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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 15 |
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Silent Screen Horrors |
 MARGEURITE GANCE in 'FALL of the HOUSE of USHER' |
 MAX SCHRECK in 'NOSFERATU' |
Horror films flourished
in the silent movie era
of TheColumnists.com
Lots of us assume that slapstick comedies are the only lasting legacy of the silent movie period, which lasted for nearly 30 years in the first half of the 20th century. Let me assure you that's an ungrounded assumption.
Horror films, for instance, flourished in the late teens and 1920s. In fact, the silent horror films made by German filmmakers from 1919-29 so deeply influenced the genre worldwide that film historians still think of those films as the ones that made almost all the "rules" of the genre.
I think too many people are afraid to even try watching a silent film today because they're sure they'll either be bored by them--or find them so old-fashioned and silly that they just can't possibly entertain modern moviegoers. I'll agree that not all of them are especially riveting today, but some are still spellbinders. And, if you have the right attitude, even some of the dated ones have much to appreciate.
Now that the DVD format has made it possible to see carefully restored silent films that come with quality musical accompaniment and lots of explanatory materials, it's a good time to check out some of the building blocks of the modern horror movies.
Here's a list of 10 of my favorite silent horror films and the features that make them still worth seeing today:
1. THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) was made by German director Robert Wiene at the close of World War I and is a story within a story, told by a madman at an asylum. Though now quite crude in story-telling technique, it's worth seeing for the bizarre expressionist sets and the sinister performances of Conrad Veidt as the zombie-like "somnambulist" who commits murders for Caligai (Werner Krause) when he rises from his "cabinet" each night.
2. DR. JEKYLL and MR. HYDE (1920) is the John Barrymore version--one of many verisons made during the silent era from the classic Robert Louis Stevenson story. Though handsome and a Broadway leading man, Barrymore had a great flair for over-the-top characters and his flamboyant performance as the good doctor who drinks a potion that turns him into his "dark" twin is still amazing to see.
3. NOSFERATU (1922) was the first, unauthorized, filming of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," made by the genuinely creeped-out German director F.W. Murnau and starring the bizarre Max Schreck as the unholy vampire who sucks the blood from his living victims. There's a DVD version with totally restored picture and two alternate musical tracks--one in the style of the period, the other a modern electronic soundtrack. Both are excellent and the film still has great impact.
4. THE HUNCHBACK of NOTRE DAME (1923) is the Universal studios classic with Lon Chaney, Sr. as Quasimodo, the distorted, deadly, but passionate bellringer at Notre Dame cathredral, who falls in love with the beautiful gypsy girl, Esmeralda. Chaney's performance is uncanny--and the action sequences as Quasidmodo defends Notre Dame against a horde of invaders still are stirring.
5. WAXWORKS (1924) may be the first "monster rally" film--a strange German film from Paul Leni whose story follows a young writer (played by William Dieterle, later a famous Hollywood director) assigned to do biographies of a wax museum's three most notorious characters, whose stories soon swallow him up. It's still worth seeing for the colorful performances of the great actors playing the three "evil" characters--Jack the Ripper (Werner Krause), Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt) and Haroun Al-Raschid, played by Emil Jannings, who would become the first Best Actor Oscar winner four years later for "The Last Command" and "The Way of All Flesh."
6. THE LOST WORLD (1925) is the granddaddy of all giant monster movies. Based on Conan Doyle's grand adventure novel, it follows the expedition of Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery) to a remote plateau in South America where prehistoric monsters still survive. The effects may seem primitive in today's all-digital world, but they were done by Willis O'Brien, who created "King Kong" eight years later, and they're still effective.
7. THE PHANTOM of the OPERA (1925) is still very creepy--and it has the grotesque Lon Chaney, Sr., spiriting away lovely Mary Philbin to his lair beneath the Paris Opera House. There is a restored, color-tinted version of this great movie with the musical soundtrack used for its reissue in the early 1930s. Try to get that version and you'll be surprised how well it still holds up.
8. METROPOLIS (1925) is Fritz Lang's German masterpiece about a city of the far future where slaves drive the machines that run the whole thing. The greatest sequence, which still is dazzling, involves the creation of the robot Maria, a man-made version of the beautiful real Maria (Brigitte Helm)--the charismatic woman the mad scientist Rotwang hopes will help him control the slaves forever.
9. THE BELLS (1926) stars Lionel Barrymore as a man who commits a murder and is haunted by the constant ringing of sleigh bells that take him back to the murder scene. Barrymore's performance still holds up, but the real treat of this film is finding Boris Karloff in a pre-"Frankenstein" horror role, playing the carnival hypnotist who knows that Barrymore is holding a terrible secret.
10. THE FALL of the HOUSE of USHER (1928) is Jean Epstein's French version of the Poe classic about Roderick Usher's madhouse in the midst of a gloomy fen and his "dead" sister who rises from her grave. This is a visual masterpiece that assistant director Luis Bunuel helped create. And the rising of Madeleine Usher, played by the wife of immortal French director Abel Gance, still shivers your timbers.
All of these films are
available in restored, good quality editions and most are now
available on DVD. Beware the older video versions, though, that
present these classics in terrible condition that'll make you
wonder why anybody would ever want to see them again.
© 2003 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches classes in mystery and related topics at Whatcom Community
College and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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