In short: Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Backlot Europe - though this time, this is meant to be close to Prague, so the proceedings do nominally not quite occur in the dream-like places this suggests.

Sir Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found dead in his house, probably murdered. However, the only wounds on his body are two little wounds on his neck through which his body seems to have been drained of blood. For most of the men around, like Borotyn’s close buddy Baron Otto von Zinden (Jean Hersholt) and the family doctor, this naturally means he has been killed by a vampire. That’s a particularly good bet in this particular case since Borotyn’s house is supposedly cursed by and with a vampire, one Count Mora (Bela Lugosi). And since we the audience will soon enough see dear old Bela hanging around doing his vampire thing, accompanied by his vampire daughter, Luna (Caroll Borland), it seems like a good bet, even though the investigating copper (Lionel Atwill), freshly arrived from Prague, poo-poos the theory as mere superstition.

He doesn’t even change his tone when Borotyn’s daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allan) is threatened by the terrible twosome. Fortunately, one Professor Zelen (Lionel Barrymore), an expert on the occult and particularly vampires is called in to help solve the little bloodsucking problem.

Which is all fine and good until the film reveals the whole vampire thing as a ridiculously contrived method to get at Borotyn’s true killer, turning Tod Browning’s Mark of the Vampire into one of the pioneers of idiot plot twists in movies that make the supernatural solutions to the plot seem downright plausible.

Not that the film has been all fun and gothic games beforehand, for while there are a handful of genuinely atmospheric and interesting scenes, mostly concerning Luna or the Count hovering dreamlike in gardens or corners (the photography by James Wong Howe is lovely), there’s rather a lot of painful comedy to get through for such a short film. This situation is not improved by the broadness with which particularly Atwell, Barrymore and Hersholt approach their roles. Given the combined pedigrees of these gentlemen, it’s highly likely this is done on purpose, lending rather a lot of credence to interpreting the film as a satire like quite a few later critics like Kim Newman do.


Of course, there’s little point to a satire that doesn’t comment intelligently on the genre it sends up – particularly if its jokes are of the painful 1930s type – and I can’t see much of an actual comment on the genre as it was in 1935 here, so even believing that’s what Browning meant Mark of the Vampire to be, I still can’t find much to appreciate in it except for Howe’s photography and about ten minutes Browning magic.