Director: Tod Browning
Writers: Guy Endore, Bernard Schubert
Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Bela Lugosi
1 Hour
Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2IkfhZz
Synopsis
This takes place in “modern” 1934. We start out with a group of gypsies singing around the campfire, as gypsies do. An old woman gathering sticks in the graveyard is attacked by a bat.
The innkeeper warns two travelers not to continue their journey tonight. The doctor walks in and tut-tuts the innkeeper about vampires. The wife of the innkeeper explains about vampires. They have the herb Bat-thorne all over the place.
Baron Otto comes down the stairs and tells the servants that their master, Sir Karroll Borotyn, was murdered last night. The inspector will be down shortly to question everyone.
The doctor looks at the body and says it was a vampire; of course, he really believes in them. The inspector doesn’t like his answer. Whatever did it, Borotyn was drained of all blood.
The villagers blame Count Mora and his daughter, who is said to be able to turn into a bat. Irena and her fiance Fedor talk about her unhappiness now that her father has died. Fedor gets bitten by a vampire that night.
Count Mora watches as his daughter, Luna, goes out for a hunt. He smiles evilly. A couple hurry home after a night in town, and they’re terrified. They drive past Mora’s daughter, and she scares them half to death, but doesn’t actually hurt them.
Luna hypnotizes Irena as Mora watches. She bites Irena and Mora smiles again.
Professor Zelin interviews Irena and comes to the conclusion that the doctor is right; it is vampires. Once a victim has been attacked, they usually are attacked again and again. Zelin calls to lock the doors and windows and start stockpiling bat-thorne. Zelin doesn’t take any flack from the inspector; he tells him how it’s going to be.
Irena starts hearing her father’s voice. Zelin says her father is back as a vampire. They go to Borotyn’s grave, and the coffin is empty. Borotyn and Mora look on in silence. The servants see a bat fly in and change into Count Mora. The servants recognize him, so there’s no doubt who it is. He hides in the house and listens to the conversations. The inspector shoots at him as he leaves, and the group sees Mora and Borotyn walking off into the fog.
The vampires gather at Mora’s place. There are at least four of them: Mora, Luna, Borotyn, and another guy. Baron Otto suggests burning the place down. Zelin says it won’t work; they have to destroy them the right way, beheading, in the daytime.
While everyone is watching Irena, Mora comes in and bites Fedor again.
The vampires return to their dungeon lair. Zelin sees a bat hanging on the wall in Mora’s castle. They head down into the dungeon and the find the door that the three vampires went in. Inside, they find Borotyn, but Zelin warns that if they don’t destroy them all together, they want revenge. Inspector Neumann gets lost, and Zelin and Otto waste a bunch of time looking for him.
Luna mesmerizes Irena and brings her out to the others. Fedor comes to her rescue and is attacked by Mora. Zelin hypnotizes Otto to get him brave enough to try to talk to Borotyn.
Irena can’t go through with it; she doens’t want to talk to Borotyn, because he looks too much like her real father. This is all the inspector’s plan to get Otto to confess to the murder of the real Borotyn. All the “vampires” are just actors, hired to make Borotyn’s return to life explainable.
Zelin tells Baron Otto it’s been one year ago since he saw sir Karrell Borotyn, and he’s going to see him again. Irena has her doubts, but they convince her to go through with the act.
Otto accepts the actor as the real “Borotyn” and the two of them play on, just as it all went down last year. Borotin hands the butler his heart medicine instructs him to “put three drops of this in a glass of water.” They discuss how Irena was supposed to marry the baron, not this Fedor dude. While Borotin has his back turned, Otto puts all the heart medicine in his drink, just like he did last year with the real Borotyn.
The actor pretends to drink the medicine and die. Otto pulls open the actor’s collar and make the mark of the vampire on his neck. Just as he gets ready to do it, the Inspector and Zelin come in and apprehend him for the murder.
Bela Lugosi and Luna brag to each other, “I was as great as any real vampire,” he says, throwing his cape over his shoulder.
Commentary
I cannot imagine any logical or legal reason why the writers didn’t call the vampire-repellant wolfsbane, but they went with bat-thorne instead.
The vampires here are mostly silent and very creepy. This is one of the few vampire movies where they actually act like undead creatures or animals rather than cursed humans. The vampires don’t speak at all, which makes them much more animalistic.
The twist at the end must have been mind-blowing at the time, but so much has been cut out of this movie that it all felt very rushed. The original film was supposed to be 80 minutes, but the released version only had 60, so a lot was removed.
Still, it was good, and a lot of vampire lore can be seen here.