Mark of the Vampire (1935)

(On Cable TV, July 2020) There’s an ongoing conversation about “subverted expectations” in some fannish circles that constantly frustrates me. If you believe the conversation (and it’s not always clear how ironic it’s meant to be), fans are fragile little creatures incapable to dealing with anyone that messes with their preconceived expectations of how a show, a series or a story should go. As much as it frustrates me to admit it, there may be a point to this—genre stories have their own expectations, and messing with those expectations comes with some peril. That conversation isn’t new, and my case in point is Mark of the Vampire, a 1935 film that, not even five years after Universal’s Dracula, already played with genre expectations. Specifically (and sorry for the 85-year-old spoiler), it starts by following the Dracula plot template faithfully, only to conclude by having the vampires be an acting troupe out for some nefarious purpose. Something that started out as a horror film thus ends up strictly mainstream (although of the crime genre). Reviews at the time were divided, and they kept on being divided in the decades since then. While the rug-pulling trick may be conceptually interesting (especially as part of a critical conversation about, indeed, subverted expectations), it’s not doing any favours to an audience that settles in to watch a vampire movie that operates according to the plot template of vampire movies. There’s probably a mitigating factor in noting that up until the twist, Mark of the Vampire is a very familiar film—if you’ve seen, well, anything close to a Stoker adaptation, it doesn’t seem to do anything better or all that different. The twist sets it apart even as it sabotages the implied contract between audience and filmmaker. Of course, there’s no real reason to get annoyed about it—I’ll wager that the numbers of Mark of the Vampire fans is in the hard dozens at this time, and the way to approach old movies is often more analytical than personal. I suspect that as a result, Mark of the Vampire is going to remain a footnote to other more straightforward vampire movies of the era. But, at least, it will be remembered.