Please do not mock. If the vampires should hear you, they will take their revenge on all of us.
Early in its run TCM Underground ran a double feature of 1932's Freaks and 1935's Mark of the Vampire, which made a certain amount of sense since both were directed by Tod Browning. I had long been familiar with the former at that point, but now, three years later, I have finally caught up with the latter since TCM was kind enough to show it again this morning. It's a film that has all the trappings of Browning's Dracula, so naturally he got Bela Lugosi to play the part of the vampiric Count Mora, who along with his daughter Luna (Carroll Borland) is terrorizing a modern-day Czechoslovakian village. When one of the victims is a nobleman whose daughter (Elizabeth Allan) stands to inherit his estate, inspector Lionel Atwill arrives from Prague and attempts to get to the bottom of things.
After Allan is attacked by Borland (to whom she surrenders quite willingly), Atwill brings in occult specialist Lionel Barrymore (who is top-billed despite not showing up until nearly a third of the film is over), who much to Atwill's chagrin doesn't debunk the claims of the superstitious locals but rather sets about preparing defenses against the supernatural threat. (Instead of hanging garlic around the place, though, he insists on a plant called bat-thorn, which I've never heard of before but apparently it's supposed to ward off vampires.) Naturally this does not prevent Lugosi from prowling about at will or Borland returning for seconds, but there are reasons for that that become clear soon enough (and I really mean that since the running time is just barely an hour). Even if the ending is a bit of a letdown, there is enough of a spooky atmosphere leading up to it (specifically, any scene featuring Lugosi and Borland) to justify any classic horror fan giving it a look-see.