Mother Riley Meets the Vampire

1952 "It's enough to make a bat laugh!"
3.9| 1h14m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 11 July 1952 Released
Producted By: Fernwood Productions Inc.
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

The legendary Bela Lugosi as "the Vampire" teams up with Britain's much-loved "Mother Riley" in this hilarious comedy adventure. The Vampire plans to control the world with the help of his robot, which accidentally gets shipped to Mother Riley. Through radar control, he contacts the robot and orders it to come to him, bringing along Mother Riley! But his life is turned upside down when he holds this most meddling of mothers captive.

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Reviews

Tockinit not horrible nor great
Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
Rainey Dawn My Son the Vampire AKA Vampire Over London (1952) or "Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" (original title).This is a cute comedy-horror film. We have Bela Lugosi as "the vampire" Von Housen, Arthur Lucan in drag as Mother Mrs. O'Riley and a robot controlled by "the vampire" Von Housen trying to take over the world. Mrs. O'Riley in her comical ways will try to help stop the vampire from world domination. What more do you want from a zany comedy?! Mrs. O'Riley has to give us a song and dance - which is kinda cute but certainly not the highlight of the film - I personally think the highlight is Lugosi and the robot - but that is my taste.A fun film overall.6/10
Cristi_Ciopron From his early Budapestan stage career, Lugosi must of kept a taste for light comedy, as he understood himself to belong to a Viennese tradition of gentle _divertissement; even his acting style can be understood not only as nonchalance, but also as a silent contempt for the wholly unlike style he met in the USA, and he choose to simply neglect this very different Hollywoodian style, he was familiar and accustomed to a lighter style, more fanciful, and he felt at ease in this British vehicle inspired by the music hall style.His career's decline didn't begin until after his last RKO movie. But with vehicles like this one, he hoped to reinvent himself.'Vampire …', a British comedy, offered Lugosi a role he seemed to enjoy, and he gave in return a lively performance in the style of the '30 serials' masterminds. Though presumed to be a vampire, his character belongs to a Sci Fi plot; but he may be a vampire as well, since the disappearances of the women are real, and there are several mummies in one of his rooms, and he feeds Mrs. Riley liver and steaks to get her ready. The storyline serves as a pretext for gags; the musical number is very funny.Lugosi plays a wicked scientist who owns a robot, but hopes to make many more others, once he secures himself a source of uranium; he declares that tin men are better than Frankenstein's monster. He kidnaps a girl, the heiress of a uranium mine, to get from her the map of the uranium mine, in order to use that element for making robots and weapons, and conquer the world; aside from generic mastermind performance, such as hailing the opening a new era in violence, Lugosi has one demanding scene, his 1st scene with Mrs. Riley, when he hires here, and his acting comes across as on a par with his guest's. The Sci Fi storyline, such as it is, comes straight from the '30 serials. If you have been amused, the movie accomplished its aim.Like in the music hall, the storyline isn't supposed to be very meaningful, or carefully thought, but a pretext for countless gags. I liked the supporting cast (the spectacled man in the first scenes, Frieda, the maid, the copper, the drunk gentleman and his pretty wife).The script gathers comedy, Sci Fi and nominal _vampirism; in the music hall's days, a role in drag wasn't unusual. The movie has the freshness of some British movies. Someone wrote that this is a movie you either enjoy, or you don't. I did.Nowadays audiences can mistake this music hall fun for slapstick and one-liners; but it's music hall fun, British fun, lots of gags, and audiences should acknowledge that 'Vampire …' belongs mainly to Mrs. Riley; the same goes for another comedian of those times, Askey (whose gags were much more of the slapstick genre, Mrs. Riley plays here generic physical comedy). The 1st scene, Mrs. Riley as a shopkeeper, was what the actor knew best, and also what he performed best. Some people today seem to be ashamed to watch an actor play in drag. But it wasn't unusual in the music hall days, and in much of the stage's history.
mark.waltz Old Mother Riley isn't too happy when her store order is mixed up with the delivery of a strange looking robot (think "Lost in Space's" robot as if made by children from a local junk pile) who kidnaps her and brings her to the nefarious grandson of a rumored long dead vampire. Whether or not this mad scientist is a vampire isn't really confirmed although he does sleep in a coffin, supposedly lives off of human blood, and is played by none other than Bela Lugosi. In a part which he played totally whacked out, Lugosi is simply trying too hard to be funny, and even if it is a twist from his other infrequent comedy roles, he seemed to be deeply out of his element. Arthur Lucan, whose mother Riley dominated British Z-grade programmers for well over a decade, certainly doesn't convince me that he's a sweet old lady. Even Lon Chaney and Lionel Barrymore when they dressed up in Whistler's Mother outfits, looked more authentic than Lucan does, which makes me wonder if this is why one of the characters arguing with "her" refers to "her" as a 'faggot'.Yes, the word 'faggot' is uttered here, and since Lucan doesn't look like either a cigarette or a bundle of sticks, it made me question the motives for it being utilized in the script. Lucan is supposed to be one of those funny granny type characters, a rip off from Hal Roach comedy shorts where grandma got some gusto in her girdle and went after the bad guy with fire and guts. She/he is first seen talking in a sped up cartoon like way while arguing with a customer, and when confronted by the variety of creatures and villains she encounters, is seen with the photography sped up so she/he can look overly feisty. The ending has her on a bicycle then a motorcycle bike she stole from a cop she collided with. Yes, a 1952 movie that goes back to the days of the Keystone Cops, or probably even a Roadrunner/Coyote cartoon with Mother Riley the poor roadrunner and the unsuspecting Lugosi the even more unfortunate coyote.Then, there's Lugosi's home, which looks like a Swiss chalet but has all sorts of old dark house contraptions including a swinging fireplace, secret spying panels, and of course, Lugosi's laboratory where unsuspecting females, kidnapped by him, are tied down and drugged. He's got an insane giggling assistant, a butch housekeeper and a nurse (Dora Bryan) who seems to suspect that something is doing on, but doesn't quit. Never is there any reason to really suspect that Lugosi is a vampire other than the coffin he sleeps in (just like the much better "The Corpse Vanishes") and that he wears a cape just like Dracula. Mother Riley isn't interesting enough to make me interested in her other films in the series, so if Lugosi had not been in this, I would have most likely skipped it altogether.
bkoganbing Mother Riley Meets the Vampire was the last of a series of films in which actor Arthur Lucan starred in drag as Old Mother Riley. Lucan's character was an endearingly funny one and popular in the British Isles for a couple of generations. Only his death the following year prevented more films from being made.For this final one Bela Lugosi plays the old woman's adversary, he's a mad scientist in this one who also fancies himself a vampire, he actually does sleep in a coffin for effect. Bela as Count Dracula in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein dabbled in some black science as well, but Bela played it quite serious there. He said though that A&C's spoof on horror films though it made a ton of money killed the classic horror genre which did not get revived until Hammer films started doing those again with a lot more gore. Realizing it and also realizing that Arthur Lucan would probably dominate the whole film as he always did in his film, Lugosi hams it up to the hilt as the scientist. Bela really got into the spirit of the comedy, just like Charles Laughton did in Abbott&Costello Meet Captain Kidd. It's sad though because Lugosi showed a good gift for comedy and did not have to end his career with Ed Wood films.Anyway the robot he was working on was shipped to Old Mother Riley's address in London and with his remote control device Lugosi attempts to get it back. Of course he gets Old Mother Riley with the robot and a couple of handfuls of trouble with the old biddy. By the way watch what the old woman does to defeat this prototype of an invincible mechanical warrior. Pretty funny stuff. As is the film.