Mother Riley Meets the Vampire [Vampire Over London] ** (1952, Arthur Lucan, Bela Lugosi, Dora Bryan) – Classic Movie Review 5645

Producer-director John Gilling’s silly but harmless 1952 British comedy horror Mother Riley Meets the Vampire [Vampire Over London] stars Arthur Lucan as Old Mother Riley who puts on his drag glad-rags for the final time in this 15th and last in the Mother Riley series of comedies.

Val Valentine’s junior-league screenplay does its best to provide simple slapstick laughs, as its old lady heroine battles to thwart evil Vampire Von Housen (Bela Lugosi) and his rotten radar-controlled robot.

The Vampire has come to England to complete his experiments to control the world, but the robot he ordered is delivered by mistake to Mother Riley. The Vampire uses his radar control to transport the robot and Mother Riley to his side.

It is not really very funny, more just a bit sad to see Lugosi given such crass material. But Lucan carries on regardless and the vintage comedy star support cast (including Dora Bryan, Richard Wattis, Hattie Jacques, Graham Moffatt, John le Mesurier, Ian Wilson and Dandy Nichols) provides a slight compensation. It is good that Moffatt turns up as a yokel, Wattis is a copper (P.C. Freddie) and Wilson is the butler (Hitchcock).

Poor Bela! He made this while he was in England in 1951 to play a six-month tour of Dracula, which started his American career in 1927 when he appeared as Count Dracula in the Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel. He played other vampires in Mark of the Vampire (1935), The Return of the Vampire (1943) following Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the only two times he played Dracula in a feature (though made a gag cameo as Dracula in a 1933 Hollywood on Parade short).

Also in the cast are Philip Leaver, Marîa Mercedes, Roderick Lovell, David Hurst, Judith Furse, George Benson, Bill Shine, David Hannaford, Charles Lloyd Pack, Cyril Smith, Arthur Brander, Peter Bathurst, Tom Macaulay and Laurence Naismith.

It is made by Fernwood Films Ltd Productions at Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, released by Renown, shot in black and white by Stan Pavey, scored by Linda Southworth and designed by Bernard Robinson.

It is the last film of Lucan, who made 17 movies, all as Mother Riley. By 1951, Lucan (Arthur Towle) and his wife and co-star Kitty McShane had separated and divorced, and she does not appear in Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, though he continued to support her. He was battling a large tax debt in 1954 when he unexpectedly collapsed and died in a Yorkshire theatre before his stage show on 17 May 1954. The Mother Riley series started in 1937 with Old Mother Riley.

It is also known as Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, or Vampire Over London, and also My Son the Vampire, the title of a recut American version released in 1963 and featuring an introductory segment with a song by US comedian Allen Sherman.

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com