This is a tough call. Between 1970 and 1972, the dapper and debonair American actor Robert Quarry made three great schlockers, two of which were produced by the legendary studio American International Pictures. All three of these films - 1970’s “Count Yorga, Vampire,” 1971’s “The Return of Count Yorga,” and 1972’s “The Deathmaster” - are worthy of being included on the “Doomsters At the Drive-In” list, but only one can make it, so I’m going to go with my heart.
“The Return of Count Yorga” was one of the very first movies that I ever got up early for (and on a school day, no less). Way back in time, when I was still living with my old man, we had digital cable, which of course meant that with the press of the blue “Info” button, you could see which movies were on next. Before falling asleep one night during the middle of the week, I noticed that “The Return of Count Yorga” would be playing at 3:00 am the next morning. Because it was obviously a horror film, I decided to wake up early and catch the flick.
I was not disappointed, for although I had yet to see the earlier installment of Count Yorga, I immediately fell in love with the campy weirdness of the sequel. Set in the unbelievably small town of Westwood, California (which seems to be located somewhere near San Francisco), “The Return of Count Yorga” deals with the titular character’s desire for one Cynthia Nelson (played by Mariette Hartley), a redheaded teacher at a local orphanage. Cynthia makes the old Bulgarian nobleman feel love for the first time, and for a vampire, such human emotions are deadly. In the tradition of “Dracula,” the Count decides to forgo his misgivings, which in turn leads him towards an unfruitful attempt at turning Cynthia into his immortal and undead lover. Vampires: they can’t catch a break.
Rather than treat it like a standalone piece, “The Return of Count Yorga” is best appreciated when compared and contrasted with its predecessor - “Count Yorga, Vampire.” Also, in case you’re the type who likes doom metal accompaniment with your fright flicks, I would suggest Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - a British band that sounds like they’re from the same late ‘60s and early ‘70s California milieu as Count Yorga himself. And Count Yorga really is a California kid, for both of his films are set in the Golden State.
But they’re not set in the same place, mind you. “Count Yorga, Vampire” opens with a shot of the Port of Los Angeles. In that scene, we watch as a wooden box is loaded into a red pickup truck, which then carts its cargo to a hillside home that isn’t terribly foreboding by itself. The chills in this opening come from the voiceover narration (which was done by George Macready, the father of the film’s producer). The narrator tells us all about the figure of the vampire - it’s place in world superstitions, the possibilities of its tribe being real, and so on and so forth.
From there, the film transitions to a séance. Donna (played oddly enough by Donna Anders) has just lost her mother, and the séance is her way of trying to communicate with her recently deceased relative. Count Yorga, a mystic from deep behind the Iron Curtain, conducts the ceremony, and despite his strong presence, not everyone takes him seriously. The two main offenders are Paul (played by Michael Murphy) and Michael (played by Michael Macready, the film’s producer). Although Paul and Michael treat the whole thing like a joke, Donna and her friend Erica (played by Judy Lang) do not, and it is they who mostly urge on the Count.
Eventually, while the séance reaches deep into the night, Donna becomes hysterical after getting worked up by the Count’s repeated calls to her mother. When Donna finally cracks, Count Yorga hypnotizes her into relaxation. This effectively ends the night’s festivities, and all leave to go home. After dropping Count Yorga off at his new residence (which is guarded by his unsightly henchman Brudah [played by Edward Walsh]), Paul and Erica manage to get their van stuck in the mud, even though Paul notes that the ground had been dry only a few minutes before. Like any other couple in such a situation, Paul and Erica decide to shag in the wagon while Count Yorga looks on from afar. After the tryst, Count Yorga attacks the pair. He first knocks out Paul with a swift kick to the mush, then he slowly engulfs a heavy breathing Erica.
This method of approach is repeated in “The Return of Count Yorga.” Ever the heterosexual, Count Yorga, a thoroughly modern man, dispatches of his male foes with kicks or strangleholds, while his female victims are treated more gently. He only bites the girls, and when he does, he works them up to a sexual fury. There’s no better example of this than the scene where Count Yorga finally makes Erica a full-fledged creature of the night. In that scene, Erica, who has been recently attacking cats and eating a lot of red meat, presages the Count’s arrival by wearing next to nothing and massaging her breasts in front of the windy night sky. It’s a little much, and in fact it seems like something left in from a soft-core porno.
That’s no coincidence, either. Initially, “Count Yorga, Vampire” was called “The Loves of Count Yorga,” and some prints of the film still display the original title. Macready and writer/director Bob Kelljan just wanted to make a little extra cash with a skin flick, but when Robert Quarry signed on to play the vampire, he talked them into making a straight horror film. Still, there’s a sleazy glaze to “Count Yorga, Vampire,” and certain scenes (such as when Count Yorga watches two of his vampire brides make-out) feel too over-the-top, even for an exploitation film.
In order to combat Count Yorga and his continued advances on Donna, Paul and Michael turn to Dr. Jim Hayes (played by Roger Perry). A veteran of Erica’s ordeal, Dr. Hayes is the first one to suspect that Count Yorga might be a vampire, and as the film progresses, he convinces everyone else. Ultimately, the living gang attack Count Yorga’s mansion, where they find Donna’s mother (who is played by the stag film specialist Marsha Jordan) as one of Count Yorga’s many vampire brides. Since Dr. Hayes is the first to fall during the assault (he’s eaten alive by Yorga’s brides), it’s left up to Michael to not only destroy the Count and his brides (which includes Erica, his best friend’s former flame), but also rescue Donna from the clutches of Yorga’s hypnotism. When Michael corners Yorga, Donna’s mother, and Donna, the Count throws his former bride in front of the stake just before he himself accidentally runs into Michael’s wooden weapon. Count Yorga’s death is a loud one, and the protracted gurgling sounds are unintentionally hilarious.
At the film’s end, Yorga is reduced to dust, thus signaling the end of the threat. Or does it? After locking the two remaining vampire brides in a room, Michael reaches for Donna’s hand. She responds by biting him, for she has become a vampire herself. Right before “The End” roles around, the narrator returns as a cackling maniac invisibly overseeing Los Angeles’s nighttime panorama. The vampire threat is still out there, and who knows when it might return.
Well, it returned only a year later with “The Return of Count Yorga.” In the sequel, the usual horror film cliches are toned down in favor of a tongue-in-cheek sarcasm that continually plays around with the boundaries of the fourth wall. Examples include a scene wherein Count Yorga loses a costume competition to a man dressed like Count Dracula and a scene wherein Count Yorga is caught watching a Spanish language version of Hammer’s “The Vampire Lovers.” And while these are moments of intentional fun, the film also contains a few head-scratchers that possibly point towards a sloppy and forgettable Kelljan (who not only directed the film, but also co-wrote it with Yvonne Wilder). For instance, Roger Perry reprises his role as a doctor who quickly wises up to Count Yorga’s vampirism, but this time around he’s Dr. Baldwin. While Dr. Baldwin is Cynthia’s fiancé and rocks a mean goatee, he’s essentially the same character as Dr. Hayes. Hell, they both even wear the same tie. In similar situation, Brudha is present in the film despite his earlier on-screen death. Unfortunately for him, in “The Return of Count Yorga,” he has to die again in yet another unglamorous scene.
The other big question in “The Return of Count Yorga” is in regards to the Santa Ana winds. Everybody, even the Reverend Thomas (played by Tom Toner), is afraid of the winds. Not only do they nosily blow throughout the film, (“The Return of Count Yorga” is a noticeably quiet movie and it lacks even a rudimentary soundtrack), but they also seem to have supernatural powers. It is the wind that revives the Count’s vampire brides, and one unlucky orphan named Tommy (played by Philip Frame) finds out that the winds can also call up Count Yorga.
Count Yorga quickly turns Tommy into his new little henchman, and in some ways, Tommy overtakes Count Yorga as the film’s biggest heavy. After all, it’s Tommy who has to be dissuaded from killing a peer with a stone slam to the skull, and it is Tommy who plunges knives into two separate hearts (the first one belongs to the Nelson’s mute maid Jennifer [played by Wilder herself], and the other belongs to the detective Lieutenant Madden [played by Rudy DeLuca]).
Not to be outdone, Count Yorga first captures Cynthia by unleashing his now larger harem on the Nelson household. The brides break into the place and kill everyone except for Cynthia. Using hypnotism once again, Count Yorga convinces Cynthia that she has been in a car accident, and that her doctor has proscribed her an extended stay at Count Yorga’s old Spanish mission abode. Of course this lie doesn’t keep, and as the film roles along, Cynthia receives scattered flashbacks to the assault.
As a more consciously artistic film than “Count Yorga, Vampire,” “The Return of Count Yorga” includes some film school flourishes that help to amplify the film’s weirdness. In one case, after Count Yorga has snuffed out Joe (played by Michael Pataki), the boyfriend of Mitzi (played by Jesse Wells), the film’s second victim, the camera goes underwater and glimpses Count Yorga through watery ripples as a strange bit of whale noise plays in the background. In another scene, Count Yorga attacks Jason (played David Lampson), the former boyfriend of one his new brides, by running after him with his arms outstretched and his two rows of teeth showing. The vampire’s run is shot in slow motion, thus allowing for a greater feeling of unnatural eeriness to seep into the film.
But as much as “The Return of Count Yorga” changes things, it’s still in many ways a repeat of the earlier film. Both films involve the Count lusting after one woman and both films include climactic battles that take place within the vampire’s home. This time around though, in “The Return of Count Yorga,” the battle sequence is more drawn out, involves more characters (including Craig T. Nelson, who was then acting in his very first feature film), and is done with better cinematography. Also, Count Yorga’s ancient manor house in “The Return of Count Yorga” easily trumps his much humbler dwelling in “Count Yorga, Vampire.”
“The Return of Count Yorga” returns to an earlier ending however, and after Dr. Baldwin (who has just survived a hallway full of vampire brides and one vampire witch) has successfully defeated the Count with a little help from Cynthia and a medieval battle axe, he turns on his lover with his newly acquired fangs barred. The film ends with Tommy, the lone survivor, kicking a ball around in the sunshine. For 1971, this is all very dour stuff.
After “The Return of Count Yorga,” AIP decided that the horror film trend was on the decline, and so they started to back blaxploitation as the next profitable genre. In 1972, Quarry would again play a vampire, but in “The Deathmaster,” Quarry played the Charles Manson-inspired bloodsucker Khorda. Due to the AIP promotions and posters that billed Count Yorga as “the Deathmaster,” many people went to see “The Deathmaster” under the assumption that it was the third installment of the Count Yorga series. Alas, “The Return of Count Yorga” is the last cinematic appearance of the Bulgarian vampire. Speaking personally, Count Yorga is one of my favorite vampires, and although many people have overlooked or forgotten this particular pair of fangs, I will never let go of the groovy vampire who made me get up at 3:00 a.m.
Words: Benjamin Welton
