Here I am kicking off October with Tod Browning (of
Dracula and
Freaks), Lionel Atwill (of
Doctor X,
Mystery Of The Wax Museum,
The Vampire Bat,
Son Of Frankenstein fame), Lionel Barrymore (of so many titles it seemed odd he'd be slumming it in this movie, but hey, I guess people gotta work), and of course, a little (very little) Bela Lugosi.
This is an odd little movie and not really a very good one, but I had it in my head that I really liked it from my last viewing about ten years ago. Less than halfway through I almost quit. It almost felt like if Ed Wood actually had a B-movie budget (albeit a low-B) for one film, he might have made this. I wanted to abort. But I stuck it out and in the end I enjoyed it and I remembered why I enjoyed it the first time.
The story here is that the old nobleman of the region is killed by a vampire on the eve of his daughter Irena's engagement. Irena becomes the ward of the nobleman's friend Baron von Zinden and a year later, as it appears Irena will perhaps finally get married, vampire shenanigans begin anew as attacks begin to mount with the victims drained of blood and two puncture wounds on their necks. Suspicions do not improve when this creepy gal keeps showing up...
And Bela Lugosi is hanging around with some weird, distracting mark on the side of his face. So there's some back-story about an old Count or something who was murdered and returned as a vampire or something, it's a bit vague honestly, but Lugosi is apparently that guy and the creepy gal is his daughter or something. Anyway, everybody's freakin' out.
So the Inspector, Atwill, who doesn't believe any of this vampire talk, sends for a revered professor (Barrymore) to come help sort all this out. But the professor is certain that all the trouble is the work of vampires. And there's definitely some serious cobwebs and other haunted business going on in the old castle.
I mean, honestly, I don't know what the hell was happening here:
But it certainly has a vibe to it.
So, look, I'm gonna be honest, like I said, this is not a good movie, the budget is low, and it's noticeable, they keep using the exact same bat on a string over and over, there's a lot of nonsense, and, even though they have Atwill and Barrymore holding everything down, the movie feels unrehearsed. Like these pro-actors showed up and were handed a script, they memorized their lines off-set real quick, came on and fired out their parts, and hit the bar.
And yet, I still have this weird fondness for this movie. And I think it's just because of how it turns out. When you finally learn what it is the movie is actually doing, it's kind of a fun subversion and you feel like you're kind of on the movie's side now.
So anyway, this is how I started off my Horrorthon, my SEVENTEENTH in a row (starting after Katrina in 2005!) and, while I might have done better to go with the far superior
Return Of The Vampire (which I probably will later this month), I can't say I'm sorry I watched this again despite all its shortcomings. It's an adorable little curio of 40s low-budget Horror and I'm ok kicking off the season with that.