favorite movie #61 - halloween edition: the return of dracula

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #61 - The Return of Dracula (1958) - Another film that impressed and scared me as a kid was The Return of Dracula, with Francis Lederer starring as the bloodthirsty count. The vampire film ditched the usual Transylvanian setting for bright, suburban California. I originally saw the film on my family's black and white television, so didn't know about the color insert scene until many years later. I think what scared me most was the sheer banality — Dracula could be someone posing as an uncle and living upstairs. He could gain access to your bedroom at night if you were so foolish to sleep with the window open. The last scene was pretty gruesome, too - I probably hadn't seen anything like it at the time. Lederer is effective, too —  just the right amount of charm and outsider-ness to make the squeaky clean characters find him off-putting. Bonus — the whole, remastered film can be viewed on YouTube.

not enough witches or discoveries ...

Check out my review of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness on BlogHer, in the BlogHer book club!

An excerpt from my review:

It's pretty bad when the most likable character in a book that is supposed to be a mystical love story between a powerful witch and an enigmatic vampire is a house. An enchanted witch's house. But the house seems to have more going on emotionally than the annoying heroine, Diana Bishop, of A Discovery of Witches, debut novel by history scholar Deborah Harkness."