The Return of Count Yorga

The best part of sequels is that once upon a time they didn't have to justify the return of someone who died in a prior movie. Like The Return of Count Yorga. Yes, he perished at the end of Count Yorga, Vampire.

But he's back, still rocking the red smoking jacket.

This time, he's got his sights set on a pre-James Garner Mariette Hartley as Cynthia Nelson, a teacher at an orphanage.

One scene of note is where Yorga's followers attack Cynthia's family- it's reminiscent of the Sharon Tate killings, something still in the public conscious just two years after the fact.

There's a cute touch when Yorga's watching television and an Italian language version of Hammer's The Vampire Lovers is on.

I'm not really keeping track, but this is the third film Michael Pataki has been in for the project- Grave of the Damned and The Bat People are the two others.

One more thing- Yorga get's a special shout out in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula short story "Castle in the Desert: Anno Dracula 1977," as Khorda, the Deathmaster, formerly known as General Iorga of Dracula's Carpathian Guard. In the Anno Dracula series, Newman takes figures from history and mixes them with characters from pop culture (literature, movies, television) and builds a world where Van Helsing and company weren't triumphant at the end of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but where Dracula becomes consort to Queen Victorian and vampires rule the world- sort of. Anno Dracula, the first book in the series, is being reissued in March 2011 by Titan Books.