I made it up to the fourth floor of the once regal Museum of Schlock. I whispered for Edwige, my steadfast kangaroo companion, but she was nowhere to be seen. I made my way over to the exhibit for Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond. Acquiring the desiccated corpse of the Zombie Schweick cost the museum a pretty penny back in the day. Little known fact: that zombie prop was an actual corpse that one of the effects guys dried out like a piece of beef jerky. The seller told me not token that secret as selling a corpse without the proper paperwork is frowned up by Interpol. He also mentioned something about the corpse being cursed, but I don’t believe in any of that mumbo jumbo voodoo horseshit!

— To be continued.

Tonight’s movie is 1971’s The Return of Count Yorga from director Bob Kelljan. I covered the original Count Yorga, Vampire back in October of 2020 when I was surrounded by vampires in an old Antebellum mansion. Those were the days. It took forever to get around to watching the sequel, but I got a very nice Arrow Home Video release of the movie so time to dig in.

We last left Count Yorga as a pile of dust on the floor after he’d been staked through the heart by the would-be hero of the last movie. Don’t expect an explanation for how he returns. There’s no black magic resurrection ceremony. I suppose a bat could have flown over his ashes and upchucked fresh blood. That worked in Scars of Dracula.

The setting is a boy’s orphanage. We see an orphan named Tommy running around and kicking his soccer ball when he stumbles upon a local graveyard. He hears Count Yorga calling for his brides to rise from the grave and these aren’t sexy vampire women. They literally look rotten. Tommy tries to scamper away, but Count Yorga appears, fangs bared. Later we see Tommy singing with the rest of the boys choir at the orphanage to the delight of various adults. I guess Tommy is probably all right.

Anyway, a costume party goes on at the orphanage. Party-goers are dressed as astronauts, Sherlock Holmes, fairy tale princesses, and—classic—Count Dracula. Yorga introduces himself to a young woman named Cynthia and he’s charmed by her beauty. He hasn’t felt these feelings for hundreds of years and he simply must have her. So naturally he sics his vampire brides on Cynthia’s family and kidnaps her to his mansion. Tommy covers for him, telling the authorities that Cynthia’s family went away to visit a sick relative.

Yorga hypnotizes Cynthia so she forgets about her family getting devoured by nasty, nasty vampires. When Yorga asks an old hag in his employ for romantic advice, she mocks him for not understanding his Brutal Vampire Nature. Later, inept heroic types try to take down the count. That didn’t work out well in the first movie. It won’t in this one.

Such a pity we didn’t get a third Count Yorga picture. Supposedly, it would have had him hanging out in the sewers of Los Angeles.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, and episode 599) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.