Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Smoreni Zmaj If you watch this movie, which I warmly recommend, in the beginning you will have impression of one more out of countless similar adaptation of classic Dracula scenario. Though one of the better ones. Lugosi as Count is unsurpassed, Carol Borland as Luna sets standards for Vampira/Elvira, and everyone else are on the level too. However, I saw that story million times and, no matter how good it is, after a while it becomes boring and I was thinking to give up on this one. But Count was not named Dracula and none of the other characters had names that we are used to and that intrigued me. Soon, story started to deviate from the classic Dracula scenario, leading us to completely unexpected twist. I was sincerely surprised and thrilled with new development when I realized this is not classic horror-Dracula, but thriller instead. And from angle of viewers back then it was maybe even mindfuk. I had no idea they had this type of movies back then. Really pleasant refreshment in the sea of similar movies from that era.9/10

bugsmoran29 I truly enjoyed the 'Mark of the Vampire," and I consider it one of my favorite Universal horror movies of all time. Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill and Lionel Barrymore make for a superlative movie double play combination. However, I have always wondered who had attacked Fedor, the male love interest in the movie; for he wasn't in on the plot to trick the Baron into re-enacting his crime? On two occasions he mentioned having being in a deep stupor. Could it be that he was a victim of the 'real' Count Mora. Also, how did they clean-up the abandoned castle so quickly to re-enact the crime? It is still a great little film but I wonder if about 10-15 minutes of critical film were lost on the editor's floor.

calvinnme This starts out looking like a conventional horror film. Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) comes downstairs to inform the servants that their beloved master, Sir Karell, has been murdered.Upstairs, in Sir Karell's office, the slumped body of the nobleman is examined. Dr. Doskil (Donald Meeks) is the superstitious and nervous one. He notes the two marks on Sir Karell's neck (not that big of a deal, maybe there before the murder), and that the body has been completely drained of blood (a very big deal, impossible to explain). His explanation - vampires. Inspector Neumann from Prague (Lionel Atwill) basically says poppycock, and goes around doing a methodical investigation, but comes up empty handed.Nearly a year later, shortly after the marriage of Sir Karell's daughter, Irena, to a young man with no real station in life or money of his own, odd things begin to happen. A local legendary vampire father/daughter team - Count Mora and daughter Luna - are spotted wandering near the old castle where the baron was murdered. Apparently the trauma of living in the same place where her father was killed was too much for Irena, so that castle was abandoned and now she is living in equally luxurious digs nearby. First Irena's husband is attacked near the old castle, but escapes with his life, then the vampires Luna and Mora start showing up and repeatedly attack Irena, and it is found that Sir Karell's grave is empty. Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) - obviously a clone of Dracula's Van Helsing, shows up and assures everyone that this is the work of vampires, that Sir Karell is now one himself, and Sir Karell's daughter is next.Unlike Dracula, there turns out to be a logical explanation for everything. Or at least there is supposed to be - I'll let you watch and find out. Just suffice it to say that this evidence of vampirism is a huge ruse backed by the police that includes just about everybody being in on the plan EXCEPT the person that the police believe is guilty. If they are wrong, they have probably tipped off the actual murderer! Now let me go through the rest of the plot holes. Sir Karell's castle that the vampires haunt was a beautiful home just a year before at the time of the murder. In just one year's time the windows are broken, the masonry is crumbling, there are spider webs everywhere, and rats and huge spiders rummage through what one can only call ruins? The actual murderer gained nothing by committing the murder - the murderer never got what the murderer wanted, and apparently didn't even try to get it after Sir Karell died. So what was the point? Plus the film clearly shows one of the "vampires" turning into a bat - with no logical explanation. Finally, there is no satisfactory answer as to how the killer removed and disposed of all of Sir Karell's blood.Why do I like it? The performances and the pace mainly. Everybody is perfect at their roles. Atwill as the stiff police inspector, Elizabeth Allan as the distraught daughter, Donald Meeks as the nervous physician, but most of all Lionel Barrymore as the vampire hunter was a delight. He took what could have been a hammy role and made it work. He would have been a great Van Helsing in the original Dracula.There were tons of scenes deleted from this film that might have caused it to make more sense, including the description of an incestuous relationship that existed in life between legendary vampires Luna and Count Mora that explains the bullet wound clearly visible in Mora's forehead that left me scratching my head UNTIL I heard the commentary on the DVD. For MGM to mainly be a studio for churning out dramas not horror in the 1930's, I think they did a good job with this one considering the limitations the production code put on them at the time.

Nigel P Films and stories with a twist at the end can be risky. If they get it right ('The Sixth Sense' and 'The Others', for example), audiences will be thrilled and eager to watch the production again to look for clues as to the denouement. Other ventures, such as this one, has proved to leave audiences feeling betrayed and reticent to re-view such a tremendous build-up, knowing that the final revelation is such a colossal let-down.By 1935, director Tod Browning's career was floundering. Three years earlier, his 'Freaks' production met with a disastrous reception for one reason and another. Here, he returned to more familiar ground, reuniting with Bela Lugosi (whom he directed in the ground-breaking 'Dracula' in 1931) in a remake of Browning's 'London After Midnight' (1927).What might have made the build-up even better would have been if MGM hadn't cut out nearly 15 minutes from its original version. Amongst the material cut was the story of Count Mora (Lugosi) and his incestuous relationship with daughter Luna (Caroll Borland), his subsequent killing of them both (explaining the bloodshot he sports on his temple throughout) and how he was condemned to spend eternity as a vampire.What we have left is one of the most beautiful horror films ever made. Languid, steeped in atmosphere, meticulous in detail, sumptuously played (Lionel Barrymore's Professor has been criticised by some, but for me is a perfectly judged creepy performance) and seductively directed. The murder victim is played by Holmes Herbert, (an actor curiously denied enough credit for his many horror roles) and it is his murderer Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) who is the subject of a colossal hoax upon which the 'twist' hinges. Apart from the twist being unreasonable on many levels, Otto is hypnotised into a confession at the end anyway, rendering the hiring of actors to create the whole scenario pointless.Such a huge shame. Everything else is so good, from the grotesque hag being frightened by a bat at the beginning, to Luna's spectacular (but briefly featured) flight on outsize wings (a scene that took many takes to perfect), there is a rich sense of eeriness throughout. Lugosi plays his second vampire film silent (except for his brief dialogue at the end, as the actor PLAYING the vampire), which was (probably unintentionally) mirrored by Sir Christopher Lee's second outing as Dracula in 1965, which was also without dialogue.