Mark of the Vampire

MHM

What can I say about Mark of the Vampire? It’s so strange that I’m not entirely certain if it’s just a delightfully bad movie or if it’s actually a horror satire. It’s one of those movies that most people seem to love or hate because it is so odd, and you really have to see it to understand the strong opinions.

In a European village, a man is found dead with two cuts on his neck. The family doctor and local baron believe it was the work of a vampire, specifically the mysterious count who lives down the street, but the police inspector doesn’t believe in vampires. Although they disagree on who was the blame, they all are concerned that the dead man’s daughter is at risk, and the doctor and the baron bring in an occult specialist to help them prevent another death. It sounds like a straight forward cheesey 30s horror movie, and it has the over the top acting you would expect, but it also has a controversial twist to the end. Much like M. Night Shyamalan’s twist endings, this one will either delight you, make you angry at the stupid movie, or leave you slightly confused about how it’s supposed to make sense. I fall into the third category, but I still find Mark of the Vampire incredibly amusing.


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3 responses to “Mark of the Vampire”

  1. Kirsten Hinkle

    Ohhhhhh…I remember watching this when I was in my early teens. Back then most people didn’t have a color TV in their homes, only black and white and somehow I always thought it made the movie scarier! This is one of my Fav.’s. Actually anything that had to do with Vampires I thought was the tops of scary movies. This particular movie made me jump at the tiniest sounds for weeks. We had tons of fog and that just made everything creeper and seem so possible. How could it not be right! I love October. They bring out all the old greats (and some not so greats) and even though there are not the up to date special effects I thing the suggestion that something was going to happen or had happen made you very involved in the movie. Imagination is something we would all do a lot better if we used it now and then!:) Knitting and Movies, What could go together better? Life is Good!!!

  2. I have to ask where you’ve found all these movies? Are they in your local library, the school library, Netflix, or just on AMC/TCM? I haven’t seen any of these on recently (but then, I haven’t been looking either).

    Oh, funny story for you regarding the movies – Wednesday the whole family was in the car, and my 3yo daughter asked to watch a movie. We threw out names of odd movies for her – and I threw out THEM! To my surprise, my husband knew the movie! He loves horror movies and was almost a film minor (one class short I think), but I was really surprised he knew that one! 🙂

    1. I have them on DVD! I originally saw most of them on TCM, but I own them in various B-horror box sets.

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