Attack of the Horror Film Series!: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
By Rhea Dee
I heart horror films. A lot. I was raised from a very young age (thanks, Dad) to respect and love these movies for all they had to offer–gore, screams, and sometimes, social commentary. The love I have for horror films is almost scary. (Ha!)
So I nearly had a squee-attack when I found out that my local art theater (Film Streams in Omaha, Nebraska) was having a film series this month of horror films appropriately called “Film Screams.” (Again, ha!) The series features an array of horror films spanning the 20th century–from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to An American Werewolf in London.
The icing on the cake though (for me at least) is the final film in the series, Evil Dead II. When I was a kid, I just about worshipped that movie. My Dad had recorded the movie off HBO and I watched the tape hundreds of times, including all the HBO stuff preceding the movie (a Stephen King interview about the Pet Semetary movie and previews for a robot marathon featuring Cherry 2000, Westworld, Blade Runner, and Chopping Mall). I cannot wait to see Evil Dead II on the big screen.
But first, all the other awesome movies in the series! Film Screams kicked off with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1921), a silent film from Germany about wicked doctors, creepy carnivals and a somnambulist. The story is told in flashbacks by Francis, our protagonist of the movie.
Francis tells a story of an attraction at a carnival that he and his friend Alan attended. The attraction is presented by Dr. Caligari who shows the audience Cesare, a somnambulist that has been asleep his whole life. Caligari tells the audience that Cesare only wakes given his command and that his somnambulism allows him a sort of precognitive nature. Once Caligari wakes Cesare, Alan rushes forward and asks him how long he will live. Cesare answers that he will not survive the night. Distraught, Alan collapses and Francis takes him home. And sure enough, someone comes and murders Alan in his sleep.
Francis, distraught by his friend’s death, embarks on a little detective adventure to discover who killed his friend. Is it Cesare? Or is it Dr. Caligari? Or is it someone else altogether?
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari definitely still has the chops to give scares. The whole film has an eerie, surreal look about it; most all of the actors have heavy black makeup around their eyes and the sets looked like they were painted by someone maniacal. It gave the film a sort of abstract look that added to the story, and eventually explained the ending (which I swear might be the first twist ending in the history of horror cinema).
One of the biggest perks about seeing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is that instead of tacking on the score composed for the silent film, local indie masters Todd Fink (of electro band The Faint, Orenda Fink and Ben Brodin (of Mal Madrigal composed their own score for the film, which was totally effing awesome. The trio composed the music without listening to the soundtrack recorded for the movie, choosing to develop their own vision of music. The result was amazing–a lush, atmospheric, slightly electronic, slightly folk-y masterpiece that added to the surreal nature of the entire film.
Finally, since I’m attending a horror film series, I thought I’d rate each film on their, hmm, “horrorability.” Basically, do these films fulfill my selfish horror film demands?
(All figures are on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Gore: 0 (some references to stabbing, but no super blood splatters)
Cheap Shots: 0 (My cheap shot definition is when something jumps out at a character and therefore makes you jump. I usually dislike cheap shots, because they lose their oomph over repeated viewings when you know when so-and-so is going to jump out of the bushes. So no cheap shots is (usually) a good thing.)
Skin crawling spookiness: 8
Overall impression: 8. Good ol’ fashioned horror.
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Rhea Dee teeters between hipster and geek. (At least that’s what that one quiz said.) She spends her time collecting vintage dresses, daydreaming about Eli Roth, and pondering the genius of John Carpenter soundtracks. She recently started a blog, Girl Heart Horror, where she blabs about how TOTALLY awesome horror is. Like, for serious.
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Ah, a classic and a staple of the German Expressionism section of every film class I’ve taken so far. I recently had a marathon this Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Nosferatu. I personally love Rob Zombie’s tribute to the film in his video for “Living Dead Girl.”