31 Days of Horror Recommendations: Blind Justice (Haevnens Nat/Revenge Night)

 

Year: 1916

Country: Denmark

Subgenre Crime Thriller/Dramatic Horror

Runtime: 100 minutes

Director: Benjamin Christensen (Benjamin Christie)

This is one of the very first "slow burn" horror films. Listed as a drama in many places, it most certainly also deserves it categorization as a horror film. Now, this is not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) or Nosferatu (1922) mind you; and it is most definitely not Häxan, Christensen's 1922 horror about witchcraft. It has no supernatural elements, save for a vague and growing unease about the nature and nurture of the soul. It's horror, does indeed reside in a skepticism over the possibility that salvation in all of it's forms may only be a human fantasy, with NO basis in reality. That people are, like any other creature, beyond salvation on any plane. The film seemingly starts as a kind of "old dark house" yarn; and just when you've settle in for such as tale it abruptly shifts in both time and narrative to story of love, loss, despair and the horrors of severe humiliation and shame. The main character John Strong, played by Christensen himself, is a circus performer who was forced into crimes of circumstance, and thus lands him in prison. The time shift sees him getting out of prison and seting out on quest to regain custody of his son; the only thing in world that he cares for. Here, John's state is presented almost as a zombie (it's really pretty scary, trust me). Christensen wrote it as a "fugue-like" state--I would say that it's a fine early film example of post traumatic stress disorder.  Christensen plays the role almost somnambulistically. He wanders in this pathetic state, until he meets up with a real criminal, one whom he met in prison. From here, he falls in with the man's criminal gang and this go from bad to worse. I will stop my description here; any further description would include serious spoilers. As for the film itself, it has been completely eclipsed by Häxan. People seem not to notice that Christensen started making films in 1914 and thanks to the Danish penchant for film preservation, many of these films are available. I don't have direct evidence of this, but in watching this recently, I see parts that appear to have influenced Stanley Kubrick in the making of The Shining. We all know that at least one other silent film, The Phantom Carriage, was visually referenced by Kubrick in the film, so it is not out of the question that this was also an influence. It was certainly a BIG influence on Tod Browning's The Unknown (1927). And likely influenced the making of (maybe even the writing of the novel that it's based on) Fox's Nightmare Alley (1947). A decent print can be found on YouTube--complete with all the original tinting (YouTube link).