Mark of the Vampire
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| Mark of the Vampire | |
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| Directed by | Tod Browning |
| Written by | Guy Endore Bernard Schubert |
| Starring | Lionel Barrymore Elizabeth Allan Béla Lugosi Lionel Atwill Jean Hersholt Caroll Borland |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | 26 April 1935 |
| Running time | 80 min. 60 min. (re-release version) |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Mark of the Vampire (also known as Vampires of Prague) is a 1935 horror film, starring Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Béla Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, and Jean Hersholt and directed by Tod Browning. It is a talkie remake of Browning's 1927 silent London After Midnight with the characters' names and some circumstances changed.
Mark of the Vampire was originally 75 minutes, but was cut back to 60 minutes by MGM. Reportedly this was due to incestuous overtones - then unacceptable by the standards of the Production Code - between Count Mora (played by Lugosi) and his daughter. However, the audio commentary on the DVD makes no mention of incest but suggests that much of what was cut was comic material, particularly surrounding the maid. In the delivery scene the bike says free blood.
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[edit] Cast
- Lionel Barrymore as Professor Zelin
- Elizabeth Allan as Irena Borotyn
- Béla Lugosi as Count Mora
- Lionel Atwill as Inspector Neumann
- Jean Hersholt as Baron Otto von Zinden
- Henry Wadsworth as Fedor Vincente
- Donald Meekas Dr. J. Doskil
- Carroll Borland as Luna
- Ivan Simpson as Jan
- Franklyn Ardell as Chauffeur
- Leila Bennett as Maria
- June Gittelson as Annie
- Holmes Herbert as Sir Karell Borotyn
- Michael Visaroff as Innkeeper
- Jessie Ralph as Midwife (scenes deleted)
[edit] Plot summary
Sir Karell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found murdered in his own house, with two tiny pinpoint wounds on his neck. The attending doctor Dr. Doskil (Donald Meek) and Sir Karell's friend Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt are convinced that responsible for the murder is a vampire, specifically Count Mora (Béla Lugosi) and his daughter Luna (Carroll Borland), while the Prague police inspector (Lionel Atwill) refuses to believe. Now his daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allan) is the count’s next target. Enter Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore), an expert on vampires and the occult, who’s sent in to prevent her death. At the same time, secrets are revealed surrounding the circumstances of Sir Karell’s death.
[edit] Trivia
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- Lugosi and Borland each have only one line in the film, though Lugosi was billed high due to his drawing quality.
- This is the final time where Lugosi and Browning co-oporate in film.
- Michael Visaroff plays the part of an inkeeper. He had played an extremely similar role in Dracula, also starring Lugosi and directed by Browning.
- Lionel Atwill has a common role as in other of his films as a police inspector.
- Large South American bats were imported for the picture.
- The actors all played their roles for a straight horror movie, unaware of the twist-ending until the last few days of shooting.
- Preview reviews list a running time of 80 minutes, so that considerable footage was cut prior to film’s release. This would account for many listed actors who were cut from the final print.
- The film was banned in Poland, and censors in Hungary excised the screams, shots of bats and other gruesome scenes.
- There was a remarkable degree of difficulty to shooting the scene where Carroll Borland flies like a bat. A jockey initially boubled for her but became nauseous on the wires. A bar was placed down the back of her dress running from her neck to her ankles, but it took some time for she and the handlers to get this right. The single shot took three weeks to work (all of this for a scene where Borland is supposed to be an actor pretending to be flying).
- In the original script, Count Mora was supposed to be involved in an incestuous relationship with his daughter Luna, and to have committed suicide. After the filming began, however, all references to the crime where cut out of the script by MGM, and so the character played by Béla Lugosi is seen with noticeable, unexplained bullet hole on the side of his forehead. Because director Tod Browning’s previous film, Freaks, had been a box office disaster, Browning was unable to object to any changes made by the studio.
[edit] Reception
The merit of this film is still debated among horror movie fans due to the ending, which reveals that the vampires were in reality actors hired to help trap a murderer. Some see it as a cop-out and Bela Lugosi reportedly found the idea absurd. Others consider it a satire on the conventions of the horror film. However, horror films of the time, such as The Cat and the Canary or The Gorilla, commonly revealed the supernatural threat to be fake, with Tod Browning's Dracula being the exception.
