Stupid bad Internet connection. Anyway, here’s today’s entry, about 12 hours late.
This fairly obscure film is sort of interesting because it does what the Night Stalker TV movie did with far greater success; updating gothic vampires and bringing them to modern day America. While Universal brought it’s monsters to the modern day, it was always in fairy tale-ish settings, like the Bayou or the fog-drenched plantation house in Son of Dracula. This film brought the Count to middle class California–it’s really sort of a riff on Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (a great film)–and pointed the way for a lot of horror films to come, including titles made today.
Amusingly, again because of the Shadow of a Doubt thing, the film has similar plot elements to Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, with the Count assuming the identity of the uncle of a pretty young thing he intends to make his bride.
The actor reprised the role of Dracula in a Night Gallery episode adapted from a Manley Wade Wellman story.
