The Return of Count Yorga (1971) 

Director: Bob Kelljan

Cast: Robert Quarry, Mariette Hartley, Roger Perry

Synopsis: Count Yorga continues to prey on the local community while living by a nearby orphanage. He also intends to take a new wife, while feeding his bevy of female vampires.

The Return of Count Yorga is the unwanted sequel to a surprise hit, featuring what is essentially an identical plot to the original movie (with even at least one identical scene: two characters walking around different locations, discussing the possibility that there are rum doings afoot), and a final twist that simply reverses the twist of the first movie – which wasn’t much of a surprise to begin with.

To be fair, The Return of Count Yorga is a marginal improvement on Count Yorga, Vampire, if only because there is an element of humour injected into the sequel by a pair of hapless police detectives played by Rudy De Luca and Craig T. Nelson (All the Right Moves, The Formula), and an all too brief cameo by George Macready (Paths of Glory, Where Love Has Gone) as the nutty Professor Rightstat. Perhaps as funny is the fact that Roger Perry, the actor who played Doctor Hayes in the original movie, plays the same role again, although this time he is called Doctor Baldwin. That guy must have had one hell of an agent. Another unintentional piece of humour: Reverand Thomas telephones Jennifer (co-writer Yvonne Wilder – Waterhole #3) to see if she is ok – nothing wrong with that you might think, except that Jennifer is not only mute, but profoundly deaf!

Robert Quarry (Sugar Hill), as the eponymous vampire, is as suave as he was in the first, and seemingly bears no ill-effects after ending up as a pile of dust in that movie. His miraculous resurrection is never explained, and neither is that of his ugly sidekick.

There are a couple of nice touches in this movie, which suggest that perhaps the makers put a little more thought into it than they did the first: the silent screams of Jennifer when she stumbles upon her massacred family; the Count enjoying a Spanish-language vampire flick on TV before setting about his night’s work; the labyrinthine maze of corridors in the Count’s mansion along which assorted victims are chased and caught by Yorga’s shuffling, decaying harem.

Watch The Return of Count Yorga as a double-bill with Count Yorga, Vampire after having a few beers and you’ll probably have a pretty good time; watch it sober in the cold light of day and you’ll definitely regret it.

(Reviewed 6th May 2002)