Upon watching it that first time, I must admit that I came out of it feeling underwhelmed and more than a little bored. I found it to be little more than a less effective and more overdone version of Dracula, with little of that movie's creepy vibe and ambience; I thought Lugosi, despite giving it his all, as he always did, was rather wasted and not given anything to do other than stalk around, watch people, and menace them now and then; and the twist ending flew in the face of much of what had been seen in the film, not to mention how convoluted and elaborate a ruse it was. In fact, I'd felt that if this was any indication as to what London After Midnight was like, then that movie should probably just stay lost. My view on the film has softened a tiny bit after having watched it a couple of more times since then but, while I can appreciate the acting and the production values, I don't find it to be a classic at all and, if it weren't part of a nice set, I would have gotten rid of it.
1934. In a small Czech village that the superstitious natives believe is plagued by vampires, nobleman Sir Karell Borotyn is found dead, his body drained completely of blood, with two small wounds on his neck. Though it's generally believed to be the handiwork of the area's supposed vampires, Prague police inspector Neumann isn't at all convinced, nor is the coroner, and the cause of death is ultimately ruled as unknown. One year later, Sir Karell's distraught daughter, Irena, is now living with her guardian, Baron Otto von Zinden, and despite her grief, is preparing to go ahead with her plan to marry her fiance, Fedor Vincente. However, Fedor appears at the house one morning, very bedraggled, claiming to have fallen near the old, abandoned castle where Sir Karell was found dead, and to have laid unconscious for hours. It's discovered that he has two small wounds on his neck as well, and soon, Count Mora and his daughter, Luna, the two vampires believed to haunt the area, make their presence known, with Irena being targeted by them. With that, Prof. Zelen, an authority on the occult, is called in Inspector Neumann, and though he hoped the professor would help him uncover the truth of what's going on, he instead confirms the general consensus that the attacks are the work of vampires. Zelen then takes the necessary steps to try to protect Irena from the monsters' continued attacks, with Neumann and Baron Otto gradually becoming believers themselves, especially when it seems as though Sir Karell himself has returned from the grave as one. However, as events unfold, it's possible that not all is at it seems...
Bela Lugosi's appearance in the film as Count Mora is undoubtedly due to the fact that he'd famously played Dracula under Tod Browning's direction but, that's about as much substance to his role as there is, as he and Luna (Carroll Borland) have little more to do than simply lurk around, stalking and glaring at their would-be victims. Between the two of them, Luna is the more striking and creepy one, as she looks like the quintessential vampire woman, dressed in white, with flowing black hair that extends down her front, all the way to her elbows, very pale skin, and blackness around her eyes, and she really looks eerie when she gives off the piercing stare that Lugosi did so well in Dracula. (Such a performance is no coincidence, as Borland had worked with Lugosi on a touring performance of Dracula as a play and became his protege.) On top of that, when Baron Otto and Inspector Neumann see Sir Karell playing the organ amongst the vampires, you see the startling visual of Luna hovering down to the floor, her arms morphed into enormous bat wings, something you don't expect to see in a movie from the 30's. As for Mora, while Lugosi manages to look as striking and iconic as he always did when he played a vampire, he's just not quite as creepy as he was in Dracula. Thinking about why that is, I think it's because, when he watches people, the angry, grimacing faces he makes aren't as unnerving as the stoic, expressionless looks he gave in that film, as well as because he's not really a character but rather just a background menace who rarely does anything really threatening towards anyone, save for charging at Baron Otto's servants at one point or jumping Fedor in the castle near the end. Both he and Luna don't say a word until the very last scene, when it's revealed that they were just actors hired to play vampires (Lugosi speaks far more in the trailer), but that's not an issue, as Lugosi didn't speak all that much in Dracula and, later on, Christopher Lee would have very little to no dialogue when he played the count (though, that said, the lack of dialogue does add to the feeling that Mora is little more than a prop in the overall story). Speaking of that last scene, the actor who was playing Mora proves to be quite a ham, bragging about how great he was in the role, saying that he gave it his all, and that it's given him an idea for a new act, though his colleagues aren't as keen on his exclamations.
In addition to him, the Neumann and the others make use of an actor (Holmes Herbert) who, according to Irena near the end, looks and sounds almost exactly like her father (our only look at Sir Karell himself is after he's been killed, with his head lying face-down on his desk). He plays Sir Karell both as a vampire, when they're trying to scare a confession out of Baron Otto, and as the man himself during the reenactment when the hypnotized Baron relives his crime. It's not clear who this man is, as he doesn't appear to be a part of the acting troupe that the people playing the other vampires belong to, but he really seems intent upon helping to expose Otto as a murderer, going so far as trying to reason with Irena when her nerves almost stop her from going through with it. One thing I don't get about the ruse is why, about halfway into the film, there's suddenly a fourth person (James Bradbury Jr.) pretending to be a vampire. When I first saw him, I thought I'd missed something and that he was meant to be someone else who was supposedly killed by the vampires (such as a farmer who's mentioned at the inquest into Sir Karell's death to have been found dead), as I knew who the others were supposed to be. After a while, it became clear that wasn't the case, so I was thinking, "Who the hell is this guy?" He's later revealed to be part of the acting troupe with those playing the other vampires but, again, who is meant to be in context of the ruse that they're putting on to scare Baron Otto into confessing? Count Mora's undead servant (he does kind of look like a butler)? It doesn't make sense but, as we'll get into, there are a lot of things here that come off as illogical when you put them into context.
Dr. Doskil is far from the only terrified, comic relief type of character the film has to offer. Though he's played as a rather serious but frightened man, Jan (Ivan F. Simpson), Sir Karell's butler, who begins working for Baron Otto after his master's death, does have his comedic moments, like when he and Doskil are terrified by a moving suit of armor that turns out to simply have a cat caught in it. Also, later on, when the vampires begin really descending upon the house, he and Maria, one of the maids, end up unintentionally scaring each other constantly, particularly a moment where, upon hearing a gunshot, Maria screams and runs off, with Jan scrambling after her, asking her not to leave him alone. At the end of the film, Jan, as he was one of the last people to see Sir Karell alive, is revealed to be in on the plot to expose Baron Otto, though exactly when he was made a part of it is up to debate (given how genuinely scared he seemed during those earlier scenes, I have a feeling that they brought him in after all the attempts to scare Otto into confessing failed). Speaking of Maria (Leila Bennett), she's 100% comic relief; a jittery maid who, being new to the area, doesn't seem to believe in vampires, as she teases the terrified driver she's riding with for being as afraid as he is... and then, they come across Luna outside of the castle gates. Freaking out, she grabs at the driver, causing him to panic, and when they reach the house and tell Baron Otto of it, he dismisses their claims, telling them not to mention it to Irena. Maria goes along with Otto's claims that it was probably a future tenant inspecting the castle, though she doesn't seem too convinced, and after Irena is attacked, she and Jan get continually terrified by the vampires as they appear at the house. She and Jan really lose it when Count Mora charges at them down a hall (each time she sees something, she's asked if she's been drinking, since she's been known to spend some time at the inn) and afterward, when Prof. Zelen tells them to search the rooms for the vampires, they're so on edge that the sudden sound of a gunshot from Inspector Neumann firing at one of the vampires sends Maria running in a panic. There's also a moment where Zelen becomes quite irritated with her when she disobeys his instructions and leaves Irena alone to go for some coffee, which seemed to have left her open to another attack. It's never stated but it seems that Maria was hired as a replacement for Annie (June Gittelson), a heavyset maid who, after seeing the marks on Fedor's throat after his attack, runs off, screaming in fear of vampires.
There are just as many parallels to draw between Mark of the Vampire and Dracula as there to London After Midnight, perhaps even more so. If it weren't for the reveal of the whole vampire thing being an elaborate charade, you could look at this film as kind of like what Dracula would have been had that entire film been set in Transylvania. The story hits a lot of the same beats: it opens with villagers who believe that their home is cursed by vampires and try to warn travelers against journeying through the area at night; the first time you see the vampires in question, it's in the rundown, cobweb-filled interior of the castle, with shots of various creatures like possums and spiders crawling around (this is the only movie dealing with vampires from this period that I can think of that features shots of real bats along with the fake ones); a good chunk of the movie's latter half takes place in one house, with our Van Helsing substitute giving much exposition about vampires and the characters discussing what to do in drawing rooms, bedrooms, and the like (to me, those sets themselves are akin to those in Dracula), and with the vampires constantly paying unwanted visits, targeting one person in particular; and the climax takes place in the building the vampires are believed to use as their lair, akin to Dracula's London home of Carfax Abbey. All of the usual ways in which vampires operate and the methods to use against them are mentioned, although the wolfbane from Dracula is replaced with some other herb and Prof. Zelen adds that a vampire's head must be severed, along with the steak to the heart. And while Mark of the Vampire, having been made four years later, has a clearer and crisper soundtrack, it, like Dracula, has no music score to speak of, apart from the opening and closing titles and any music that's played by characters in the film itself.
Being an MGM production, the film definitely had more than enough to work with and comes off as being very classy. It's well shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe (a future two-time Oscar winner) for one, and for another, the art direction by Cedric Gibbons is superb, particularly in the nice-looking, fancy interiors of Baron Otto's house, the rundown, absolutely Gothic interiors of the old castle, and the expanses of the village square and the fog-shrouded countryside, no doubt shot on the backlot. Also, while the film is far from a special effects tour-de-force, with simple effects like dissolves used in one shot of a bat transitioning into Count Mora in a doorway, the shot they created of Luna descending to the floor of the castle's main room, her arms in the shape of huge bat wings, is quite a startling example of mattework (as I mentioned earlier, when I first saw it, I really sat up and took notice, as it was a very unexpected image). That said, the film opens with a very bizarre bit of editing: the first image is a church's steeple and the camera pans down it to reveal the singing villagers below, but the shot suddenly splits halfway, with the daytime shot of the steeple scrolling upward to reveal the nighttime one of the villagers. It's a weird visual to begin the movie with and I'm guessing it was done because they realized too late the mistake they made by not shooting the two elements during the same time of day, had no time or means to correct it, and simply had to make due as best as they could.
The film definitely seems to be trying to capture the Gothic feel and mood that Dracula had, as it's dripping with all of the trappings: creepy, fog-filled countrysides (one of the first scenes is a woman gathering herbs in an old cemetery); the interiors of the old castle being filled with large cobwebs, an old organ, and dark, underground vaults where they're believed to lurk; large prop bats flown through various scenes; the look of the vampires, and so forth. However, as classic as these aspects are, Mark of the Vampire never quite reaches the level of creepiness that Dracula did. For one, while the cinematography is well-done, it's shot in a rather typical fashion, and the attempts at dimly-lit scenes with lots of shadows don't feel as creepy as they could be (ironic, considering how James Wong Howe was considered an expert at photographing shadows). In addition, while the village square that you see during the opening does show off the film's production values, it's not as effectively isolating and creepy as the location work done for the opening of Dracula. Also, all of the nighttime exterior scenes are accompanied by a constant, low moaning/howling sound that I think is either supposed to be the wind or lowing animals of some kind, and while it's clear it's trying to create a mood, it comes off as kind of cliche and cheesy to me. It would have been better if they'd taken the approach Tod Browning did in Dracula, with there being absolute silence for the most part, save for the occasional eerie howl of a wolf. That, coupled with the issues I have with the "vampires," particularly Count Mora, and the story as a whole, makes this is a much less effective film than what they were going for.
We might as well now talk about the most problematic aspect of the film: the twist ending, revealing that everything involving the vampires was an elaborate charade involving Prof. Zelen, Inspector Neumann, and Irena to get Baron Otto to confess his guilt. First off, it must be said that, during the silent era, particularly the 20's, American horror films often shied away from the supernatural, revealing those elements to be some kind of fraud, not only in London After Midnight but in other films that do survive to this day, like The Cat and the Canary. Though he came close to playing Dracula, horror legend Lon Chaney never played a character who was wholly supernatural, as his most famous characters, Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the eponymous Phantom of the Opera, were merely disfigured human beings, and, in fact, Dracula itself is one of the few films Tod Browning directed where the supernatural was real. But, after 1931, with the advent of both that film and Frankenstein, the supernatural became an accepted part of the genre; as a result, though its twist wasn't unprecedented, it did make Mark of the Vampire feel a tad outdated even at the time. It seems like some of those involved with the film weren't too happy about the reveal, which Carroll Borland said was kept a secret from the cast until the end of shooting, as she and Bela Lugosi both found it to be absurd. Indeed, when you watch the film again with that ending in mind, so many issues come up.
First of all, this plan is so convoluted and depends on so many things going exactly right. If they wanted to scare a confession out of Baron Otto, why all this business with those actors playing Count Mora, Luna, and that other, unnamed "vampire" and the idea that they're targeting Irena? Instead, why not just concentrate on the ruse by making it look like Sir Karell has returned from the dead? In fact, why go with the vampire angle at all? Baron Otto knows he's the one who murdered Sir Karell, so why he would believe that he's returned as a vampire, which can only happen if you're killed by one, which he tries to make everyone else believe? It would have been much more effective to have the actor playing Sir Karell act like he's simply an undead ghoul seeking vengeance on the baron. That brings up another issue: how did they think their plan, as it unfolded, would scare him into confessing? They had the actors playing the vampires continually target Irena, as well as scare the crap out of the servants, whereas Sir Karell's stand-in never goes near the house but, instead, hangs around the castle. How did they expect to get him to confess if he himself was never threatened, particularly by a vengeance-seeking Sir Karell? It's revealed near the end that Irena herself was the one who suspected him after Fedor got attacked, so they figured it had something to do with her, but I don't get how her being threatened was supposed to have the desired effect. While the plan does make Baron Otto a nervous wreck, the only course of action he considers taking is either to surround the castle with heavily-armed policemen or to simply leave come daylight. After that is when they seem to come up with the plan to use hypnosis to make him relive the crime, having him go to the castle with Zelen and Neumann under the belief that they're going to find and kill the vampires while they're sleeping during the daytime. Even here, there are instances where things could have easily gone horribly wrong. While searching the vaults below the castle, they come upon the figure of Sir Karell, sleeping like a vampire, and when Zelen suggests they find the others, the baron panics and comes close to bring a metal rod down on the man. Neumann stops him just in time, with Zelen saying that if they don't destroy all the vampires at once, they're risking fall prey to their endless vengeance, but what if they were unable to stop him? They could have easily gotten that man killed! Right before Zelen hypnotizes Otto into reliving the night he murdered Sir Karell, he tries to get him to go upstairs, where they hear the organ playing, saying that he'd be able to reason with him. While it was a long shot, given how his nerves were shot at that point, what would they have done if Otto did decide to go up there before he could be hypnotized? It would have totally blown the whole scheme. And finally, that reenactment hinged upon everybody playing things out the exact same way it did the night Sir Karell was murdered. They are so lucky that nobody forgot what they did and when they did it, especially given that they're recreating something that took place one year before.
The twist also opens up a lot of gaping plotholes in regards to the "vampires" themselves. If their only purpose is to try to scare Baron Otto into confessing his guilt, why are there so many shots of them watching people while acting all menacingly and eerily wandering around the castle and countryside when there's no one around to see and get creeped out by them? And why is it necessary for them to actually creep up to and appear to feed on Irena, when she could have easily just done herself up to look like she'd been attacked and wait for someone not in on the plot to find her? Furthermore, if these are just actors pretending to be vampires, how are they able to pass through an enormous spiderweb without disturbing it, sit down in the old castle without displacing any of the dust, and apparently go from bats to their human form? You see them packing up some huge bat-wings at the end of the movie, which at least explains the visual of Luna descending to the castle floor with her wings apparently changed into them (practically, there's no way she could have done that so gracefully, but at least they try for an explanation in that instance), but how did the guy playing Count Mora pull off that transition from a bat before he charged down the hall at the servants? In addition, were those large, prop bats you see floating around now and then meant to be real in the context of the film or where they props as well? And what in the hell was that white dog-like thing roaming aroun in the background when Neumann and Baron Otto investigated Sir Karell's tomb? Was that supposed to be a wolf? Also, a farmer who was found on the road, completely drained of his blood, is mentioned during the inquest. If there are no vampires, then what happened to him? Near the end of the movie, when Fedor makes his way to the castle, he sees Luna seemingly attempting to bite Irena, prompting him to break through the window to save her. Again, why was it necessary for her to do that? They had no way of knowing Fedor or anyone else would be there and, furthermore, all it did was make him panic and attempt to save her, causing him to almost compromise the whole thing. And while Count Mora's lunging and grabbing him is undoubtedly to keep him from spoiling the plan, why did Luna hiss like a vampire when he was breaking in? You want to know why it's all done this way? Because it's part of the artifice of movies that's meant to make the audience believe that there are real vampires roaming around, that they killed Sir Karell, and they're now targeting Irena. Tod Browning's reasoning for not telling the actors about the reveal until the end of shooting was supposedly in order to keep them from altering their performances but he didn't seem to take into account, or even care about, how negatively the reveal would affect the story in retrospect. Interestingly, Carroll Borland once claimed that an alternate ending was proposed that alluded to the vampires having actually been real, with Zelen receiving a telegram from the actors saying that they'd missed their train, but Browning rejected it. If that's true then, while it wouldn't have fixed everything (if they had been real vampires, why would they care about helping to expose a murder, etc.), it would have made some elements easier to swallow.
As it stands now, the film is only an hour long, but there is evidence that the first cut of it was closer to 75 or 80 minutes, which has led to much speculation about what exactly was cut. There have been some rumors that the deleted material alluded to possible incest between Count Mora and Luna, as well as an explanation for the bloody mark on Mora's right temple being that he shot himself in the head. However, Gregory Mank, had managed to get ahold of the shooting script when writing his book, Hollywood Cauldron: 13 Horror Films from the Genre's Golden Age, said that, while such a thing was hinted at in the original scenario, it was not in the script itself and, therefore, was never filmed. Given that this was when the Production Code had really started to crack down on adverse content in films, it's very unlikely that MGM would have even allowed such an idea to make its way into the final script, let alone waste money on filming something that they would be forced to remove anyway. One thing I will say, however, is that, incest or not, there is an aspect of the film that is somewhat eyebrow-raising: Luna is always visited and "bitten" by Luna, while Mora, when he's not stalking and frightening the servants, only goes after Fedor, entering the room where he's sleeping in a very menacing way while Luna is going for Irena again. (Incidentally, when the others find him after checking on Irena, they find him to be deeply asleep, which Prof. Zelen suggests was unnatural, i.e. he was hypnotized by one of the vampires. But, since they're not really vampires, what did happen to Fedor? Did they drug him or something?) In any case, it seems like the deleted material most likely consisted of exposition and of more instances of comic relief, possibly involving Maria the maid. Though, I couldn't imagine there being more, given how much exposition is already spouted, particularly by Prof. Zelen, and the funny scenes with Maria that we already have.
Again, the film has no music score, aside from the opening and closing titles and the music and songs sung by some of the characters in the film. The opening music is nothing special at all, nor is the upbeat outro, and the local tune that the villagers are singing in the opening is fine enough but nothing special. However, when "Sir Karell" plays the organ in the castle, it is effectively forlorn and creepy-sounding and actually mixes well with the strange, atmospheric sounds that dominate the nighttime scenes.
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