Jul 061935
 
2.5 reels

When Sir Borotyn’s body is found, drained of all it’s blood, superstitious Dr. Doskil (Donald Meek) declares the cause of death to be a vampire attack, and the townspeople agree.  Skeptical Police Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) calls in Professor Zelen (Lionel Barrymore) who agrees with the doctor.  Zelen fears that the new residents of the castle, Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) and his daughter Luna (Carol Borland), are the vampires and they are after Borotyn’s daughter (Elizabeth Allan).  Baron Otto von Zinden (Jean Hersholt), the executor of the Borotyn estate, teams up with Newmann and Zelen to defeat the vampires.

Mark of  the Vampire is one the the “almosts” of film history.  It is so stylish, so funny, and so filled with brilliant work, that when it falls apart, it ends up disappointing almost everyone who watches it.  Not that it could avoid that.  Directed by Tod Browning, it is a remake of his own greatly hyped, and now lost, silent film, London After Midnight, staring Lon Chaney.  In all probability, the later film is the better one, but it’s hard to stand in the shadow of a ghost.

Browning, who had learned a few things about shooting talking pictures in the four years since he’d made Dracula, filled Mark of  the Vampire with one great set piece after another.  The vampires look better, stranger, and more menacing.  Lugosi played this vampire as Dracula gone feral (it’s easy to see where the inspiration for Christopher Lee’s Dracula came from).  Borland’s Luna is stunning, and defined the female vampire.  It is said that Charles Addams created Morticia after seeing Borland’s performance.  With atmosphere to spare, this may be the most beautiful of the horror films of the ’30s-’50s.

The cast is excellent, filled with genre staples.  Lugosi and Borland are the standouts, but Meek, Atwill, Hersholt, and Allan all excel.  For a change, Barrymore doesn’t annoy me, but there is a trick to his performance which ties into the structure of the movie.  You see, this isn’t just another vampire film, but is a postmodern spoof.  Yes, four years after Dracula and there was enough to make fun of in the vampire sub-genre, though Browning particularly rips at himself.  The plot is very similar to his version of Dracula with Barrymore’s Professor Zelen a variant of Van Helsing, focusing on everything that was silly about the character the first time around.  This is a movie where everyone, including the viewer, knows the vampire story, and it’s just a matter of seeing how Browning is going to twist things.  And twist them he does.  Many people who don’t like this film object to its postmodern nature, wanting the picture to be an improved retread of Dracula.  In the end, it turns into something very different, and that makes it so much better.

But not all is well.  There are two radical changes toward the end of the film, not one.  The first is when we are let in on a character’s plan and the film shows itself to be something more than what it appeared to be.  If that had been the end of the movie, I would rank this as one of the greats.  Unfortunately, there is an additional segment dealing with hypnosis that makes most of what went on before it unimportant.  I can’t fathom why Browning and script writers Guy Endore and Bernard Schubert would strip away the previous forty minutes of the film.  With the hypnosis subplot, Mark of  the Vampire becomes an elegant and amusing curiosity.

Back to VampiresBack to Classic Horror