STILL SCARY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Two monster movies worthy of Blu-ray editions were released in October -- DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE (1931) and MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935). This article from the Wall Street Journal further promotes them as prime examples of classic 1930's Hollywood horror.

Halloween Movies: Still Scary After All These Years

By David Mermelstein | Oct. 26, 2022 | wsj.com

One happy byproduct of the oversaturation of things ghoulish and garish that comes our way this time every year is the reliable arrival on home video of films at least tangentially related to Halloween. And so it is that Warner Archive has just bestowed on fright lovers two horror classics: “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1931) and “Mark of the Vampire” (1935)—each glowingly restored in 4K and available on Blu-ray.

Though no longer as famous as some counterparts from Universal (namely “Frankenstein,” “Dracula” and “The Mummy”), both were quite well known in their day. And each was directed by a Hollywood eminence, though at opposite ends of their careers: Paramount’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Rouben Mamoulian, who would achieve even greater fame in musicals and melodramas; and MGM’s “Mark of the Vampire” by Tod Browning, whose credits by then included 10 Lon Chaney silents, as well as “Dracula” and the singular “Freaks.”

A loose remake of “London After Midnight,” a Browning-Chaney silent from 1927 now presumed lost, “Mark of the Vampire” would prove Browning’s last major credit. (He directed his final film in 1939, though he continued to live in Southern California until his death in 1962.) It also happens to have among the most confusing and harebrained plots ever filmed—though its surprise denouement will surely delight first-time viewers. The movie benefits from a first-class cast that includes a crusty Lionel Barrymore; Bela Lugosi, essentially reprising the role that made him a household name; a typically doctrinaire Lionel Atwill; and Jean Hersholt (for whom the Motion Picture Academy’s esteemed humanitarian award is named) playing a sweetly stern Mitteleuropean minor noble—along with the little-remembered but appealing Elizabeth Allan as the vampire’s well-mannered prey.

The movie also offers an enveloping mise-en-scène, rife with every trope now linked to genteel 1930s horror: the derelict castle, the moonlit graveyard, flickering candles, servants either hysterical or stoic (but never anything else), and someone, somewhere, playing an organ. Credit must also be given to Warren Newcombe and his then-cutting-edge special effects—most notably the seamless metamorphosis he achieved turning a bat into a miniature version of the vampiress Luna. But the picture’s visual cohesion rests with the celebrated cinematographer James Wong Howe, who was later nominated for nine Oscars, winning two (“The Rose Tattoo” and “Hud”). Here, he shades faces in artful black-and-white chiaroscuro and often shoots the action through windows, screens and curtains, lending Browning’s enterprise a sinister voyeuristic quality.

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s macabre tale of good gone evil, was embraced early and often by Hollywood, though most screen versions owe more fealty to Richard Mansfield’s once-celebrated stage adaptation than to the original novella. Initially, Paramount hoped to entice John Barrymore to reprise with sound the dual role he made famous in a 1920 silent still hailed today. But after the great actor took a pass, Mamoulian set his sights on one he preferred, Fredric March, a rising star many likened to a young Barrymore. The director’s instincts were validated the following year, when March won the Oscar for best actor (sharing it with Wallace Beery), the first time a performer in a horror film would be so honored—and the last for 60 years, until Anthony Hopkins won the same prize for “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Mamoulian’s pre-code production is lavish and audacious, and his securing the Oscar-winning Karl Struss (“Sunrise”) to shoot it ensured that the movie’s visual elements would register as boldly as its acting and story did. Struss’s manipulation of shadow and light, daring use of close-ups, and eye for the right ambient detail earned the film much praise. But nothing stuck in the collective imagination more than the unprecedented manner in which he captured Dr. Jekyll’s transformation into a simian-like Hyde (and vice versa). A fiercely held trade secret for decades, the technique required specially colored makeup for March, courtesy of Wally Westmore, and various photosensitive lenses for Struss’s cameras.

The combination of Westmore’s and Struss’s innovations and March’s fearless performance remains both unnerving and unforgettable. Less well remembered is Miriam Hopkins’s turn as the brash barmaid Ivy, who is ultimately destroyed by Hyde. Hopkins was once a star on a par with Bette Davis, and in this role, thanks to a portrayal of uncommon vulnerability and heartbreak, she is any actress’s equal.

Some film lovers may better recall Spencer Tracy’s 1941 remake, directed by Victor Fleming for MGM, with Ingrid Bergman as Ivy (also tremendously effective). Tracy plays Hyde as a sadist, rather than id personified à la March. Also recently restored in 4K, it was issued on Blu-ray by Warner Archive in May. Watching both versions in quick succession would be a fine way to spend Oct. 31—or, frankly, just about any other day.