This was the last film in Universal's Dracula series, a franchise that began way back in 1931 with Bela Lugosi. Here, it's Francis Lederer, and though often maligned it's really not that bad. The California desert location had a suitably eerie atmosphere, and the black-and-white photography was good. It was an interesting plot device to have Dracula posing as a refugee from the Iron Curtain visiting his American relatives. Keep in mind this was two years after the abortive Hungarian revolution of 1956, and the idea of an Eastern European émigré artist popping up out of nowhere was by no means impossible. Certainly Cold War tensions made a good background for horror, as classics like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" demonstrate. This one isn't nearly that good, but it has its moments.
Review of The Return of Dracula
