The Mark of Zorro

 Year:  1940

Director:  Rouben Mamoulian

Screenplay:  John Taintor Foote, story by Garrett Fort and Bess Meredyth, based on the novel The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley

Starring:  Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Basil Rathbone

Running Time:  94 minutes

Genre:  Action, adventure

19th Century California:  Don Diego Vega (Power) is summoned home from Madrid by his father.  In California, Diego is horrified by how the local people are oppressed by the cruel and corrupt governor.  Outwardly coming across as a wealthy, cowardly fop, Diego adopts the secret identity of masked outlaw El Zorro ("The Fox") to fight for justice.

The swashbuckling hero Zorro had previously rode onto cinema screens in the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro, which starred Douglas Fairbanks in the lead role.  This is a spirited old fashioned adventure film, with some enjoyable action, and some exciting sword fights.  The film's title comes from Zorro's habit of marking things and sometimes people with three quick sword slashes to form the letter "Z".  Also it doesn't take itself too seriously and there is a welcome vein of humour throughout.  Tyrone Power is good in the lead role, obnoxiously foppish as Diego, but athletically physical and romantic as Zorro.  Basil Rathbone is good as the evil master swordsman who Zorro must defeat.  Linda Darnell doesn't really have anything much to do other than be courted by Diego, as she falls in love with his Zorro persona.  This is the kind of Saturday matinee film that really doesn't get made much anymore, and while it hasn't aged well in places, it is still a very entertaining film.   The Mark of Zorro has gone on to become part of the Batman mythos.  In both comic books and movies, it's depicted as the film that the young Bruce Wayne watched with his parent's the night that they were killed.  Although it differs among various versions whether it was the 1920 or 1940 film that they watched.  

Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro

Dracula

Year of Release:  1931
Director:  Tod Browning and Karl Freund (uncredited)
Screenplay:  Garrett Fort, based on the stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker
Starring:  Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan
Running Time:  75 minutes
Genre:  Horror

This is one of the most influential horror films ever made.  an English solicitor, Renfield (Frye) arrives in Transylvania to finalise the purchase of an old abbey by mysterious nobleman Count Dracula (Lugosi).  Renfield soon learns that Dracula is, in reality, a vampire.  Driven insane by his experiences and enslaved to Dracula, Renfield helps the Count travel to England.  Once in Britain, Dracula sets his sights on Mina (Chandler), the daughter of Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston) who runs the lunatic asylum next to his abbey.

There have been many screen adaptations of Dracula, and this is neither the first or the best of them, but it is still the most influential.  The film bears little resemblance to Bram Stoker's original novel of 1897, being largely based on a hugely successful 1924 stage adaptation which turned the novel into effectively a drawing room mystery.  The film has some extremely atmospheric scenes, particularly early on, capturing a real sense of decay and mystery.  As it comes along the film becomes increasingly flat, it's stage-bound origins very much in evidence.  A lot of the important sequences take place off-screen, including the film's climax, which is hugely disappointing.  There are also plot elements and characters that appear and are dropped without explanation, and it doesn't really flow.  However, Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula, even though he bears little resemblance to the character as described by Stoker he is still what comes to mind when you think of "Dracula", and to this day his portrayal is parodied, copied and referenced.  With his slow, fractured, heavily accented speech (Lugosi couldn't speak English at the time and learned his lines phonetically), along with his icy hypnotic stare, he has an otherworldly sense about him that dominates the screen.

This is not a good film, and it really hasn't aged well, but there are some great things in here and it is a key film in the canon of American film and the evolution of the horror film, which make it worth watching, and it is a must-see if only for Bela Lugosi's performance.

Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) and Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) in Dracula