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A killer dubbed the Vampire keeps London in terror, but little does
anyone know the vampire is really scientist Van Housen (Bela Lugosi), who
has kept busy doing evil experiments to one day perhaps conquer the world,
& who for some reason (it's never explained why) seend human, female
blood ... and he needs uranium, & to that end he has kidnapped Julia
Loretti (María Mercedes), daughter of a renown scientist, who has some
charts that lead to a rich uranium supply ...
But Van Houen also has a self-designed robot, but when he has the thing
sent to him, it accidebntly gets mixed up in the mail & is instead to
always bickering & notoriously penniless shopowner Mother Riley
(Arhtur Lucan), who thinks it's the inheritance she is expecting that will
save her from being evicted from her shop.
But via remotecontrol, Van Housen gets his robot back, & orders it
to also bring Mothr Riley ... whom he soon charms into taking up employ as
his maid ... while in reality he just needs (& feeds) her for one of
his experiments.
Soon though, Mother Riley finds Julia Loretty among his things, &
quickly makes scram to alarm the police. But when the police won't listen
& instead want to arrest her for drunk disorder, she decides to take
saving the girl into her own hands, only helped by fellow maid Tilly (Dora
Bryan) ... but soon the 2 women are found out & locked in.
Via hypnotism, Van Housen meanwhile finds out where the uranium charts
are, then sets a deathtrap for her & leaves to fetch the charts The
robot meanwhile he commands to take care of mMother Riley, who has just
escaped ... but Mother Riley, faced with the robot, takes the mechanical
man apart & saves Julia just in time, & just before Julia's
fiancé (Roderick Lovell) or the poice that has just been called by Tilly
arrive at the scene.
Then Mother Riley goes after Van housen and gang in a stolen police
car, on a bicycle & a motorbike, not knowing that they have already
been found out by the police, & the finale has her steering her bike
into River Thames.
Incredibly silly & somewhat childish, but nevertheless entertaining
comedy, that is centered less around Bela Lugosi (as most other reviews
& advertisments would like to make you believe) but around Arthur
Lucan playig the character of Mother Riley in woman's cloths. Mother Riley
(as played by Lucan) was a popular stage character, that also was in a
series of 16 films, starting in 1937 (though in one of these films, Kathleen Mavourneen
from 1937 the Riley character is a mere supporting role). Old
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire was the last film in the series, but
Lucan continued to portray the character on stage. & while Old
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire does pop up every now & again
somewhere, the other films of the series seem to have pretty much
vanished, probably because they don't have Lugosi starring in them - which
is a pity.
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