The Return of Count Yorga

In THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA, Robert Quarry reprises his suave vampire role. This time, he sets up shop in an abandoned orphanage near San Francisco. His army of female undead are fairly frightening, at one point going "Manson Family" style, during a rather -for its time- shocking massacre scene. This is actually the best part of the movie! Mariette Hartley plays Cynthia, the Count's latest obsession.

An overall gloomy, effective follow-up to the first film, it plays more like a stand-alone movie than a true sequel. For instance, there is no explanation for Yorga's resurrection, or his relocating to Northern California. In spite of this, the movie has enough atmosphere and Quarry's charisma to carry it through. Edward Walsh returns as Yorga's henchman, Brudah, as does Roger Perry as a completely different doctor than his role in film one!...

This film, while solid for the most part, reminds me of a scene from "Columbo", where one character says to the detective "an exciting meal has been ruined!". That's the way I felt about this film, and they say a poor ending can hurt a film, and I must agree here. While this may seem like a negative review, there's things that I did like, such as Robert Quarry's performance, and the creepy mansion in which he resides, with a bunch of slick dark rooms, and skinny stairs. Look for some familiar faces in a very young Craig T. Nelson, Mariette Hartley, Michael Pataki, and Rudy De Luca. On the other hand, there's Philip Frame, who plays Tommy, and he may be the worst actor I've ever seen, and I'm not surprised that he only has 1 more acting credit after this film. That kid also deserved that good smack, the little jerk. One of the most disappointing aspects for me is that Tommy doesn't get his just desserts he richly deserved, but that's all I'll spoil for you. There's more good scenes than bad scenes, but the bad ones almost defy vampire logic, and really hurt the film for me.

The Santa Ana winds howl, signalling the return of Count Yorga, who had previously been killed, The Count has a penchant for Orphans from the local orphanage, and becomes very drawn to beautiful teacher,

I haven't seen the original film for years, but I remember it fondly, and have always regarded it as one of my favourite classic horrors, this is a very worthy follow up. It's definitely a little bit cheesy at times, but if like me you're a fan of seventies horror, you'll enjoy it.

Robert Quarry is excellent as Yorga once again, his eyes were wonderfully deadpan throughout the film, but there's no denying he had a real elegance and presence.

Great scenes of San Francisco in the early 1970's, I bet that was one awesome place to be.

Some of the makeup is a little questionable as you'd perhaps expect, but surely that can be forgiven, I don't think any expectations of greatness were made when they produced this film, but overall it does the job.

Worth seeing, 7/10.

Robert Quarry returns as Count Yorga, brought back to life by the Santa Ana winds after having been killed at the end of the prior film. Yorga then begins to prey on the residents of a nearby orphanage and seems to lavish particular attention on a young teacher at the orphanage, Mariette Hartley. As with the first film, it's rather low budget, but makes up for it in enthusiasm and gore. This sequel gave more screen time to the Vampire Brides of Yorga, which was kind fun and provided some good creepy visuals, but overall this is an awfully silly film. Producer Michael Macready's father, Hollywood veteran George Macready made his final film appearance here as Prof. Rightstat and a young Craig T. Nelson made his film debut on this picture playing a cop. And not that you would notice it, the director of photography on this film was Bill butler, who's later go on to film "Jaws" and several "Rocky" pictures.

First of all, the sets and atmosphere are great. An opening grave yard is truly beautiful and spooky. Perhaps the big-haired living dead women crawl their way out of the dirt with too much ease, but style is more important than being realistic. The Count appears to have no reason to be at the boarding school's halloween bash, but he is there, uninvited, clashing with the other guests. The fact that there is a costumed vampire at the party, leads to amusing tension and the viewer knows that the Count will be teaching these people a thing or two about real vampires as the movie continues.

Cameras are placed creatively throughout the film. One strangulation scene on a dock is shot from underwater with screaming whale sound effects. Shots in Yorga's mansion utilize quite a bit of framing through doorways. In fact doors are important to the film, the house is rigged with mechanical gates that open to reveal vampires (or close to trap intruders) numerous times. Also in the house, unexplained baby dolls, but they are creepy and so serve their purpose. Sound effects include whispering voices and laughter, perhaps not original, but fun.

You could look at this film as a mess, or you could have a good time watching it as I did. I don't need every phenomenon to make perfect sence or for all elements to be resolved. I like mysterious, bizarre, artistic horror.