Vampire Over London

One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

The plot sees Old Mother Riley foil a mad scientist—played by Bela Lugosi—and his android.

Mother Riley Meets the Vampire was the last in a string of movies featuring the titular character, Old Mother Riley, played by Arthur Lucan.

Lucan isn’t funny as Riley. At all. He shrieks and mugs his way through the entire film, like some kind of bad vaudeville act. That he made sixteen other movies based around the Mother Riley character mystifies.

The kicker here is that Bela Lugosi entertains, in an Ed Wood, so-bad-it’s-good, kinda way, but Lucan’s incessantly annoying performance obliterates any camp value.

Aside from Lugosi, the film’s only other merit is a few flashes of directorial inspiration from future Hammer alumnus John Gilling, and a mercifully brief 74-minute running time, though even that feels far too long for this exercise in patience.