What’s New in Old Movies: September 2024
By Don Stradley
It’s nice to get an early start on Halloween. Lucky for us the physical media market is alive with spooky offerings.
Let’s get started with the film generally considered the granddaddy of ‘em all, a thriller from Germany that must’ve given audiences bad dreams a century ago, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Werner Krauss stars as the bizarre doctor of the title, while Conrad Veidt is Cesare, the somnambulist who does the doctor’s bidding. With its peculiar sets and hypnotic imagery, director Robert Wiene smashed any previous notion of what a movie could do visually. You can’t even say Caligari was ahead of its time, because no one since has dared to imitate it. There have been remakes and homages, like Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory, or Picasso’s Guernica; but the original is so unique to the creator’s vision that imitations fall flat.
Though the movie is usually recalled for its spectacular set design, which was inspired by the expressionistic artwork of the period, Veidt’s portrayal of the sleepwalking phantom is one of the key movie roles of all time. With his pale face, black lips, and dead-eyed stare, he seemed in 1920 to create the template for every horror movie monster to come. His influence can be seen everywhere, from Karloff in Frankenstein to various vampire movies, to George Romero’s undead. His aura pervades some of Tim Burton’s work and anything that might be dubbed “Goth-chic.” In short, just about every pasty-faced creep who has ever lurked in a shadow has owed something to Veidt. Yet he remains sui generis, just like the movie. As Captain Lou Albano used to say, “Often imitated, but never duplicated.”
Krauss’ mad doctor had a similar effect, with many cinema madmen of the next few years owing a lot to his frazzled, bug-eyed look. His influence ended, I suppose, when top hats went out of favor.
Though the film was a great leap stylistically, it divided critics and puzzled audiences. It may have been such a drastic change from what moviegoers had previously seen that there was no easy way to process it. People understood that they were seeing something unusual but weren’t certain that they’d enjoyed it. Some felt that such artsy pretension didn’t belong in films; others worried that all films were going to look this way in the future, with cubist sets and trancelike stories. They needn’t have worried. Movies stayed sort of dumb.
Still, it must’ve been an unforgettable experience to see Caligari in 1920. At that time the movie was accompanied by a sweeping orchestral score, which one critic compared to Strauss and Stravinsky. When MGM maneuvered to bring the film to America, it was as if Michealangelo’s David was being shipped over for our unwashed masses. It was hailed as not a mere movie, but a genuine piece of art, a masterwork for the ages. This, of course, raised the hackles of skeptics. As the late film lecturer and author David J. Skal wrote of it, “Caligari was a kind of cultural sputnik launched out of nowhere by Europe,” but for moviegoers weaned on Chaplin and Fairbanks, it was a bit too much to swallow.
Among the first critics to see it was Karl K. Kitchen of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In a sprawling account of his experience seeing the highly touted film, Kitchen called it, “one of the biggest disappointments in film history.”
In April of 1921, Kitchen journeyed to New York to see Caligari’s premiere on Broadway, a much-heralded event at the massive, 5,000 seat Capital Theater. The “European production” was presented as the “supreme sensation of the season,” no doubt raising expectations to a dangerous level. While Kitchen praised Krauss and Veidt as “excellent” and “deserving of high praise,” he disdained the film’s story, its treatment of insanity, and its artistic design. “The whole thing,” he wrote, “seemed so unreal, and so unpleasant, that I was glad to escape to the street.” He added, “It does not amuse, it does not even entertain, and of course it does not have any educational value.”
Mr. Kitchen wasn’t alone in his grievances. “The story is bad,” wrote the New York Daily News, scorning the screenplay as “unrelieved morbidity.” There were many who praised the film’s originality, but just as many despised it, echoing Motion Picture World’s dismissal of Caligari as a “degenerate German invention.” The film’s Teutonic origin even caused an egg-throwing riot outside a Los Angeles theater, with Hollywood members of the American Legion protesting the showing of a German film. In reaction to a mob estimated at 2,000, the theater’s owner removed Caligari from the marquee.
Fortunately, you can enjoy the movie without fearing a riot, thanks to a new release from Kino Lorber. It is a two-disc package, one a 4K Ultra HD, the other a Blu-ray. According to the liner notes, it comes with a “new orchestral score by five-time Emmy®-winning composer Jeff Beal (House of Cards), which had its premiere performance at Carnegie Hall on June 3, 2024.” If you prefer, the second disc comes with a more modern, electronic sounding score by Paul Miller, AKA DJ Spooky. You’ll also get some audio commentary by Beal, plus a 52-minute documentary called Caligari: How Horror Came to the Cinema. (Kino Lorber, 78 mins, tinted, available October 22)
Billed as Mexico’s first horror film, La Llorona (1933) depicts the legend of the crying woman, a macabre Mexican folktale about a mother who murders her own children. Jealous of the attention her two sons get from her husband, she drowns them and then commits suicide. As a ghost she combs the countryside, looking for her sons. She remains eternally trapped between Earth and heaven, crying out for the sons she killed.
Cuban director Ramón Peón was better known for action/adventure films, usually featuring a masked vigilante known as “The Black Eagle,” but with La Llorona he created a genuinely oddball feature. It played limited engagements across California, Texas, and Arizona, mostly in theaters that featured Spanish language fare. The film has a remarkable pedigree, with Carlos Noriega Hope and Fernando De Fuentas contributing to the screenplay. The former was one of Mexico’s top filmmakers of the silent era, and the latter went on to be a great fantasy filmmaker. Approximately 50 years after its release, La Llorona earned a reference in Phil Hardy’s excellent Encyclopedia of Horror Movies, with mention of its “artistry,” and special praise going to Peón for creating “spectacular spectral figures with slow camera movement and superimpositions.”
The new La Llorona Blu-ray comes from Powerhouse Films (the same group that put out The Bat Woman, which I recommended in a previous installment). It includes a new 2K restoration, plus a selection of audio commentaries and featurettes. You’ll also get a 17-minute documentary by Viviana Garcia Besne, the producer’s great granddaughter. (US standard Blu-ray, 73 mins, available Sept. 24)
Finally, it’s nice to see Kino Lorber is releasing Burn, Witch, Burn (1962). This is one of those elegant and oh-so-British supernatural films of the early ‘60s, where a professor learns that his ascent up the academic ladder was merely the result of his wife’s dabbling in the dark arts. He makes her get rid of her scary artifacts and witchy stuff, but he lives to regret it, especially when another witch shows up to cause trouble.
Directed by Sidney Hayers, produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff, based on a novel by Fritz Lieber, with a screenplay by three of the best post-war pulp writers (Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and George Baxt), Burn, Witch, Burn is a gem. The Kino Lorber 4K restoration comes with some intriguing special features, including an audio commentary by Matheson, an interview with actor Peter Wyngarde, and the original U.K. version, Night of the Eagle. The Blu-ray cover is also reversible, with Burn Witch Burn on one side, Night of the Eagle on the other. Kino thinks of everything! (90 mins, available October 1.)
One for the Books: Filmmaker and best-selling author Laurent Bouzereau has published well-received books on Faye Dunaway and Steven Spielberg, but his latest might be his best one yet. The De Palma Decade: Redefining Cinema with Doubles, Voyeurs, and Psychic Teens sounds like a great Halloween read. If you love the films of Brian De Palma, here is a 320-page exploration of his best period, starting with Sisters and ending with Blowout. You won’t read about The Untouchables or Mission Impossible, but you’ll be fine. Bouzerou, a self-confessed De Palma obsessive, was probably correct to focus on De Palma’s earlier, darker era. Oscar winning director Guillermo del Toro calls the new book “an indispensable text for all those of us intent in deciphering the master.” If it’s good for Guillermo, it’s good for me. (Running Press Adult, Hardcover, Kindle, available Sept 3)
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