"Forget your absurd old superstitions. This is nineteen hundred and thirty-four."
By the time Tod Browning made "Dracula" in 1931, he had already established himself as a talented silent filmmaker, mainly through his collaborations with the legendary Lon Chaney. In fact, it was Chaney who was originally slated to star in the production before lung cancer ended his life. Browning's "Dracula" is an essential adaptation of the story, although much criticism has been made of the picture. Some feel the film is a creaky relic of the silent era. This has never been something I've agreed with. Browning was indeed a pre-talkie director, but I find the arcane and beautiful visual language of that bygone time perfect for the subject matter. Lugosi and Frye, under the direction of Browning, both etch the iconography of their characters in stone, forever defining them. What hurts the film most in the eyes of many is the total lack of musical score. While I'm not saying it wouldn't be better with a soundtrack, the absence of one creates a unique mood, as if the film is inhabited by the silence of the past. I apologize for this introductory digression, but it was important to briefly discuss "Dracula" since it informs so much of the picture we are reviewing today. The two era's of Browning's career would meet four years later when Lugosi stepped into Chaney's shoe's in "Mark of the Vampire", a remake of the Browning/Chaney legendary lost silent "London After Midnight".
Peasants singing in the town square, a foggy graveyard, whispered warnings of vampire's preying in the night- "Mark of the Vampire" immediately immerses the viewer in 1930s horror trope heaven. Night falls and in the morning Sir Karrell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found dead. Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) arrives in town to investigate. He doesn't buy the claims of Dr. Doskil (Donald Meek), who has ruled it death by vampire.
As Borotyn's daughter, Irena's (Elizabeth Allen), wedding day approaches, her fiance, Fedor (Henry Wadsworth), arrives unexpectedly at Baron Otto's (Jean Hersholt), where she has been staying. Dishevelled, he says he blacked out near the castle and doesn't know what happened. Upon his neck he bears the mark of the vampire.
Browning directly quotes "Dracula" with Lugosi's entrance into the picture. Count Mora walks down the stairs of his castle, flanked by his daughter Luna (Carol Borland), a ghostly, sepulchral beauty. This sequence mirrors that earlier film, and both exhibit Browning's penchant for cutaways to bugs and rodents.
Mora and Luna appear outside Irena's room, and fall upon her in the mist shrouded night. Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) is brought in to inspect Irena. He zealously believes, as do the villagers, that blood suckers have been feasting in the night. Barrymore acted for Browning a number of times, and he portrays Professor Zelin as a wonderfully crotchety version of Van Helsing. Zelin sets to hanging "bat thorn" all over the damn place, because I guess wolf's bane isn't indigenous to the region.
Browning worked with noted expressionist cinematographer Karl Freund on "Dracula", and "Mark of the Vampire" sees him teaming with another legendary lensman, James Wong Howe. The scene in which Neumann and Otto visit Sir Borotyn's tomb is a work of gloomy, gorgeous unease. Later, during the film's most famous sequence, the Count stands within his castle and the undead Borotyn plays the organ. Luna descends from above, a spectral, winged night thing; an angel of Hell come to Earth. The Count and Luna haunt the film with their phantom presence, and their scenes pierce the veil to reach a place beyond the tangible, living world in the same way "Carnival of Souls" and many of Jean Rollin's work's would do decade's later.
The Professor decides the only course of action is to enter the castle and destroy the vampire's before sunrise. Otto joins him and they become trapped in the vaults as daytime ends. Drawn by a vampiric influence, Irena makes her way to the Count's abode, as well. And then...a plot twist awakens the film from it's Gothic slumber and the intruding light of rationality overcomes the narrative. If you're like me and don't wish to be shaken from the gloomy fugue of the film up to that point, then I suggest starting the film over when the scene of Zelin hypnotizing Otto occurs, thereby creating a hypnagogic Mobius strip.
It's worth noting that there is no score to this picture. In "Dracula" the lack of score is often attributed to early talkie technical limitations, but with "Mark of the Vampire", made year's later, it has to be viewed as a deliberate directorial choice. As with the earlier picture, I find it adds an element of strangeness to the overall effect.
"Mark of the Vampire" is another example of Browning's command of mood and atmosphere, and highlights his ability to interweave the beautiful and unsettling. The ending does detract a bit from the impact of the film, but it also provides a delightfully humorous self reflexive moment for Lugosi that almost makes the whole thing worth it.
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