Tod Browning’s Mark of the Vampire

We always assumed vampire legends were silly superstitions, but in the age of coronaviruses, it may very well be that an aversion to bats was a survival instinct hard-wired into our DNA. Bela Lugosi and Tod Browning did more than their share to stoke those primordial fears. Four years after the classic Dracula, they returned to the blood-sucking well with Mark of the Vampire, which airs on TCM this Friday.

Sadly, Sir Karell Borotyn dies one fateful night, but the only apparent cause are two small bite marks on his neck. You know what that means. So does the cowardly Dr. Doskil, but Inspector Neumann of the Prague police thinks all the rustic locals’ vampire talk is just a bunch of rubbish, even though the recently deceased Count Mora and his equally dead daughter Luna have been seen prowling around. However, he starts giving the rumors some credence when both Borotyn’s daughter Irena and her fiancé Fedor Vincente suffer similar bite marks. The Van Helsing-like Prof. Zelen confirms their vampire suspicions and starts organizing a defensive campaign (“bat-thorn” instead of wolfsbane).

Mark has a twist that a lot of fans absolutely hate, but it has been ripped off anyway in dozens of subsequent films. It is not nearly as elegant as the original Dracula, but Mark still has plenty of entertaining skulking through graveyards. The great James Wong Howe’s black-and-white cinematography has the classic atmospheric look that made the monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s so darn cool. This was actually a case of Browning remaking himself, but his original silent film, London After Midnight (starring Lon Chaney) is now considered lost.

Obviously, it is shame that we are missing out on Chaney Sr. in a horror setting, but the cast of Mark also includes several legends. Lugosi was probably frustrated by his lack of dialogue, but his scenes with Carroll Borland (playing Luna) are arguably just as iconic as the original Dracula (you can clearly see their influence on Plan 9 from Outer Space, for what that’s worth). Lionel Atwill (who later tried to enforce the law with monsters on the loose as the Inspector in Son of Frankenstein) is rock solid playing the skeptical Neumann.

Simian Verite: Murders in the Rue Morgue

It basically started the time-honored tradition of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that bear at best a minimal resemblance to the stories whose titles they have appropriated (Roger Corman was slavishly faithful, by comparison). C. Auguste Dupin is considered the original template of the mercurial, ambiguously anti-social deductive genius that later spawned classic sleuths like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Nero Wolfe. However, Universal turned him into a love-struck medical student. Clearly, the studio had little understanding of the story’s evergreen appeal, beyond the murderous orangutan. Yet that would be enough to assure classic status for Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (trailer here), which screens during Anthology Film Archive’s recently launched Simian Vérité film series.

The carnival has come to 1840s Paris, amid the turbulent era of the “July Monarchy,” but you wouldn’t know it from carefree Pierre Dupin, his sweetheart, Camille L’Espanaye, and their shallow friends. Dr. Mirakle causes a sensation with his trained gorilla Erik and his scandalous lectures in support of Darwinism. L’Espanaye also makes a strong impression on Mirakle, and an even more so with Erik. Dupin can tell there is something off about Mirakle, but he is distracted by the mysteriously murdered women, whose corpses start turning up in the morgue (his favorite late night hang) shortly after the arrival of the carny.

Typically, the lily-white romantic interests are the weakest link in vintage Universal monster movies, but Leon Ames (then billed as Leon Waycoff) and Sidney Fox are especially awkward as Dupin and L’Espanaye. Not for one second do we believe his foppish act and her childish state of arrested development could ever be remotely compatible.

On the other hand, Bela Lugosi and the killer monkey go together like love & marriage and a horse & carriage. King Bela was at the peak of his popularity at this point—and he gives fans the arched eye-brows and diabolical line-deliveries they craved. Yet, he also seems genuinely hurt inside when L’Espanaye stands him up.

Almost as important as Lugosi was the presence of cinematographer Karl Freund, who shot The Golem and Metropolis in Germany and would soon helm the original classic Mummy. He helps Florey decant some of the old German Expressionist magic. The Parisian rooftop scenes remain particularly evocative, in a dark fable-ish kind of way.

It is always a nostalgic joy to watch Lugosi at the peak of his scenery chewing powers. Despite the drippiness of its romantic leads, it remains a fascinating example of the homicidal ape sub-genre. Arguably, it has yet to receive proper due for its lasting influence. Frankly, we can see echoes of Erik dragging the swooned L’Espanaye as he scales walls and leaps from building to building in the mack daddy of all killer ape movies, King Kong, which released the following year—not to mention the iconic Robot Monster.

Nonetheless, as Poe non-adaptations go, the cult classic The Black Cat, also starring Lugosi, is far superior. Still, it is good clean fun watching the great Hungarian actor and a dude in a gorilla suit terrorize Paris. Recommended for old school Universal fans, the one-hour Murders in the Rue Morgue screens with the amusing but fannish short doc, I Created Lancelot Link, featuring a reunion of the chimp show’s creators this Monday (6/19) and the following Monday (6/26), as part of Simian Vérité at Anthology Film Archives.

Extraordinary Tales: GKIDS does Poe

Finally, the two greatest Draculas are together in one film. It is a posthumous collaboration between Bela Lugosi and Sir Christopher Lee, but that is all the more fitting. Many of the greatest voices in horror cinema bring to life five classic Edgar Allan Poe stories in Raúl García’s Extraordinary Tales (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Between 2004 and 2014, former Disney animator García unleashed his inner fanboy producing a series of Poe short films that paid tribute to the dark bard of Baltimore, as well as other icons of classic horror cinema and graphic art. They are now finally collected and connected by a framing device naturally set in a gothic cemetery. Poe’s spirit now resides in a raven, but an anthropomorphized Lady of Death tries to convince the writer to accept his final resting, by using his own stories as grim object lessons.

The figures of García’s interstitials and the first tale, The Fall of the House of Usher, are a bit blocky, but the backgrounds are wonderfully atmospheric. Usher is also stratospherically elevated by the late, great Sir Christopher’s drippingly macabre narration. He sounds as sonorously sinister as ever, which make Usher a delight.

However, for classic monster fans, nothing can top García’s The Tell Tale Heart, which was Oscar short-listed as an animated short in 2005. Using a non-professional proof-of-concept recording taped by Lugosi’s agent in the late 1940s when he was trying to package a Poe-themed stage show, García truly taps into the psychologically perverse essence of the story. Rather than phoning it in, Lugosi fully draws out all the twisted drama. With all its hisses and pops, it rather appropriately sounds like some sort of ghostly spirit broadcast. Visually, García’s stark black & white animation, conceived as an homage to Argentine comic artist Alberto Breccia, is also absolutely arresting.

Julian Sands does not exactly have the same stature, but the Warlock and Arachnophobia actor is certainly no stranger to a horror movie set. His narration for The Fact in the Case of M. Valdemar is right on the money, yet he is completely up-staged by García’s visuals. In this case, he renders the story in a style that evokes the pulpy look of EC Comics. It is definitely cool looking, but the master touch is the mesmerist narrator, who bears a surely not coincidental resemblance to Vincent Price.

Frankly, Guillermo del Toro is not a natural born voice-over artist, but the Mexican auteur sounds duly authentic narrating arguably the most faithful English language adaptation of Spanish Inquisition-set The Pit and the Pendulum to date. In fact, the entire film remains remarkably true to Poe’s source material. The expressionism of Pit also makes it one of García’s most sophisticated looking and psychologically engaging tales.

With The Masque of Red Death, Extraordinary ends on a mostly wordless high point. Roger Corman himself, the self-made mogul who helmed all the great Poe adaptations starring Price, has only one line of dialogue as Prince Prospero, but it is worth the wait. Instead of chatter, García builds tension and foreboding by showing the silent figure of death glide through the Prince’s hedonistic bacchanal.

García has truly assembled a horror connoisseur’s dream team by incorporating the work of Poe, Lugosi, Lee, Corman, del Toro, and sort of Price and Breccia into one enormously satisfying film. Even though it is distributed by GKIDS, Extraordinary Tales might be too intense for youngsters, but kids old enough to stay up for Corman classics on the weekends should enjoy its spookiness. García maintains an impressively eerie mood, but older fans might just get caught up in nostalgia for our old midnight movie idols. Either way, it is thoroughly entertaining film. Highly recommended for horror and animation fans, Extraordinary Tales opens this Friday (10/23) in New York, at the IFC Center.

The Restored White Zombie: Bela Lugosi Gets His Voodoo On

Bela Lugosi got there first—before Val Lewton, George Romero, or the AMC network.  Yet, when he appeared in what is considered the very first zombie film, it was thought to be a rather odd career choice at the time (the first of many, as it turned out).  Of course, Victor Helperin’s White Zombie (trailer here) would look like a prestige picture compared to his Ed Wood films.  In fact, the Haitian voodoo chiller has always had its champions, very definitely including Rob Zombie, but the state of the public domain prints has made it difficult for mere mortals to embrace it.  In a welcome turn of events, Kino Classics has released a crisp new restoration (produced by Holland Releasing) on DVD and BluRay, now available from online retailers everywhere.

Madeleine Short and Neil Parker are to be married in the manor house of Charles Beaumont, but they really shouldn’t.  The plantation owner is really interested in taking Short for himself.  Not exactly a seductive figure, Beaumont seeks the help of Murder Legendre, a voodoo master who runs his sugar mill entirely with zombie labor.  With a name like that, Legendre has to be evil, but whether he has supernatural powers is a debatable point.

Unable to win over Short, Beaumont slips her Legendre’s zombie mickey on her wedding day.  Soon after tying the knot, Short passes away—or so it seems.  Of course, Legendre has her up on her feet and shambling about Beaumont’s estate in no time.  Much to his disgust, the wealthy old planter finds her soulless body to be poor company.  Can Parker save her, once he pulls himself out of the bottle?  He will have some help from the missionary, Dr. Bruner, whose constant need of matches serves as the film’s annoying comic relief.

Lugosi is pretty darn sinister as Legendre, who does some really cool voodoo business with candle fetishes.  Presumably the price of sugar is down, since he cannot seem to afford a full set of buttons for his tunic (even with a horde of unpaid zombie laborers at his disposal).  Nonetheless, we should not let pedantry stand in the way of our appreciation of a great Lugosi performance.

While Lugosi delivers for his fans, his co-stars often sound like the former silent stars they were.  At least, as Parker nee Short, Madge Bellamy spends a good portion of the film in the form of a speechless zombie.  Likewise, fellow silent veteran John Harron’s over-acting will make viewers miss the mannered David Manners (the WASP-ish protagonist of Dracula, The Black Cat, and The Mummy).

So White Zombie offers Lugosi and zombies, which should be enough for viewers any day of the week.  There is also an original rumba composed for the film by Xavier Cugat, heard in the unusually expressionistic scene of Parker’s mournful binge-drinking.  Such sequences can be more fully appreciated when seen as part of the restoration, which looks tremendous on BluRay.  Although independently produced by Edward Helperin, White Zombie could be considered an honorary Universal monster movie, since it was filmed on U’s back lot, with richly detailed sets and props leased from the studio.  It also features the work of one of Universal’s biggest stars, Lugosi, and the studio’s make-up wizard, Jack Pierce.

It is ironic that Lugosi would lend his support to a comeback vehicle for former silent stars Bellamy, Harron, and Robert Frazer (who maintains his dignity as Beaumont) when his later filmography consists of one dubious attempt to re-ignite his career after another.  He deserved better karma for appearing in White Zombie.  It also happens to be nearly as stylish a horror film as The Black Cat.  Affectionately recommended, White Zombie is a film any zombie fan or Lugosi admirer should know.  It is now available in its fully restored glory, thanks to Kino Classics, with a vintage Lugosi interview included as a bonus.

NYJFF ’13: The Black Cat

It should have been the start of something big.  Czech immigrant director Edgar G. Ulmer helmed Universal’s biggest hit of 1934. He also launched an affair with the wife of the studio chief’s nephew, who he would ultimately marry.  As a result, Ulmer was doomed to become a cult director.  Ulmer’s strange and fateful The Black Cat (trailer here) screens as part of a special presentation on Jewish horror films at this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Although supposedly inspired by Poe’s short story, Peter Ruric’s screenplay is about as faithful to “The Black Cat” as it is to The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Golden Bowl.  There is a noir feline who shows up at inopportune times, but that is about the extent of it.  It does not matter.  U’s Black Cat is quite bizarre and surprisingly twisted for its time.

A boring American couple is honeymooning in Hungary for no good reason.  When Joan Alison is injured in a bus accident, their traveling companion, Dr. Vitus Werdegast, whisks her off to the home of his nemesis, Hjalmar Poelzig, to recuperate.  Werdegast is one of the few survivors of a Russian massacre of Hungarian soldiers, facilitated by Poelzig’s betrayal.  Prospering after the war, Poelzig has built his ultramodern home over the ruins of the notorious Fort Marmorus, the site of the wartime atrocities.

One of the intriguing aspects of Cat is the way it apparently tries to explain human manifestations of evil.  Poelzig, the turncoat war criminal, is also a Satanist (who happens to be measuring Mrs. Alison for his cult’s next human sacrifice).  Pre-dating the Spanish Civil War and the Moscow Show Trials, The Black Cat has a decidedly Hobbesian perspective on the world and human nature.  Of course, Ulmer was a product of the Old Europe, where wars and even pogroms were still very real dangers.

Odder still, Poelzig’s architecture is transparently modeled on the Bauhaus school, many members of which were avowed Communists.  His very name is a dubious tribute to architect Hans Poelzig, with whom Ulmer claimed to have worked on sets for The Golem (clips of which could well turn up in Hoberman’s presentation this Thursday).  Regardless, the striking International-style sets look fantastic, perfectly suiting the dramatic light and shadow of John J. Mescall’s moody black and white cinematography.

As a further distinction, Black Cat has to be Boris Karloff’s most sexualized screen appearance.  The audience first sees him in silhouette, rising in bed, with another body clearly lying beside him.  When the tables turn on his Poelzig, we see his shirt ripped from his body, as Werdegast proceeds to flay his skin.  You do not have to be a strict Freudian to read some funny business into that scene.

The Black Cat is easily one of the most stylish films from the golden age of Universal horror.  Granted, it shares some of shortcomings of its brethren.  The local cops are cartoonish buffoons (where’s Lionel Atwill when we need him?), whereas David Manners is impossibly chipper and guileless as Peter Alison.  Nonetheless, it is a very cool looking and unusually sophisticated in the themes it addresses.  It even features a life-and-death chess game decades before The Seventh Seal.  A wonderfully eccentric work of 1930’s creepiness, genre fans are definitely advised to rediscover The Black Cat.  Available in Karloff-Lugosi DVD collections, it screens as part of J. Hoberman’s consideration of Jewish horror films this Thursday (1/17) as the 2013 NYJFF continues at the Walter Reade Theater.