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).

31 Days of Horror Recommendations: The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895)

 

Year: 1895

Country: U.S.

Subgenre: Historical Horror (also Film First/Silent Horror)

Runtime: 1 minute is the given time (it's more like 20 seconds)

Director: Alfred Clark

I am lover of the silents and love reading about the beginnings of film--particularly those from the 19th century; at nearly 125 years of age, this little film ranks as one of the earliest narrative films to have been made. While, Méliès' Le manoir du diable is regarded as the very first intentionally made horror film; that film was released in 1896, one year after this Edison production went out to nickelodeons. However, this film is often listed as a horror film; and, I think, rightly so. It reportedly so horrified people in parlors, that many of them fainted (and not all of them were women). It is a very brief film; as the saying goes, "if you blink, you'll miss it," but it's impression was very long lasting!  As mentioned, it is an Edison Laboratories production directed by Alfred Clark, who was new to the company. He is a figure that doesn't get near enough attention or credit in the annals of film history. It was he who brought a number novel ideas to the Edison studio, including trained actors, scenario plots and film editing. This film is regarded as the very first "hard edit" in any film--and it was so realistic that many people actually thought a woman willingly gave up her life for the making of it. So you can add infamy to it's list of descriptions.  In reality the actor who played Mary Stuart was in fact a man named Robert Thomae; it is his only known film appearance. The hard edit in this is considered a special effect, the first of it's kind, and the film is listed as the very first "trick film." Again, this was prior to the king of trick films, Georges Méliès, bursting into the brand new film industry in France the following year. Because we are so fortunate that so many of Méliès hundreds of film shorts have survived, this Edison short often get over looked. So how about giving it a look right now?

31 Days of Horror Recommendations: Le manoir du diable [The House of the Devil] (1896)

 

Year: 1896 (yes, your eyes are not decieving you!)

Country: France

Notables: First Horror Film!

Subgenre: Haunted House

Runtime:  3+ minutes

Director: Georges Méliès

This is an honest recommendation. It is the very first horror film (unless you count, and many people do, the unintended horror of 1895's The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots); and it is essential horror viewing.  It is not quite 3 and a half minutes long and prints vary in terms of condition. But, even the grainiest of the prints out there suffices to give the viewer what Méliès was up to. This is a haunted house (or haunted manor) film, but the spirits that are contained in the film included ghosts, skeleton and even the first vampire like creature that changes from bat form into human form.  That's a LOT for 3 minutes!  The frame story is that Mephistopheles, complete with cauldron, conjures up these horrors (or tricksters--more like!), after he, as the above mentioned bat, flies into an old castle and takes human form. It is intended to be a farce and funny. So the very first horror film, is actually a horror comedy.  For those of us that LOVE horror comedies, this is deeply satisfying!*.  Méliès followed with a similar film, Le Château hanté (or The Haunted Castle) the following year. [Be aware that the vast majority of copies to view online are incomplete--and edited from a larger documentary on Méliès, most of the original film is available via a couple of DVD collections of his work, putting the film rightfully on it's own, bits are still missing from the end and it is a miracle that we have the film at all! It was thought lost until 1985.]

*I am aware that many, if not most, silent film scholars would rather die than categorize this film as "horror".  But in so much as one can categorize early narrative films: this is most definitely a comedy, a fantasy and, yes, a horror film. Horror genres as they sprung from gothic tales do not need to scare or horrify to be "horror." It is a distinction WITH a difference as far I am concerned. Early films that dealt with the macabre, which Méliès certainly trafficked in theatrically, deserve the horror moniker as much as early films that recreated past events deserve for be called "historical." 

Poe Friday: The Sealed Room (1909)

Speaking Of Ghost Stories...

Does This Remind Anyone Of Another Film?

Ghosts: The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Yes the year reads right!  1921.  I have a great love silent film and I am over-joyed to be watching a fully restored version of this great ghost film from Sweden.  It is now on Blu Ray and looks amazing.  It employs similar tinting as the crime serial Les Vampires (1915-1916) did in regards to night time sequences, great blue tints!  Includes yellow tints for domestic situations not seen in most previous feature length films.  Nosferatu, which came out a year later, included that--along with a reddish tint not found in many early feature silents--it was, after all, a vampire film!  Although the Blu Ray looks great, not happy with the soundtrack from Kino.  This is a horror film.  The soundtrack for their blu ray in no way reflects that.  I think this is a situation where one might need to create a soundtrack; like, for example, a strange Brian Eno Scape.  It's a ghost story set on New Year's Eve, where the last person to die with great sin has to man the "phantom carriage" for the next year, acting as the grim reaper, collecting the souls of all the dead (including drowned fishermen).  The original Swedish title cards are preserved with a great deal of love though.  Overall a winner on Blu Ray.

Reblogged on my Silent blog site.

Silent Horror: The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920)

From 1920, older than almost every surviving feature length horror film, this is German Expressionism in film at it's most horrific and raw state.  It gives, actually a glimpse that film was the real driving force behind the artistic (and beyond many would argue) movement--not merely a remnant of German Romanticism, but not quite "brutal" as in "brutal architecture" became later in the 20th century.  There was, of course, the brutality of the Great War, and German Expressionism first found it's way into the visual by way of painting, but with the invention of longer forms of reels of film came the possibility of putting that into motion (sort of).  Director Weine hired two German Expressionist painters to paint the sets for the film:  Herman Warm and Walter Reimann, but it is the grotesque carnival in living pictures that makes the film hard to get out of the mind.  This was certainly a very big influence on Lang's Metropolis.  For that matter, it had to be an influence on Nosferatu as well, in the sense that Max Schreck who plays Orlok seems to have used many of the moves of the Ceasare the somnambulist (Konrad Veidt) in his vampiric movements.  There is also something of the comic book that comes to mind in this film.  The title cards to splashed and splintered, and shove their way onto the screen (see the Sin City movies--only this is better). This is truly a weird one, in both the English meaning of the word and the German as well.  Of course, something this grotesque is not going to get past people like Rob Zombie, so below is an embed of "Living Dead Girl"--his version of The Cabinet.  

Silent Horror: Frankenstein (1910)

The above is the complete film restored with some really good and appropriate music, for the original that has been the out on DVD for many years now see below.  This is the very first Frankenstein film, and was one of the only horror movies ever produced by the Edison film production machine--a group that could easily hold the title for invention of the motion picture.

Silent Horror: Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages

This is an absolute early horror classic--much in the same vein as Nosferatu, only much more tabu (taboo) and underground--more akin in it's surreal and occultic nature to The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari than it's famous Murnau vampire cousin, also a film from 1922.  Also, many people think this is a German film; in fact, it is Swedish.  One of my all time favorites.  Word about the print here.  It's Criterion Collection--restored to full glory!!  The music is terrible.  So I am viewing it with the soundtrack to Dario Argento's classic 1975 witch horror Suspiria by goblin--very effective!  

Silent Horror (with some Comedy): The Haunted House (1921)

Silent Horror: Nosferatu (1922)

F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu is probably the most well known silent horror movie in this day and age, probably one the most famous and consistently watched silent films, ever, no matter the genre (which almost didn't happen as the widow of Bram Stoker almost succeeded in getting the film destroyed altogether). Of course, at the time of it's release, it was recognized as being a part of the German Expressionist movement, of which film was only a part.  It like, "Les Vampires" seven years before it, utilizes tinted still frames for emotional emphasis.  I first saw this when I was a kid in black and white and was completely blown away when I first saw a fully restored copy as an adult as a result of the tinting.  Makes that carriage ride 10 times more terrifying!!