Through Blood Tinted Glasses Review - Mark of the Vampire (1935)
Read: TBTG Introduction/ Reviews: Dracula (1931) / The Vampire Bat (1933)
Articles: The Endurance of Dracula / Horror and the Disabled
Directed By: Tod Browning
Genre: Horror Mystery
Format: Digital – Rented (Amazon)
If you go into this film not expecting too much, you might be pleasantly surprised! Somewhere vaguely near Prague (as far as I could tell), Sir Karrell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found drained of blood, with two pinprick marks in his neck. There’s only one explanation: a vampire attack! Family friend Baron Otto von Zinden (Jean Hersholt) dutifully takes in Sir Karrell’s daughter, Irene (Elizabeth Allan), only for her to become the next target. Unlike her father, however, Irene is put under a spell rather than killed, causing a frantic race against time for the baron, Prague Police Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) and Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore), an expert on the occult. Meanwhile, with everyone suspecting Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) and his daughter (Carroll Borland), what exactly are those two up to?
Welcome to Through Blood Tinted Glasses, a journey through English language vampire films. Each film will be accompanied by a review and an article/essay, and if you’d like to read the article that goes along with Mark of the Vampire prior to it being on this website, make sure you subscribe to Substack.
The below contains spoilers but I will be doing my best to keep this at a minimum
“The vampires are hungry too for their supper.”
These first three films are relatively similar, and we now even have a fair bit of crossover with the cast! We previously saw Atwill in The Vampire Bat (1933), and, famously, Lugosi was Dracula in, well, Dracula (1931). Like The Vampire Bat, Mark of the Vampire takes place somewhere vaguely Eastern European (though at least in Mark we get confirmation we’re near Prague). We have the trusty villagers, who turn out to, of course, be a suspicious lot. Lugosi lurks in the background, making the odd appearance, and there are special effect bats to rival Dracula.
Similarly to The Vampire Bat, there’s a belief in vampires, and a sceptical inspector who finds himself questioning his own beliefs as the strange events increase. We get a few dodgy accents here and there, and when Sir Karrell is found murdered, we’re told there’s no cause for alarm. And that kind of sums up the film – it’s endearingly messy, with very little here that actually makes sense. It’s jumpy, too, shifting from one scene to another pretty rapidly.
The imagery, however, is memorable – there’s a moment where the helmet in an empty suit of armour starts moving, and it’s a creepy moment, until the cause is revealed. We have plenty of creepiness from Count Mora and his daughter, with Lugosi in particular looking like he’s simply donned his Dracula costume, then added a cut to the head. And, like Dracula, we get some poorly done but utterly charming bat scenes.
Quiet, atmosphere building imagery dominates this film, and that’s saying a lot for a 60-minute runtime. The main problem is everything else around it. The plot is as flimsy as the bats we see on screen, and the characters make as much sense as the return of the possum (again, previously seen in Dracula). To a point, it really feels like Browning wanted an excuse to redo Dracula, there’s so much here that feels directly lifted.
Once the film was over, I sat there feeling just a little…stunned. Not in awe, but in general “what did I just watch” mode. The count’s daughter has slightly more to do here than Dracula’s brides, but she still remains silent throughout. The ending leads you down a particular path that if examined too closely, falls totally apart. Importantly, however, this all adds to its charm.
It’s worth watching. It’s by far not the best we’ve come across, and I’m not sure if there will be worse to come, but to me, it’s a valuable vampire relic, and gives us some wonderful moments that are worth the mess around them.
“There is no more foul or relentless enemy of man in the occult world, than this dead-alive creature spewed up from the grave.”
Rating: 6/10 Fangs
Mark of the Vampire wasn’t streaming anywhere I could find – I rented this via Amazon.
Next Up: Condemned to Live (1935)
Some of the films I’m planning to watch aren’t easily available on streaming, but I do have a wish list with films and books to support this series. You can check it out here if you’d like to support Through Blood Tinted Glasses, or if you’re just curious at the films that’ll be coming up in the future.
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter: @elleturpitt
Bluesky: @elleturpitt.bsky.social
