Rating: 3/5
Hooptober 2.0 | 19/31 | Before 1970 4/5
Bats fill the night sky above Kleinschloss. Kringen carries a walking stick and a lamp, looking like Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse. A howling wolf draws Kringen’s attention to the bat-laden trees. Then, a man leaps across the ledges along a tower just above the trees. We fly up onto the roof to see the window where the man entered. The lights cut. A woman screams.
Bürgermeister Gustave Schoen discusses the six deaths in Kleinschloss with his council and police inspector Karl Brettschneider. The bürgermeister suspects vampires, as each death involves blood loss and victims have two jugular wounds. Brettschneider is, of course, skeptical, bordering on derisive.
Brettschneider returns home to his lover, Ruth Bertin, who works in her laboratory. Her colleague, Dr. Otto von Niemann, has left to care for Martha, a bat attack victim. Like any good doctor, he takes a swig of her prescribed medication to ensure its efficacy. Consummate weirdo Hermann Gleib visits Martha with flowers. He declares his love of bats, which he collects off the street and cares for like cats.
Gleib follows Dr. von Neimann out. They run into Kringen, who tells the doctor about his encounter with a vampire as a bat. The doctor encourages Kringen to give his testimony to the bürgermeister, but Gleib begs him not to. When Gleib wanders off, Kringen and Dr. von Neimann wonder if Gleib is behind the attacks. The rumors stir the village’s fears.
This film came out around the same time as Doctor X, another Lionel Atwill/Fay Wray movie, and one I adore. That film had Warner Bros. money. This movie had Majestic Pictures money — that is, no money.
Like Roger Corman, the studio used its meager funds to lease existing sets and contract a couple of big names. They made dozens of Pre-Code movies before Republic Pictures bought them up to dominate the quickie market.
Melvyn Douglas is the genuine star of this movie. He’s so charming and funny. Fay Wray is always magnetic, but forever the damsel. At least she gets to be a scientist here.
Dwight Frye shows up as Hermann Gleib. Frye, best known for his role as Renfield in the original Dracula, brings some much-needed weirdness to the equation.
Maude Eburne is pretty funny as the hypochondriac aunt. She uses the doctor’s stethoscope to hear her heartbeat and worries something must be wrong because she can hear it beating. She self-diagnoses that she needs a dose of salicylic acid. Girl, what?
The audio is pretty shoddy. Almost no Foley or sound effects are present. You can hear where they cut the actor’s mic in and out between lines. There’s one scene where it sounds like an audience laughs when Melvyn Douglas jests about blood-sucking vampires, but once he finishes his line, the audio cuts. I’m unsure if it’s just the copy I found or the film itself.
The version I watched also had colored, so the torches are a rich red and orange in the otherwise monochrome movie.
The film is quick, running just over an hour. This era of horror is so cozy for me. They’d have to mess up pretty badly for me to hate this.