The Fallen Vampire is an uneven, frustrating, but fitfully engaging documentary on beloved horror icon Bela Lugosi. Things kick off with Lugosi getting the lead in the Broadway production of Dracula. Hot off the popularity of the play, Bela resorts to taking a drastic pay cut to ensure he'll be cast in the big screen adaptation from Universal Pictures.
Then, the film backtracks to Lugosi’s early life. Stories of his upbringing sometimes conflict as he often lied about his humble beginnings. Even now, some details of Lugosi’s life pre-Hollywood are still up for debate. I liked that though, because it adds to his overall sense of mystery.
From there, it’s more or less the standard rags to riches to rags story. After the success of Dracula, Lugosi turns down Frankenstein and is forced to look on as the man who played the role, Boris Karloff eclipses him in popularity as the screen’s top horror star. Eventually, he becomes typecast in unsatisfying horror roles, the size of the parts grows smaller, and he spends much of his later life struggling with addiction.
There aren’t any real major revelations here, so much of this will feel like an old hat for fans of Lugosi. The overuse of public domain interview clips (which have turned up in countless similar documentaries) gets to be a bit much too. The new interviews aren’t particularly earth-shattering either, but I did get a kick out of seeing Lugosi’s Mark of the Vampire leading lady, Carol Borland attesting to his ladies’ man status.
The film also gets sidetracked when it starts to detour into the historical context of the Dracula legend. There’s a bit about Transylvania burial customs that just seems like filler. I mean, this stuff would be okay if we were watching a Dracula documentary, but this is supposed to be about Bela Lugosi. I could’ve also done without the cheap shots that were made at the expense of the movies Bela made with Ed Wood. (The narrator calls Glen or Glenda “an artistic failure”, which couldn’t be any further from the truth.)
Now that I got that off my chest, there’s still some good stuff here. I liked seeing the stills from the old Broadway version of Dracula where Lugosi’s make-up is much more pronounced than what wound up in the film version. We also get a funny bit where Bela stalks Betty Boop (“You have booped your last boop!”) and an amusing snippet from a newsreel where Lugosi donates blood for the war effort. (The narrator says, “It’s time to give back some of that blood you’ve taken!”)
AKA: Bela Lugosi: The Fallen Vampire.
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