A midnight visit from the Vampyr

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Surprise! It's midnight on Halloween. You thought my week o' public domain horror films was over with Night of the Living Dead. You were wrong. Director Carl Dreyer directed one of the great films of all time, The Passion of Joan of Arc, which I once called "a blessing to the world of cinema." Four years later he would direct Vampyr, a ghostly, ostentatious, bold, experimental film. It's dark and slow and brooding and moody and forgoes an engrossing story in exchange for an engrossing atmosphere. Twilight this ain't. Happy midnight. Enjoy the film. (I've changed the embedded video to…

Three, three, three! classic silents

Posted inFilms, Videos
It's the Friday of Halloween weekend. Maybe you're bored. Maybe you're looking for something to occupy your time. That's why I'm packing three, three, three horror classics of the silent era into one blog post. The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Forget about song and dance and Broadway, the real Phantom of the Opera was a creepy classic that was ahead of its time. The story has been remade five times, but it's tough to beat a silent classic with Lon Chaney. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0tWZc8gP4 Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1920) Jekyll and Hyde don't rate very highly in modern horror, but…

White Zombie (1932)

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For most of this week of horrors I've focused on classics of the silent era. Here I thought I'd throw something else into the mix. Not only is 1932's White Zombie not of the silent era, it's not really a classic, either. But it IS something of a landmark. Featuring screen legend Béla Lugosi, best known for being creepy as hell (and the most recognizable Dracula), White Zombie is probably the first ever zombie film, albeit not in the George Romero way we think of zombies today. This is classic voodoo and witch doctor stuff. Is it any good? The…

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

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When I first began to explore silent film, one of the earliest movies to convince me of the power of the silents was 1922's landmark horror film, Nosferatu, a Dracula adaptation in all but name. I say in all but name because the film was intended to be an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the studio could not obtain the rights the story. A few name changes and plot tweaks and wala! A brand new story ... sort of. Nosferatu is one of the great silent films and is still one of the great horror films, relying on a…

The Golem (1920)

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This creepy, dreamlike film from 1920 is based on the old Jewish folklore of the Golem, an artificial creature made of inanimate matter and brought to life. (Shades of Frankenstein's monster there.) In this moody German production, the creature comes to life and, naturally, wreaks havoc. This variation on the tale -- the full title is The Golem: How He Came into the World -- is one of the great examples of German impressionist cinema. Both the story as well as the approach to visual storytelling in this film proved highly influential, guiding the work of legends like Alfred Hitchcock.…