Full-Length Silent Horror Films: The Beginning - 1920-1924
Fuck silent films.
Now that that's out of the way, Sin and I started the 1920s in our horror film series. By this point, the vaudeville elements of the old horror films are practically gone. However, this decade in its entirety has been tough. Each film is silent with odd orchestral soundtracks and are each between 90 and 120 minutes. All the same, some have been pretty enjoyable. Some have been a lot tougher.
As usual for these posts, I'll give a couple-sentence review of each one and then list Sin's and my favorite at the end.
1920
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: This version was interesting compared to the 1910s version. It was full-length, so that meant we got more story. But it still seemed a lot more religiously pedantic than the previous version. It played off the romance elements a lot more, and the special effects were noticeably better. We got more of the "sin" aspects, and I saw elements of Dorian Grey with the treatment of a fatherly figure to Jekyll who tempted him with taking him to a Moulin Rouge-styled establishment. It was more enjoyable at points but also more annoying at other points.
Genuine: This was a film directed by Wiene again, the German expressionist from the tail end of the 10s. This film was a key aesthetic point for me. I immediately understood where Tim Burton gained his aesthetic tastes, from studying Wiene. There were some shots where I was like, "This looks just like it came from Beetlejuice." These German expressionist films also treated women interestingly. It was a unique flavor of sexism: lots of evil sexuality at work. His films didn't partake much in the American movement of women mostly being innocent, ignorant virgin types. Of course, American cinema adapts, but by this point, American film's sexism was not as multi-faceted as it was later or even today. So, it's interesting to see how American horror portrayed women differently than German horror. OTHERWISE, I hated Genuine. Its plot was so dull and weird.
The Golem: We need more Jewish horror films. This one was interesting. I believe this was actually a prequel film, but the main film and its sequel are lost films. This was a good origin story though. It reminded me of some superhero or supervillain origin stories. Its plot, as a result, was fairly predictable to me as a 21st century person, but the makeup design was nice. I enjoyed its aesthetics at least.
1921
The Phantom Carriage: This film was fucking cool. It started out really dull, but it plays with disease as both a religious and supernatural metaphor, and as someone living with HIV, this film really spoke to me about disease, death, and contagiousness. I was amazed at the treatment of humanity in a film about disease, fairly progressive in that sense. I was even a bit horrified at a point where a woman thought there was no more meaning to her life, so she decides to use her deceased husband's handkerchief covered in tuberculosis contagions to make a tea to kill herself and her two children. Yeah, it gets that dark. Definitely worth a watch in and of itself.
1922
Haxan: This was a Swedish horror film. Its first part focuses on quoting descriptions and displaying images from the old witch-hunting treatise, the Malleus Maleficarum. Now, I had actually already read the Malleus, so I knew all of the quotes and images. Seeing it in a film version was interesting. After this part, it moves on to actual film acting of what witches were like "back in the day." Its final part shows witches in the 1920s. This film as a fucking trip. It had lots of furries throughout. Some sexy ass demons. And speaking of ass, there was a whole rimming scene that was delicious~ If you're a sex-positive furry, I highly recommend you watch this film. Skip forward twenty minutes, if you don't want all the quotes, and then have a blast. That said, some of the tortures displayed in the film were terrifying, mostly because they definitely actually happened. Apparently, some of the actors in the film wanted to try some of the torture devices for real. They were most displeased with the results, according to the director.
Nosferatu: Yes, the classic vampire film. Except for a few scenes from the later Bram Stoker's Dracula, I had never actually seen a Dracula film before this. I thoroughly enjoyed some elements. It wasn't until watching it that I realized how the first fifth of the original novel really is "Beauty and the Beast" / "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" / "Cupid and Psyche": It starts with a character sent away to a monster's castle, where they are told they cannot see their host in the daytime, oh, and stay out of that one room, and then they of course disobey, and that's when the monstrosity is seen. The acting was incredible for this, and I loved the depiction of Orlok (or whatever his name was). If we read vampires as sexual monsters, which most academics do, then the sexual play with the main character's wife and the vampire is interesting. She sacrifices herself in order to save everyone. Also, this film had a werewolf in it! At least according to Transylvania's folklore in the film. It even showed the werewolf (just a hyaena). The film is definitely worth a watch.
The Headless Horseman: Oddly enough, my only real exposure to this story was reading the original back when I was a kid and seeing the Disney animated version numerous times. So what surprised me the most was just how fucking often I saw exact shot-for-shot scenes that would later appear in Disney's version in this film. It was crazy how similar the two were. I hated that this film version spoiled the ending, something that neither the original story nor Disney's version did. The ending should be a mystery, yet this one doesn't. I still struggle with how to read the story. At points, it's super conservative and anti-academic. At other points, it's mocking town folk knowledge and folk justice. Still, it was an enjoyable film. I got a bit freaked out when they were going to tar and feather Ichabod. They gave so much screen time to the boiling of the tar, and I was just like, "Nooooo, don't tar that poor innocent man." I was glad it fell through, but still. It was tense for me!
1923
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: This was much longer than the version we watched in the 1910s, but it was probably just as dull. This film also saw our first exposure to Lon Chaney, Sr. He played Quasimodo. Apparently, Chaney had a reputation for playing "cripples," and this was supposed to be his final casting in that role. Apparently, also, it was common knowledge for years that he would play this part. He bought the film rights for it years prior and just struggled to find a producer and director. Still, he had a lot of artistic control, designing his own makeup and costume. Storywise, they made some interesting departures from the older film version. They didn't blame a religious figure on everything. Instead, the archdeacon had a "brother." Largely, it was more of a romance. The film introduced Phoebus, and had a conflict among Phoebus, Clopin, and the archdeacon's brother over who would have control over Esmeralda. But again, by the end, it's a pretty cynical and dark film.
1924
Hands of Orlac: This was another Conrad Veidt film. Veidt plays a pianist who loses his hands in a train accident, and they are replaced with a long-executed murderer's hands. While this is now a more common horror trope, replacing body parts with those of a criminal and seeing the evil that comes with that manifest, it seemed fairly original in film at the time. The thing I loved most about this film wasn't the German expressionism (I think this was also a Wiene film). It was the intricate story twists. It was definitely the most complex plot we have seen so far, and it made for an enjoyable mystery as well as a horror narrative. Probably my favorite Veidt film so far.
Waxworks: This film also had Veidt in it. It focuses on two writers hired to create sensational stories for three characters at a wax museum. The three stories become the main parts of the film. The Caliph story was pretty racist and more of an adventure story, but it was okay. The Ivan the Terrible story was creepy in a Poe sense but not much more than that. And the Jack the Ripper story was just feeble attempts at suspense, and that was about it. Not a particularly interesting movie.
So, for favorites!
My favorite of these five years was probably Haxan actually. It had very limited plot, but I still found myself most engaged in it, both for its aesthetics, its sexiness, and its intriguing treatment of horror, even though it tried to be more documentary in nature.
Sin's was...Haxan as well! (I just asked him.) "Just because of the imagery it had." So I guess we're in agreement there.
The next film post will be for the second half of the decade.
Comment question of the day would be this: have you seen any of these films? If so, which ones?
Now that that's out of the way, Sin and I started the 1920s in our horror film series. By this point, the vaudeville elements of the old horror films are practically gone. However, this decade in its entirety has been tough. Each film is silent with odd orchestral soundtracks and are each between 90 and 120 minutes. All the same, some have been pretty enjoyable. Some have been a lot tougher.
As usual for these posts, I'll give a couple-sentence review of each one and then list Sin's and my favorite at the end.
1920
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: This version was interesting compared to the 1910s version. It was full-length, so that meant we got more story. But it still seemed a lot more religiously pedantic than the previous version. It played off the romance elements a lot more, and the special effects were noticeably better. We got more of the "sin" aspects, and I saw elements of Dorian Grey with the treatment of a fatherly figure to Jekyll who tempted him with taking him to a Moulin Rouge-styled establishment. It was more enjoyable at points but also more annoying at other points.
Genuine: This was a film directed by Wiene again, the German expressionist from the tail end of the 10s. This film was a key aesthetic point for me. I immediately understood where Tim Burton gained his aesthetic tastes, from studying Wiene. There were some shots where I was like, "This looks just like it came from Beetlejuice." These German expressionist films also treated women interestingly. It was a unique flavor of sexism: lots of evil sexuality at work. His films didn't partake much in the American movement of women mostly being innocent, ignorant virgin types. Of course, American cinema adapts, but by this point, American film's sexism was not as multi-faceted as it was later or even today. So, it's interesting to see how American horror portrayed women differently than German horror. OTHERWISE, I hated Genuine. Its plot was so dull and weird.
The Golem: We need more Jewish horror films. This one was interesting. I believe this was actually a prequel film, but the main film and its sequel are lost films. This was a good origin story though. It reminded me of some superhero or supervillain origin stories. Its plot, as a result, was fairly predictable to me as a 21st century person, but the makeup design was nice. I enjoyed its aesthetics at least.
1921
The Phantom Carriage: This film was fucking cool. It started out really dull, but it plays with disease as both a religious and supernatural metaphor, and as someone living with HIV, this film really spoke to me about disease, death, and contagiousness. I was amazed at the treatment of humanity in a film about disease, fairly progressive in that sense. I was even a bit horrified at a point where a woman thought there was no more meaning to her life, so she decides to use her deceased husband's handkerchief covered in tuberculosis contagions to make a tea to kill herself and her two children. Yeah, it gets that dark. Definitely worth a watch in and of itself.
1922
Haxan: This was a Swedish horror film. Its first part focuses on quoting descriptions and displaying images from the old witch-hunting treatise, the Malleus Maleficarum. Now, I had actually already read the Malleus, so I knew all of the quotes and images. Seeing it in a film version was interesting. After this part, it moves on to actual film acting of what witches were like "back in the day." Its final part shows witches in the 1920s. This film as a fucking trip. It had lots of furries throughout. Some sexy ass demons. And speaking of ass, there was a whole rimming scene that was delicious~ If you're a sex-positive furry, I highly recommend you watch this film. Skip forward twenty minutes, if you don't want all the quotes, and then have a blast. That said, some of the tortures displayed in the film were terrifying, mostly because they definitely actually happened. Apparently, some of the actors in the film wanted to try some of the torture devices for real. They were most displeased with the results, according to the director.
Nosferatu: Yes, the classic vampire film. Except for a few scenes from the later Bram Stoker's Dracula, I had never actually seen a Dracula film before this. I thoroughly enjoyed some elements. It wasn't until watching it that I realized how the first fifth of the original novel really is "Beauty and the Beast" / "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" / "Cupid and Psyche": It starts with a character sent away to a monster's castle, where they are told they cannot see their host in the daytime, oh, and stay out of that one room, and then they of course disobey, and that's when the monstrosity is seen. The acting was incredible for this, and I loved the depiction of Orlok (or whatever his name was). If we read vampires as sexual monsters, which most academics do, then the sexual play with the main character's wife and the vampire is interesting. She sacrifices herself in order to save everyone. Also, this film had a werewolf in it! At least according to Transylvania's folklore in the film. It even showed the werewolf (just a hyaena). The film is definitely worth a watch.
The Headless Horseman: Oddly enough, my only real exposure to this story was reading the original back when I was a kid and seeing the Disney animated version numerous times. So what surprised me the most was just how fucking often I saw exact shot-for-shot scenes that would later appear in Disney's version in this film. It was crazy how similar the two were. I hated that this film version spoiled the ending, something that neither the original story nor Disney's version did. The ending should be a mystery, yet this one doesn't. I still struggle with how to read the story. At points, it's super conservative and anti-academic. At other points, it's mocking town folk knowledge and folk justice. Still, it was an enjoyable film. I got a bit freaked out when they were going to tar and feather Ichabod. They gave so much screen time to the boiling of the tar, and I was just like, "Nooooo, don't tar that poor innocent man." I was glad it fell through, but still. It was tense for me!
1923
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: This was much longer than the version we watched in the 1910s, but it was probably just as dull. This film also saw our first exposure to Lon Chaney, Sr. He played Quasimodo. Apparently, Chaney had a reputation for playing "cripples," and this was supposed to be his final casting in that role. Apparently, also, it was common knowledge for years that he would play this part. He bought the film rights for it years prior and just struggled to find a producer and director. Still, he had a lot of artistic control, designing his own makeup and costume. Storywise, they made some interesting departures from the older film version. They didn't blame a religious figure on everything. Instead, the archdeacon had a "brother." Largely, it was more of a romance. The film introduced Phoebus, and had a conflict among Phoebus, Clopin, and the archdeacon's brother over who would have control over Esmeralda. But again, by the end, it's a pretty cynical and dark film.
1924
Hands of Orlac: This was another Conrad Veidt film. Veidt plays a pianist who loses his hands in a train accident, and they are replaced with a long-executed murderer's hands. While this is now a more common horror trope, replacing body parts with those of a criminal and seeing the evil that comes with that manifest, it seemed fairly original in film at the time. The thing I loved most about this film wasn't the German expressionism (I think this was also a Wiene film). It was the intricate story twists. It was definitely the most complex plot we have seen so far, and it made for an enjoyable mystery as well as a horror narrative. Probably my favorite Veidt film so far.
Waxworks: This film also had Veidt in it. It focuses on two writers hired to create sensational stories for three characters at a wax museum. The three stories become the main parts of the film. The Caliph story was pretty racist and more of an adventure story, but it was okay. The Ivan the Terrible story was creepy in a Poe sense but not much more than that. And the Jack the Ripper story was just feeble attempts at suspense, and that was about it. Not a particularly interesting movie.
So, for favorites!
My favorite of these five years was probably Haxan actually. It had very limited plot, but I still found myself most engaged in it, both for its aesthetics, its sexiness, and its intriguing treatment of horror, even though it tried to be more documentary in nature.
Sin's was...Haxan as well! (I just asked him.) "Just because of the imagery it had." So I guess we're in agreement there.
The next film post will be for the second half of the decade.
Comment question of the day would be this: have you seen any of these films? If so, which ones?
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