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Tod Browning was a genius, for sure, but an erratic one. He seemed at his best working with Chaney, Sr. in the silent days, began to lose ground when talkies came in. Also, his (literally) weird kind of movie was better suited to the silent screen. He had good ideas and could visualize, pictorialize, if you will, but he wasn't so good when it came to dramatizing and, especially, where dialogue was concerned.

Still and all, Browning was a unique talent, and even a second rate Browning is worth watching just to see what the great man was up to. There was apparently something going on with him, maybe his age was catching up with him,--he was a good decade or more older than Ford, Hawks, Wellman and many other directors who began in silent films--and this may have been a factor in his just wanting to slow down after a solid two decades plus of work as a director. He was apparently well paid at MGM so he didn't need the money to keep working; nor apparently, was he all that ambitious artistically.

Browning was about fifty when he made Freaks, his best remembered film, and maybe his best, period. He said it all in that one; everything he'd been hinting at for years came out in the film, ironically, without Chaney. Instead of getting Chaney to use strange devices and makeup to play an ugly or mutilated character Browning went for the real thing, real freaks, and with a vengeance. He probably should have retired after that, as no doubt MGM would have loved him for, but he had a long term contract with them, hung on for a few more years. Mark Of the Vampire is Browning in eclipse but it has its moments, has always felt, to me, strangely comfortablel its ambiance, I mean, not frightening so much as quaint, easy to take.