17th February 2009

Was Bela Lugosi as good as Christopher Lee as Count Dracula? Personally I prefer the Hammer films, but then the old Universal ones are very creaky by today’s standards. The role is probably synonymous more with Lee these days, but Lugosi practically created it and was ultimately defined by it. It made him and, by the look of it, broke him as well.

Lugosi’s brief bio on the IMDb makes for pretty sad reading. You’ve got to feel some sympathy for an actor who shot to such fame in such a legendary film but ended up addicted to drugs and appearing in Ed Wood movies. But before such an inauspicious end there was further humiliation: playing second fiddle to a British music hall drag act in Mother Riley Meets The Vampire, which came my way this week.

It’s on a DVD paired with Old Mother Riley: Headmistress, probably one of the most painful British cheapies I’ve ever seen. This was the fourteenth and penultimate in the series which first hit film back in 1937 but had already existed as a stage act. It’s not a genre movie so I don’t want to devote too high a word count to it here, but some serious drugs must have been involved, and not in a good way (if there is one). Halfway through there’s a scene where screeching Irish washerwoman Old Mother Riley (Arthur Lucan) attempts to play “The Minstrel Boy To The War Has Gone” on the piano, and a statue on the wall tells him he’s got it wrong. Then the piano starts playing itself... before wheeling itself around the room pursued by Riley. And then a marching band (performed by the Luton Girls Choir) comes into the room, marches up and down, and then leaves. My, how we laughed. It’s shot on threepence ha’penny, and puns, arm-waving and alarmingly unsophisticated knockabout take up most of the meagre 70 minutes running time, shamelessly padded out with musical numbers (it’s the Luton Girls Choir again). Subtle it ain’t. But it probably did very nicely in 1950.

The much more genre-centred Mother Riley Meets The Vampire, which followed in 1953 and closed the series, is better, though it’s still terrible. It’s directed by John Gilling no less, who made Plague Of The Zombies and The Reptile for Hammer. And it has Bela Lugosi as The Vampire, a mysterious scientist and vampire who may be responsible for the disappearances of several young ladies, and is planning to take over the world with an army of uranium-powered robots. So far he has built one robot and it accidentally gets delivered to Old Mother Riley. Hilarity ensues, sort of. Early there’s even a musical song with the most primitive choreography you can imagine; one of the two dancers is Hattie Jacques. In all honesty Lugosi is the only halfway decent thing in this, and the only reason to inflict this on yourself. He gives it his all but it’s just not worthy of him.

I don’t know if these movies come up on TV these days, or indeed if they ever did. I don’t think they’ve even bothered with George Formby recently. You’re more likely to find the Rathbone-Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes, which are wonderful, even if some of the later ones are a bit on the shaky side (the first two, in period, are the best of the run). I also wouldn’t mind if the BBC showed some of the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, which I used to enjoy during school holidays about a thousand years ago (give or take 970 years). But I seriously doubt they’re going to dig Old Mother Riley out of the archives, so you’re going to having to buy the DVD and take your chances. My advice is to buy drugs instead, they’re probably better for you in the long run. (And obviously I’m being facetious here.)

Until the next time.

Richard.