid shows were replete with Draculas, on shows like Drac Pack, Monster Squad and Groovie Goolies. So it was only a matter of time until some big market product used a mock-Dracula to market directly to the kiddies. And…

Lugosi's Dracula was so iconic--despite appearing on screen only twice--that until recently every other screen interpretation was set against his. Only Christopher Lee came close to stealing his crown. By the '70s, though, the old Lugosi-style Dracula had become so familiar that he began to be reinterpreted as safe and lovable for kids.

Surely the first really great, utterly iconic film monster was Lugosi's Dracula. So to kick off the year, let's take a week to review alternate takes on the Bela's Count. The first was Armand Tesla, Lugosi's own, most direct take-off on Dracula, in Columbia's Return of the Vampire. Lugosi exploited the classic Dracula look…