Doc Rotten's Halls of Horror: Second-Tier Draculas

In 1897, Archibald Constible & Co. first published Bram Stoker’s epistolary horror novel, Dracula, and introduced the literary world to the vampire Count: a legend was born. When the motion picture business matured, the story became fodder for film adaptation, first with F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), where the names were changed to avoid copyright, and then with Todd Browning’s Dracula (1931). The following decades would see many adaptations of the terror classic. Some of the more successful include Hammer Film’s Horror of Dracula (1958), John Badham’s Dracula (1979) and Francis Ford Coppela’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). These films gave birth to horror icons and popular incarnations of the toothy count: Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella and Gary Oldman. Not every attempt to film Count Dracula met with the same success; there have been many pretenders to the throne.

The same year Hammer Film’s introduced Christopher Lee as Count Dracula in Horror of Dracula (1958), United Artists released The Return of Dracula (1958) with Francis Lederer in the title role. In the film, Dracula comes to California and invades a small-town family, posing as their long estranged cousin, Bellac Gordal. Lederer’s Dracula is one of the first contemporary attempts as vampire folklore. It is also the first time the vampire is able to turn into a wolf. Shot in black and white, The Return of Dracula also has the surprise insert of color as blood runs red from the wound of an impaled vampire bride, a trick William Castle would perform more famously a few years later in The Tingler (1959) staring Vincent Price.

John Carradine would portray Count Dracula, or similar vampires, numerous times and for numerous studios. He started playing the Count for Universal in the House of Frankenstein (1944). Two decades later, he would take an infamous turn at the myth with William Beaudine’s Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966). In the old west, Carradine’s Count Dracula makes a play for Billy the Kid’s fiancée, Elizabeth Bently. In this weird west tale, Billy the Kid turns hero and saves his girl from the clutches of the vampire king. Billy the Kids vs. Dracula is a bizarre mess of a movie and sinks Dracula to a sad low. The film was often double-billed with Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.

Japan takes a stab at the count with Lake of Dracula (1971) casting Mori Kishida as Dracula, or at least some confusing descendent of the vampire legend. This Count is suitably more feral given the decade it was created, but the European lore mixed with modern Japan doesn’t always work. This film is the second in Director Michiro Yamaoto's vampire trilogy, the other two being Vampire Doll (1970) and Evil of Dracula (1974).

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