The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 83 days to go.
Let’s start on the first true classic of spook cinema – The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari – released in 1920. The version below is a fantastic restored one, with the colour tinting added back in. Well worth an hour of anyone’s time.
As for the plot, essentially it is about the evil Dr Caligari (Werner Krauss) who has total control over a somnambulist (a person in a strange sleep condition), who in this case is set off on sleepwalking kill missions by Caligari against people who have wronged him. The Somnambulist is played by Conrad Veidt who later went to Hollywood and played the lead Nazi in Casablanca. The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari is a strange film with jagged sets, reflecting a fractured state of mind and with a wonderful use of shadow.
The only problem with the film, and this is something film critic Kim Newman has picked up on, is so many of these early spook films nullify themselves by having the whole movie revealed at the end to have been a dream – and this film, with its bizarre Usual Suspects ending is no different.
Thankfully, the other classic I am going to reference doesn’t have that sort of ending. Although this is a film which had a huge copyright problem at the time. Nosferatu. Thankfully today there is no copyright problem and the film is below. This is a wonderful restored version, which again includes colour tints.
While The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari remains a highly acclaimed work amongst film scholars, Nosferatu remains active in popular culture to this day. It influenced Stephen King’s TV version of Salem’s Lot, was remade directly in 1979 with Klaus Kinski as the vampire and also had a truly bizarre film made about its making called Shadow Of The Vampire.
Strangely, as popular as Nosferatu is, by right the film shouldn’t even exist Even though there are numerous changes, such as all the names of the characters, this is the Dracula story as written by Bram Stoker. In fact Stoker’s widow successfully sued over the film and all prints were ordered to be destroyed. Thankfully some survived, and its classic status was then assured. All the main elements of the Dracula story are there, although the lead vampire is renamed Count Orlok in a foolish attempt to avoid copyright. Orlok traps young lawyer Jonahan Harker or as he is known here Thomas Hutter, in his castle. He then organises a ship to take him to Germany and begin a reign of terror. The ending differs greatly from the book, but then so do most versions of Dracula!
Nosferatu has all the elements of German expressionism, as can be seen in the sets and the lighting. The lead character, Count Orlok as played by Max Shreck is an unforgettable monster of evil. The ending is also one of the greats of horror cinema. This film has much depth to it, reflecting the time in which it was made. The sequences of rats bringing plague across the German town when Orlok arrives, references back to the real horror to the initial viewers of the Spanish Flu of a few years before.
Also, as Nosferatu is a silent film, every few years a composer will write a new musical score for it. There have been many such scores over the years. There are two I have heard which I find impressive. One is by Phillip Glass and the other by James Bernard. Mr Bernard was Hammer horror’s composer of choice and he wrote those fantastic scores for Dracula over the years. In 1997 he brought a touch of that Hammer class to Nosferatu, which is well worth tracking down.
So while Germany created a film movement which lasts to this day, and the first two horror classics, it was America which created the first horror movie star, being Lon Chaney.
Mr Chaney started as a theatre actor before going to film. Back in the early days of silent cinema, there were no make up artists – instead many of the actors who came from the theatre brought their tradition of doing their own stage make up. Lon Chaney, it turns out, was one of the early greats of make up effects.
His ability coupled with his skill as a character actor soon got Lon Chaney noticed by the public and he was very much in demand. His performances as “The Frog” in The Miracle Man (1920) and as an amputee in The Penalty (1920) are remarkable and before too long he was the star in series of horror classics.
In the tradition of American spook movies, as Lon Chaney became more popular, he turned his attention to classic literary horror stories. In fact his greatest performances were as The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and The Phantom Of The Opera. I was very fortunate a couple of years ago to watch the 1923 version of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame as part of a Bristol Film Festival, with the film screened in the cathedral with an organ accompaniment. The only problem with watching it today is, Universal who made this film, their most successful silent movie, allowed the copyright to lapse and no one has ever restored it. It is very badly worn, although the sets and Chaney’s magnificent performance in his incredible make up do shine through. Again, if you want to see it, here it is:
One thing with Lon Chaney in these great roles, he was not afraid to be unsympathetic. There is a real madness with his hunchback and phantom characterisations which lead actors would avoid today. And as for the full reveal of the Phantom when his mask is taken off, which occurs about 45 minutes into the film – even today – horrifying. Chaney suffered to get that Phantom shock effect – he used painful false teeth and metal clips to make his face more skull like. It is said members of the audience passed out when seeing the Phantom in 1925. It is not hard to see why.
Again we have a version we can watch. This has been restored and the colour tints are back in. Well worth a look.
At this time, mid 1920’s, Lon Chaney’s star power was at its height. One of the most popular jokes of the period, from comic Jim Dilley was “Don’t step on that bug that’s Lon Chaney”
Years later there was even a film made about him, James Cagney starred as The Man With A Thousand Faces (1957), although most of it is fiction as Chaney was very protective of his personal life. It nevertheless is worth seeing for some of the recreations of scenes from his most famous films.
Lon Chaney was Universal’s first choice to play Dracula in the first official horror picture. Unfortunately, in 1929 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and he died in 1930, just before they started. He was just 47 years old. As Ray Bradbury was to say of Lon Chaney years later “He was someone who acted out our psyches. He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen”.
As a postcript to this, Lon’s son Crighton changed his name to Lon Chaney Jr and he did become part of the Universal horror cycle, but that is another story.
So the next time someone says to you about silent horror cinema – just casually remind them they were in fact “spook” films – and damn good ones at that.
