Mark of the Vampire (1935)
It’s a very strange thing. It’s necessary to give it all away, or else what else would there to be to talk about. It undoubtedly inspired Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein — i.e. big candles (torches), a stoney basement, and a bookcase that twirls to reveal a passageway (though these may be in other horror movies; I’m no expert). And this is not a horror movie it is a comedy; except it isn’t the least bit funny. Tod Browning, who also made Freaks (see blog 42#) was obviously somewhat of a freak himself, and not a very good filmmaker (though he somehow got James Wong Howe to be the cinematographer and two Lionels — Barrymore and Lionel Atwill — to act in it). So, you think you’re watching a horror movie, and it’s pretty straightforward fare; the best thing about it is the mechanical bats that are flying at you now and then — in mists of bat fog — or whatever, they really are kinda scary, and apparently Browning was a bit too concerned about getting them right (the crew complained). There are also what appear to be number of real live bats squirming on the floor, attached to the ceiling etc. They are very creepy. And then there is Bela Lugosi and Carroll Borland as the ‘terrifying’ vampires. They mainly just try to transfix you with hilariously frigid stares (esp. Borland) and over-the-top clown white makeup, and march around like robots. It’s difficult to get caught up in it; Elizabeth Allan is quite convincing as the beautiful young heroine, and it’s fascinating to see Lionel Barrymore actually erect (not in a wheelchair) — and he’s not looking as old as usual, and is almost handsome. But here’s the trick; the vampires are not really vampires. You find this out about two thirds of the way through the movie. Just as Barrymore seems to be hot on the trail of Bela Lugosi, he suddenly hypnotises Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) and we are plunged into another film. It turns out Elizabeth Allan’s father was not killed by vampires but by Baron Otto, and this whole vampire thing is just a plot to hypnotize Baron Otto, and get him to re-enact his crime -- to prove he’s guilty. The one thing that’s not really clear about all this is why you need to hire people to pretend to be vampires in order to get a murderer to confess— perhaps that says more about Tod Browning’s oddly organised pre-frontal cortex than anything. I personally don’t believe that Browning actually knew what he was doing, I believe he made it up as he went along. I say this because apparently he didn’t tell the actors that the vampires were fake vampires until it was time to film the final scenes — Lugosi and Borland thought they were in an ordinary vampire film. And Lionel Barrymore really thought he was playing Professor Zelin, a very brilliant and earnest scholar convinced that vampires do exist — when he was playing Professor Zelin (?) who hired a fact a bunch of actors (?) to play vampires in order to ‘force’ a killer — under hypnosis — to re-enact his crime and ergo confess. It’s kinda almost maybe funny at the end, momentarily, when Lugosi and Carroll (the sign on her truck says ‘Luna The Bat Woman Theatre’) are packing up their vampire gear. Lugosi has a line with huge camp resonance: “I gave all of me, I was better than any real vampire.” One wonders of course, is Lugosi speaking about his whole career? And it brings up a fascinating question with epistemological, ontological and metaphysical ramifications, do vampires exist? Well we needn’t go there because this tacked on ending doesn’t mean anything in the context of the film; like the Freaks gimmick this is Tod Browning fooling himself that he was a ground-breakingly original filmmaker. What is interesting, to me, is that Lionel Barrymore is really quite earnest as the vampire killer, actually I found him oddly good — and he had all the appearance of an actor deeply believing his part. So did Browning’s ruse work? Did he get a great performance out of Barrymore who seems to be acting his tits off in a very stupid movie? What’s even odder is that audiences were apparently grossed out and frightened by this movie, and wrote letters to the papers about how vampire movies should be banned. God bless lousy filmmakers like Todd Browning and Ed Wood (Plan Nine from Outer Space) who suspended their own disbelief to such an extent that they were actually convinced they were brilliant. Now that’s beautiful. The Greek sophists said (something to this effect that) ‘he who is fooled is wiser than he who is not.’ I am too wise to believe in COVID-19 -- but I do earnestly envy the ecstatic complacency of those who believe that, because they wear a mask, they will live forever.
