RETURN OF COUNT YORGA

US, 1971, 97 Minutes, Colour.
Robert Quarry, Mariette Hartley, Roger Perry, Yvonne Wilder, Tom Toner, Rudy De Luca.
Directed by Robert Kelljan.

Count Yorga, Vampire and the Return of Count Yorga were extremely popular in 1970 and 1971. While the original is quite good, its successor was even better. The films star Robert Quarry and he made an excellent vampire. Everybody loves a scare; we like our capacity for fear and fright to be preyed on, especially in a film, from which we know we can walk out safely into real life daylight. Count Yorga Vampire is very frightening at moments, especially in the last fifteen minutes and its end with a voice laughing at the audience from a dark screen. The film doesn't take itself too seriously and so succeeds within its own limits. The Return of Count Yorga is a much more polished variety of the same thing.

1. The appeal of horror film and their conventions? Audience expectations? The film's success in using these conventions and catering for expectations?

2. The transfer of English and European conventions to America? A successful transfer? Vampires in modern America?

3. The value of this film as a sequel? Audience expectations from the original? The details of the personality of Yorga, the details of his myth? The elements of satire and parody in the presentation of the vampire film?

4. The emphasis on techniques: the playful opening with Tommy, and then the living dead arising? The contrast of the living dead with the people at the orphanage? Their wins and the speculation about the wins? The hand at the window, techniques of Yorga in flight towards his victims, the atmosphere of menace? The living dead?

5. The focus on Cynthia and audience identification with her? As a person her role in the orphanage, her fears, the fascination for Yorga and his holding her? Her fear? The ending and her being victimised?

6. The personality of Count Yorga and his style? The initial appearance, solemnity, his vampire acts, sinister behaviour, his murders, yet the irony of his watching television? The appropriate climax of a fight between the hero and the vampire? His death?

7. The film's use of Tommy and the innocent child as a sinister character? His lies, leading people to death?

8. The massacre of the family, the horde of living dead who paid court to Yorga? Their final menace throughout the house at the end?

9. The contribution of the characters of Jennifer and her being mute, her desperation to communicate? The minister and his lack of awareness, especially before his death. The doctor and the police?

10. How appropriate was the climax? The fear of the police, the doctor, the death of the brutal servant, the final vampirism? The irony of the doctor and Cynthia at the end? A successful example of its kind?