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"This vampire business," its uncanny textures and underlying hooey. Carpeted with mist and choked with dread, the little Czech village is transparently a loving studio simulacrum long before the narrative's artifice is revealed. The aristocrat (Holmes Herbert) is found dead and drained, bloodsuckers are blamed, the young heiress (Elizabeth Allan) is taken in by her father's friend (Jean Hersholt). "A pestilence that grows" to horrified locals, "superstitious twaddle" to the inspector (Lionel Atwill). The Count (Bela Lugosi) leers by the graveyard as an oozing puncture adorns the side of his head, the close-up dissolves to a chiming clock and a scream. The professor (Lionel Barrymore) arrives with a fulsome report: "There is no more foul or relentless enemy of man in the occult world than this dead-alive creature spewed up from the grave." Tod Browning and Lugosi reworking their most famous creatures, in the process discovering traces of parodic reflexivity. Live opossums and puppet bats comprise the castle's tenebrous menagerie, a POV tracking shot from a passing coach spots the Count's chalky daughter (Carroll Borland) at the gates, a sublime apparition in dark tresses and flowing robes. Cinema's fragmented trance, "only an experiment." A candle goes out, darkness gives way to staring faces in the vertical sliver of a doorway. One hour of choice delirium, where explanations just muddle the devilry of the screen. The gnarled branch like a skeleton's arm, the kitten in the clattering suit of armor, the culprit as actor in a reenactment. "Sure, sure, but get off your makeup." Rare appreciation comes from Bergman (The Magician) and Franju (Pleins feux sur l'assassin). With Donald Meek, Henry Wadsworth, Ivan F. Simpson, and Leila Bennett. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |