Good start, but then it gets ruined

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

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

Enjoyable vampire film with Bela Lugosi again playing a vampire after Dracula. Pretty easy going and what a twist towards the end of the film as not everything is not what it seems. The twist demonstrates that this is not the kind of vampire movie that one would normally expect. It is instead a plot line that is pivotal to what is truly been going on in the movie. It is rather interesting on when this movie was released in 1935 as noted by the DVD commentators. The commentators said that this was released at a time before World War II as no one was worrying about some guy called Hitler. Looking at this with the benefit of the passage of time since its release it certainly presents the innocence of the time prior to the horrors the world would see in a few years subsequent to its release. The performances were overall fine and Lugosi seems to enjoy playing another vampire whose name isn't Dracula. Definitely a good way to pass the time. An easy-going fluff.

MGM hopped on the horror bandwagon with this remake of their lost silent classic "London After Midnight" and produced a Gothic atmosphere to rival the Universal classics. It wasn't MGM who provided this film with its spookiness, but its veteran horror director, Tod Browning, who had directed the original as well as such classics as the original "Dracula" and the controversial "Freaks". Everything starts off fine (for the audience that is) as a mysterious murder takes its victim by draining blood from their necks, leaving them as dry as the Sahara. The blame is put on a supposed local vampire count (Bela Lugosi in a mostly silent role) and his equally dead daughter (Carroll Boland) who roam through a cobwebbed castle with an eerie gait. When Lugosi and Boland are on screen, the film has an atmospheric, almost sad like quality, although comical moments of an old hag running through a cemetery while trying to escape a gigantic bat and two travelers spooked by the presence of the ghostly pair reacting in quite the overly dramatic way.What weakens the film is the controversial ending which changed the fact that Lugosi's Count Mora had a sexual relationship with his daughter and committed suicide after killing her which was the reason for him becoming a vampire. (Pesky Hays code...) Lugosi has a very visible bullet hole, and the twists that changed the plot make their characters seem unnecessary to the plot as a whole. The twist at the end is a bit upsetting considering the insinuations which remain in the plot, but overall the film is well done and quite enjoyable. The cast is filled with many excellent actors, most notably Lionel Barrymore, Lionel Atwill, Donald Meek, Elizabeth Allen, Jean Hersholt and the unbilled Louise Emmons as the hag running through the cemetery. I mention her because some people might confuse her with Lucille La Verne who played La Vengeance in MGM's "A Tale of Two Cities" the same year.

It's a real shame, to me, how undervalued this movie is in the annals of horror history. As a complete horror junkie, I frequent websites, message boards and fan cons and this movie is rarely mentioned among the greats, which is a shame because it could be put on a par with most of Universal's classic work. I recognize, though, that the bad wrap attributed to it is mostly because of the twist ending and we'll get to that in a second.I normally try to avoid plot outlines and especially spoilers in my reviews, but it seems almost necessary with this movie and if you've read anything about it, that twist has probably been spoiled for you already. The movie begins with the death of a count, which is attributed to a local vampire and his daughter, played by Bela Lugosi and Caroll Borland. These same vampires begin to set their sights on the count's daughter, who has just been married. It is, eventually, revealed that all of the supernatural goings-on are a ruse by actors to try to ensnare the real murderer into revealing himself.Directed by Tod Browning, this movie is a remake of his lost silent feature London AFTER MIDNIGHT, which is oddly probably more well-known despite being lost forever. Browning was a genius horror director of the golden age who has created some absolute classics like Dracula and FREAKS. His marks are all over this movie, which might be one of the most atmospheric films I've ever seen. This movie just screams to be watched at midnight with all of the lights off. We get plenty of Gothic flourishes and spooky props like bats and cobwebs. There is an eerie soundtrack throughout the movie with an ever-present sound of howling from the grave. The entire movie is just permeated with this hypnotic quality. That translates to the performances of Lugosi and Borland, as well, as they silently stalk their victims through the shadows. A few scenes really stand out like the bat to vampire transformations, which are admittedly poorly done by today's standards but nonetheless enjoyable, and the coup de grace, the scene of Borland flying through the air on large bat wings, which is still pretty spectacular.Lugosi puts on one of his better vampire performances here. He has about one line of dialog in the whole movie, but his vampire is far more feral than most of his performances. Carroll Borland steals the show, though, as his daughter. While definitely inspired by the Brides of Dracula, her look is fantastic, with pale skin, sunken dark eyes and that long hair. Her look single-handedly defined the horror queen look that would be repeated by Vampira and Morticia Addams.The "human actors" are not to be outdone, either, as we get some classic horror royalty. Lionel Barrymore is great as the professor and hypnotist who is essentially the Van Helsing of the movie. He has this creepy quality that makes the viewer never quite sure we're really to trust him. Everyone's favorite police man, Lionel Atwill, shows up here as well to play his usual inspector.That ending is what ruins it for a lot of folks, though, but it never did for me. Maybe it's a childhood spent rotting my brain on Scooby-Doo cartoons, but the idea of revealing the monster to be a real person in disguise seems like a common horror theme and, indeed, in almost every spooky movie leading up to the 30s, the monster was always revealed to be a hoax. It's silly, to me. We know that monsters aren't real anyways, right? So, how does it exactly ruin a sense of drama for us if that's revealed to us in a movie? Every movie we watch is make believe, but people hate this one for pulling back that curtain and saying "we were just playing". Browning's history of silent film directing made a definite impact on his style. Really, you could watch this movie on mute and it would still be an eerie, ethereal delight sure to give enjoyment to any classic horror fan.