DEAD MEN WALK (1943)

This is the kind of picture that separates the true horrorista from the dilettante.  Sure, anyone can sit through a couple of hours with one of the honest-to-god classics, but it takes a special kind of nerve to stay put for 64 minutes of a PRC giggler.

PRC was Producers Releasing Corporation, which Wikipedia generously calls “one of the less prestigious Hollywood film studios.”  When you got to the bottom of the barrel, you dug through the wood to get to PRC.

One of the studio’s primo directors was Sam Newfield (originally Neufield) who, along with his brother Sigmund, owned a chunk of the outfit.  In 30 years, Sam directed something like 300 films, 15 of them in 1943 alone (Dead Men Walk, The Black Raven, and a bunch of westerns.)  Dead Men Walk’s screenwriter, Fred Myton, was a slacker, with only seven produced credits in ’43—two horror pictures and five oaters.   

Okay, I hear you ask yourself, was there anything about this flick that makes it stand out.  Good question, and the answer is “Yes.”

It stars George Zucco and Dwight Frye, actors who had both seen better days. 

Frye is Zolarr, a retread of his most famous screen role, Renfield in the Lugosi version of Dracula.  Zolarr is the servant of Dr. Elwyn Clayton who, being dead, is relatively easy to take care of.  Frye’s main purpose is to hysterically cry “Yes, master” or “Help me, master” depending on his predicament of the moment.  It’s been only a decade since Dracula, but Frye hasn’t aged well and looks as if he could drop dead on a bus at any moment, which he did later that year.  He did manage to give us five films in 1943—after this one came Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and three tiny and uncredited roles in others.  Frye had been a successful comic actor on Broadway during the 1920s and longed for a chance to do comedy on screen.  You can see the comic chops in Fritz, in Frankenstein.

Zucco is good guy Dr. Lloyd Clayton and evil twin Elwyn Clayton.  Elwyn is a follower of Satan (nothing good ever comes of that) who is killed by Lloyd and then returns from the grave as a vampire, a situation which gives Zucco all the room he needs to give us his best Tod Slaughter imitation.  Eyes wide open, ramrod straight, chortling at every thought of revenge, Zucco is absolutely worth the price of admission—which, admittedly, in a PRC film, isn’t much.  Another Broadway star fallen on hard times in Hollywood, Zucco was a fine character actor who only once got the kind of screen role he deserved—as Moriarty in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1939.

The picture is essentially another re-hash of Dracula with touches of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tossed in to make it look different.  There ain’t much to it, folks, but Zucco and Frye are always fun to watch, and Zucco is extra special this time out.  At 64 minutes, you might enjoy it.  If it had gone to 65, not so much.

Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Some film reviewers try to slip by saying that the actors in the movie seemed bored. What that generally means is that there is nothing in the plot or characters to energize the interest of intelligent or experienced actors—or audiences.

Well, the actors in Mark of the Vampire appear absolutely catatonic and I would guess that the staff and crew weren’t far behind. Among classic horror films with any kind of pedigree, this may be the worst. And if it’s true that director Tod Browning lost interest in Dracula after the death of its intended star, Lon Chaney, this somnolent remake of Chaney’s original London After Midnight, also directed by Browning, is a Nyquil cocktail.

The name above the title is Lionel Barrymore’s. He’d worked with Browning before (The Show, 1927; West of Zanzibar, 1928) and would again (The Devil-Doll, 1936) but I wonder if he wanted to make this one, if he’d lost a bet, signed contracts in his sleep, had to do what MGM told him to do, or just wanted to help a pal after the fiasco that had been Freaks (1932).  Barrymore plays a police detective posing as a doctor and his performance is so hammy you expect it to come with a hunk of Swiss between two slices of rye. 

The story is set in 1934. Sir Karell (Holmes Herbert) has been killed and his blood drained, apparently by a vampire. The Professor (Barrymore) has been called into the case by Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) and Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) because they fear the monster may return to kill Sir Karell’s daughter Ilsa (Elizabeth Allen).  Of course, she has a worried fiancé Fedor (Henry Wadsworth) and the household is rounded out by the usual 1930s staff of comic relief servants.

The villains next door are the vampire team headed by Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) and the wide-eyed Luna (Carol Borland). Their abode is filthy and bedecked by cobwebs. Opossums hiss and scurry, representing, I suppose, mutated rats. Lugosi and Borland, in mostly non-speaking roles, even descend a grand staircase, passing through (off camera) a large cobweb without breaking it.

Any single element of this movie, no matter how insignificant, that reminds the viewer of Dracula is purely intentional.

Lugosi is said to have disliked what was done with his character and petitioned Browning to make changes, but the director stuck with the script as written by Guy Endore, Bernard Schubert, John L. Balderston, H.S. Kraft, Samuel Ornitz, and Browning himself (the latter four uncredited).  Even with the talent involved, the screenplay is such a mess, determining whether director or actor was right is a waste of time.  Nothing could salvage this stinker and I suspect that everyone but Lugosi knew it. Without Chaney’s unique talent for verisimilitude through makeup and gesture, this one became silly on page one.

Only the cults of Browning and Lugosi have kept this one breathing as long as it has—those pus one of the most gob-smackingly out-of-left-field endings you’ve ever not-quite-believed you were seeing.

Mark of the Vampire is a must for classic horror and/or Browning and/or Lugosi fans, but even at a little over an hour it will tax the patience and credulity of anyone else. I mean, I’ve seen it a half dozen times and I still don’t believe it. It just reminds me how much, like Browning, I miss Lon Chaney.