Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Top billed in this horror fest is Lionel Barrymore who plays a Van Helsing like expert in the occult, specialty being vampires. Lionel is well versed in all the folklore on the undead. But he's only one of many character players in this MGM production. Mark Of The Vampire is a great film for those of us who love those familiar character faces of studio era Hollywood.Holmes Herbert a local nobleman is murdered, some say by vampires who are rumored to reside in an ancient castle. A year after that his daughter Elizabeth Allan is similarly attacked with those two telltale neck punctures and behaving real strangely.It's then that Barrymore is called in and he does solve the mystery of the local vampires. The solution almost at the last second is quite a surprise.Lionel Atwill is almost in dress rehearsal for his famous role as the police inspector in Son Of Frankenstein. But Bela Lugosi is the real surprise. That familiar voice of Count Dracula is absent up to the last minute of the film though he looks as menacing as Dracula ever did as Count Yorga. But his voice closes out Mark Of The Vampire and it's on the order of what Joe E. Brown did in Some Like It Hot.Definitely worth the wait.

This starts out looking like a conventional horror film. Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) comes downstairs to inform the servants that their beloved master, Sir Karell, has been murdered.Upstairs, in Sir Karell's office, the slumped body of the nobleman is examined. Dr. Doskil (Donald Meeks) is the superstitious and nervous one. He notes the two marks on Sir Karell's neck (not that big of a deal, maybe there before the murder), and that the body has been completely drained of blood (a very big deal, impossible to explain). His explanation - vampires. Inspector Neumann from Prague (Lionel Atwill) basically says poppycock, and goes around doing a methodical investigation, but comes up empty handed.Nearly a year later, shortly after the marriage of Sir Karell's daughter, Irena, to a young man with no real station in life or money of his own, odd things begin to happen. A local legendary vampire father/daughter team - Count Mora and daughter Luna - are spotted wandering near the old castle where the baron was murdered. Apparently the trauma of living in the same place where her father was killed was too much for Irena, so that castle was abandoned and now she is living in equally luxurious digs nearby. First Irena's husband is attacked near the old castle, but escapes with his life, then the vampires Luna and Mora start showing up and repeatedly attack Irena, and it is found that Sir Karell's grave is empty. Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) - obviously a clone of Dracula's Van Helsing, shows up and assures everyone that this is the work of vampires, that Sir Karell is now one himself, and Sir Karell's daughter is next.Unlike Dracula, there turns out to be a logical explanation for everything. Or at least there is supposed to be - I'll let you watch and find out. Just suffice it to say that this evidence of vampirism is a huge ruse backed by the police that includes just about everybody being in on the plan EXCEPT the person that the police believe is guilty. If they are wrong, they have probably tipped off the actual murderer! Now let me go through the rest of the plot holes. Sir Karell's castle that the vampires haunt was a beautiful home just a year before at the time of the murder. In just one year's time the windows are broken, the masonry is crumbling, there are spider webs everywhere, and rats and huge spiders rummage through what one can only call ruins? The actual murderer gained nothing by committing the murder - the murderer never got what the murderer wanted, and apparently didn't even try to get it after Sir Karell died. So what was the point? Plus the film clearly shows one of the "vampires" turning into a bat - with no logical explanation. Finally, there is no satisfactory answer as to how the killer removed and disposed of all of Sir Karell's blood.Why do I like it? The performances and the pace mainly. Everybody is perfect at their roles. Atwill as the stiff police inspector, Elizabeth Allan as the distraught daughter, Donald Meeks as the nervous physician, but most of all Lionel Barrymore as the vampire hunter was a delight. He took what could have been a hammy role and made it work. He would have been a great Van Helsing in the original Dracula.There were tons of scenes deleted from this film that might have caused it to make more sense, including the description of an incestuous relationship that existed in life between legendary vampires Luna and Count Mora that explains the bullet wound clearly visible in Mora's forehead that left me scratching my head UNTIL I heard the commentary on the DVD. For MGM to mainly be a studio for churning out dramas not horror in the 1930's, I think they did a good job with this one considering the limitations the production code put on them at the time.

The film deserves some points for mood setting and general creepiness. But the twist ending is a joke, akin to a Scooby Doo episode but without the buildup or humor that you expect when watching Scooby Doo.SPOILERS The plot is so full of holes that it's hardly a shame to give anything away. But here's the big one: the Baron kills the Sir Karill, apparently with an eye on eventually getting to the daughter's inheritance. He makes it look like vampires did it (with an extremely hokey scissors pinpricks and a heated glass to completely drain the body of blood???). Separate nit: You never see any neck wounds on anyone so are never sure what the heck is really happening. So to trap him, Zeler enlists actors and an exact duplicate of the dead Sir Karill to act like vampires??? Huh? To create a fear factor that will render the baron susceptible to hypnosis? WTH?? The Baron knows he – not vampires – killed the count. Vampires showing up now MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. The jarring revelation of this (plus the creepy old castle suddenly becoming clean and modern) will leave you wondering what the heck is going on.Separate nit: In re-enacting the killing, the duplicate count decides to go ahead and drink whatever the baron prepared for him knowing it's tainted. WTH? That could be poison! With the blood drained, who could tell later what killed him?] BTW, just how did Luna transform into a bat (or even have a bat flying around) if they weren't real vampires? See the Trivia that it took 3 days to shoot this shot. If you like old films for old films sake, maybe you'll enjoy this. But as far as a story, the ending will make you feel cheated and confused.

Tod Browning directed Bela Lugosi again, here playing a Count Mora, who, along with his daughter Luna(played by Elizabeth Allan) are reputed to have been resurrected from the dead, and killed a local Baron. A year later, the police Inspector(played by Lionel Atwill) and a visiting Professor(played by Lionel Barrymore) plot to unmask the murderer, and deal with the vampires... Though this film has a fine cast and some effective, atmospheric direction, the "plot", while seemingly clever and even "post-modern" in reveal, makes very little sense when you see the film a second time, not to mention feeling like a cheat, though it is amusing in a way. Not a success, but an interesting misfire.