Wrote a long-ish, rambling blog post about the Bela Lugosi movies I watched this month.
It’s a sad fact that Hollywood has never been very good in terms of diversity in front of or behind the camera (and still has a long way to go), and over the years has often limited opportunities or slotted actors in roles that play to their “otherness”. This weighed heavily on my mind as I watched
White Zombie, as I don’t know if any actor has taken control of that otherness and used it to such unsettling effect as Bela Lugosi does so here. Lugosi’s presence is so distinct and his delivery so mannered that here as in
Dracula, he seems not to be playing a villain so much as embodying evil and piercing through the artifice of the film around him. Lugosi’s performance also ties into the film’s racial politics, which are queasy as can be expected for a horror film about Haitian voodoo, but complex. A character decries local practices as “sins that even the devil would be ashamed of”, yet the plot centres on a foreign, colonial presence exploiting those practices, and it isn’t a stretch to read his act of turning his enemies into zombies as a metaphor for slavery.
The film exists in an eerie dream state between silent and sound film, and any imperfections only enhance that feeling. Dialogue and sound intrude jarringly into silence or music (particularly the shriek of a vulture, which never stops being unnerving), and any stilted acting brings to mind the zombies enslaved by the villain. The atmosphere is evocative and foreboding, with images that sear themselves into our mind. Victor Halperin would go on to direct a sequel
, Revolt of the Zombies, which does not star Lugosi but recycles the same shot of his eyes. Lugosi’s absence is sorely felt, as is any semblance of the atmosphere or visual style present in this film, and its handling of race lacks the complexity offered by this earlier effort. The movie briefly perks up when the revolt in the title finally happens, producing a handful of interesting images, but for a movie that runs about an hour, it easily feels thrice as long.
I would be remiss to delve into Lugosi’s work without revisiting his iconic work in Tod Browning’s
Dracula. I don’t know if I actually think the movie is any better this time around, but I did find myself more endeared by it. It’s hard to find interesting things to say about his work here, but while what we know of Lugosi’s life suggests that he probably wasn’t really a centuries old blood-drinking aristocrat, the lived-in quality of his performance might have you fooled. George Melford’s Spanish language version is a much more dynamic film on the whole (and is on the shortlist of my favourite vampire movies), yet there’s no denying Lugosi’s absence isn’t felt. (The wonders of modern technology have allowed the the transplant of Jim Carrey into
The Shining and many of our beloved celebrities into hardcore pornography; I would argue that deepfaking Lugosi into the Melford
Dracula is just as worthwhile an experiment.) It’s safe to say that he’s much better than the movie he’s in, the stage origins of which are apparent (characters are frequently shot staidly, centre frame; much of the action takes place in the same room with characters entering and exiting in lieu of actual incident), yet that stylistic stiffness yields great dividends when the action moves to Dracula’s castle, with those scenes having an aura of entombment.
Perhaps this approach was an extension of Browning’s view of the genre. Many vampire movies emphasize the sensual, striving to demonstrate the erotic allure of the condition; Browning’s film argues that the living dead lead a pretty dismal existence. “There are far worse things awaiting man than death.” An arguably dismissive attitude towards vampirism could be read into
Mark of the Vampire, which reunites Lugosi and Browning. The movie is at times quite atmospheric, particularly when Lugosi is onscreen, yet in a way that feels fairly divorced from the energy of the film as a whole. (He also unfortunately has no dialogue until the end, although he makes the most of it.) If
Dracula suffers in comparison to the stylishness of James Whale’s
Frankenstein movies, then
Mark of the Vampire could have used some of the tongue-in-cheek energy Whale brought to
The Old Dark House.
The Devil Bat finds Lugosi working with a much smaller production by Producers Releasing Corporation, a Poverty Row studio. It’s not an especially dynamic work, featuring a not terribly convincing bat puppet and a scene where his character awkwardly confesses to his crimes and schemes up a murder on the fly to cover his tracks, yet his professionalism can’t be denied and he’s quite good in the role.
Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, which has a technically accurate but misleading title, finds his career in more obvious decline. Your enjoyment may depend heavily on your tolerance for Jerry Lewis style shrillness, yet once again Lugosi treats his role as serious as a heart attack. This movie is also of interest to fans of Duke Mitchell, showing him well before he developed the vulgar charisma of his wannabe
Godfather characters in
Massacre Mafia Style and
Gone with the Pope. Towards the end of his life Lugosi came into the orbit of Ed Wood, considered by many to be the worst director of all time. The extent of Lugosi’s role in
Plan 9 From Outer Space is well known, but his last speaking part came in
Bride of the Monster. Neither film did much for me (Wood’s distinct brand of badness has little effect on me for whatever reason, and
Bride didn’t seem all that worse than some of the other films I’ve seen this month, to be honest) but Lugosi makes the film just a bit more engaging whenever he’s onscreen.
Going back to his prime years,
Murders in the Rue Morgue finds Lugosi on stage at a carnival sideshow, pleads with an unappreciative audience, and by extension, the viewer (“Heresy? Do they still burn men for heresy? Then burn me monsieur, light the fire! Do you think your little candle will outshine the flame of truth?”). There’s a sense of resentment here, of doing great yet unappreciated work in squalid conditions, that I suspect might have resonated with him over the course of his career. The out of place aristocracy he brings to the role makes him all the more magnetic and, at the same time, undeniably creepy, which makes the relatively explicit (by 1932 standards) content resonate. (A gruesome knife fight and a sexually charged torture scene are among the highlights spicing up the first act.) The movie definitely loses a little whenever Lugosi isn’t onscreen, yet Robert Florey’s visual direction, heavily influenced by German expressionism, is dynamic enough to always keep things engaging. This is the movie Lugosi made after walking away from
Frankenstein, and while there are similarities in visual style, Lugosi’s performance here couldn’t be more different from Boris Karloff’s in the other film.
It’s hard to discuss Lugosi without mentioning Karloff, that other titan of early sound horror films. Karloff’s career ended with more dignity (his last film,
Targets, offers a reflection on his career, the horror genre and violence in ‘60s America), yet going head to head in
The Black Cat, Lugosi wins. Karloff is great, giving an eerily mannered, subtly monstrous performance, yet Lugosi is able to create a character that not only is implied to have the same capacity for monstrous behaviour, but get us to empathize with him. There’s an early line delivery that might be one of the best I’ve ever heard with its mixture of menace and deep psychological wounds. (I will quote it, but hearing it delivered by the man himself will send chills down your spine. ”Have you ever heard of Kurgaal? It is a prison below Omsk. Many men have gone there. Few have returned. I have returned. After fifteen years... I have returned.”) He grounds the twisted headspace that the movie inhabits, which Edgar G. Ulmer evokes with a bold visual style and uncanny art direction. The cumulative result is the best horror film I’ve seen in quite some time.
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