The bright light of reason and critical thinking skills diminish the darkness that threatens to consume this demon haunted world. Tod Browning perfects the vampire tropes he created four years earlier with his film DRACULA and utilizes another legendary DP in James Wong Howe who creates such a thick, ghostly atmosphere of dread and surreal disharmony with looming shadows, low-key lighting, creeping tendril of fog and allowing darkness, like a smothering living presence, which often fills the compositions with negative space. Though approximately 20 minutes is now lost (the violent backstory which explains the “vampires”), this quickens the pacing and propels the story to its nonsensical climax, and combined with the photography this creates the Form, the structure or skeleton of the film, that elevates this to classic status. Lionel Barrymore’s overwrought performance is just icing on the cake!
The plot makes little sense but maybe the fun is just experiencing the film, living it scene by scene as it unravels. Browning thrills in revealing the trick behind the magic, but here it seems false and disappointing. So, let me get this straight: A wealthy guy named Sir Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is murdered shortly before his daughter’s marriage to her milquetoast fiancée Fedor (Henry Wadsworth). His best friend and Guardian of his daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allen), the Baron Otto von Zinden (Jean Hersholt), discovers Borotyn’s corpse slumped over his desk. The local Doctor declares the cause of death as vampires, due to the fact of two puncture wounds to the neck and the body being drained of blood. Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) is summoned to investigate and criticizes the local superstition and demands a reality check from the bumpkin doctor.
Cut To: a year later and Irena and her fiancée have abandoned her father’s castle and live nearby at the Baron’s Estate. Soon, there are walking corpses, hovering bats, and things going bump in the night. Professor Zelan (Lionel Barrymore), A Vampire Expert, is summoned to protect Irena from being continually savaged by the undead predators and he, together with Inspector Neumann track these creatures to their castle lair for a final conflict between good and evil. But it’s all phony. The “vampires” are vaudeville actors hired by Neumann and Zelan, with Irena included in the deception. This elaborate scheme is to get the killer to confess his motive and specific details of the crime (for example, how he drained the blood) by traumatizing him when Borotyn (another actor who, by chance, looks exactly like the dead guy!) seems to materialize as a voracious vampire. A little mesmerism helps too. Which makes little sense in retrospect. Such as, Fedor isn’t part of the plot, yet he’s attacked and “bitten” by the undead and suffers ill effects. I suppose if he believes enough, he could bring about a hysterical reaction. But we get multiple scenes of a giant hovering bat turning into human form: how did these vaudeville actors fake this? This wasn’t staged at the castle; this happens many times at Zinden’s Estate. And why do the actors and Irena continue with the charade when no one else is around? To deceive the audience, of course. The abandoned castle is also slathered with cobwebs in one scene, we get a close-up of the organ woven with spiderwebs, but in short time all the detritus disappears. Also, the crime itself once reenacted isn’t believable: the perpetrator drains an entire corpse with a small drinking glass? And leaves not a drop behind as evidence? Huh?
Bela Lugosi depicts Count Mora, the local legendary (yet imaginary) vampire and sports an obvious bullet-hole in his temple. The explanation seems to have been excised from the release print due to the nefarious Hays Code enforcement. He only has one line of dialogue which closes the film and spends his screen time glaring in close-up and looking menacing. Luna (Carroll Borland) is the other undead-in-arms (or fangs) and wanders in the fog as the alluring Meta modernist Goth Girl.
Final Grade: (B-)
