Caseus Archivelox: The Black Cat

2002-02-26
Few films before or since have confused me as much as this one. This is entirely because of Bela Lugosi’s incredibly thick accent. It is like Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker being combined into one person, who talks with marbles in his mouth, in pig Latin, backwards, and expects the audience to be able to follow it when he reads some Judith Butler film theory. It was so distractingly hard to follow that I think I missed some of the back-story of the movie. I am not sure whether that is a bad thing or a good thing, though. Karloff was excellent, and Lugosi may have been as well, if I had been able to understand most of what he said. The major problem for the movie occurs in that, as well as with most Hollywood films, the main romantic leads are bland and the secondary characters, who are rarely given enough screen time, are much more interesting.

Also, the title “suggested by the Edgar Allen Poe story” is one of the grossest lies I have seen performed upon the American public. There was a black cat in the movie. There were no women being buried with a live cat. I was upset. I like Poe, and that movie was no Poe.

The movie was really short, but included some of the most disturbing things I have seen in a movie, let alone one that was made under the Hayes production code. Necrophilia, Satanism, a character being flayed alive, a cat being killed, incest, revenge, murder, and possibly pedophilia are all included, even if not shown on screen.

The sets were very interesting, as the art deco sets are very different from the other horror films that normally have gothic styles, with lots of stone work, although the scenes from the tunnels under the house were reminiscent of the gothic style of architecture.

The use of chess as a metaphor for the struggle between good (Lugosi) and evil (Karloff) was repeated, in my opinion more successfully, in “The Seventh Seal” so it does have an interesting place in film history beyond the first time that Karloff and Lugosi were in the same movie. However, the director, Edgar G. Ulmer, seems to have forgotten to use close-ups to break up the medium-shots that seem to dominate the film. Had he broken up the chess game for the young couple’s life, the movie would have added some much needed tension; as it is, the movie is full of great ideas, but ultimately falls short due to execution.

2002-02-26 - 9:49 p.m.
I did see "The Black Cat", and unfortunately only one cat was killed. And it was offscreen. I'm all about animals being killed on-screen. That was a major problem with "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", the cat didn't kill the bird on screen. Anyway, I found it silly, and I had problems understanding Bela Lugosi. Karloff would have been better in that role, because I could understand him. It's like Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker being combined into one person, who talks with marbles in his mouth, in pig latin, backwards, and expects the audience to be able to follow it when he reads some Judith Butler film theory. To those who don't know what I'm talking about, he was very hard to understand through his thick accent.

Caseus Archivelox: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Fly, & Paris Is Burning

2002-02-25
First off, there is one too many pronunciations of Jekyll. People need to pronounce it correctly. It bothers me when I hear it pronounced correctly (as in the movie) and I cringe because of being misled and not corrected for so many years.

Also, the special effects of the dissolves for the transformations are sometimes perfect, and very impressive for the time. Although occasionally the dissolves are noticeable, I am not sure whether it was because I knew to look for them; they were nicely concealed, and subtler than most computer graphic work today.

I also appreciated the very sexual nature of the film, which, had it been released three years later, with the implementation of the Hays production code, would have been taken out and the film would have been less interesting from our standpoint. Sex is very important in the film, from the obvious lasciviousness of Mr. Hyde and semi-nude Ivy Pearson to the subtler hairy hands of Mr. Hyde (suggesting the “hairy palms” of masturbators) and the nude pictures in Ivy’s bedroom. Jekyll is an obviously sexually frustrated man, and when he is denied marriage with Muriel (and it’s accompanying conjugal rights), he “creates” the sexual predator Mr. Hyde (a play on the hidden sexual desires that he thinks are in all men) in order to fulfill his sexual appetites. With further transformations, the makeup becomes more pronounced and Hyde more disfigured. His sexual desires ultimately turn him into “one of the living dead” and destroy him.

The use of the first person camera help to force the viewer not only to see the world from Jekyll’s perspective, but also to identify with his feelings of sexual frustration and desire. When he is cornered in his lab at the end of the film, instead of using a medium or far shot of Dr. Lanyon pointing Jekyll out as Hyde, Mamoulian uses the first person shot, implicating the audience as a partner in Hyde’s crimes as well, suggesting that since the audience (presumably) took pleasure in the story, they have also turned into Hyde-like sexual deviants.

Having seen many Cronenberg films in my life (Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, M. Butterfly, Crash, and eXistenZ), I am constantly amazed at how uncomfortable they make me feel, although M. Butterfly and Crash made me feel uncomfortable due to their not-as-good-ness, not creepy organic materials showing up in the weirdest places or head exploding. In The Fly, Cronenberg creates an organic monster that eventually becomes fused with inorganic materials (and thus must die, in Cronenberg’s organic-focused worldview). Even without the now famous “Help me” lines from the original film, Seth Brundle’s transformation into a fly is more disturbing and much more graphic than the original, and his use of his own vomit to eat and eventually as a weapon makes the audience even more disgusted than when the baboon is turned inside out. Although the plot holes occasionally get in the way of the audience (without a large amount of suspension of their disbelief), it is more enjoyable than some of Cronenberg’s later films.

The Fly is a painful story about the disintegration of a loved one in front of your eyes, which mirrors the decline of humans into old age, although it has some fun leprosy similarities, as parts of Brundle’s body fall off, and it could almost be seen as a metaphor for AIDS, but that would require some selective readings and ignorance of some of the facts of the movie. But the fears of seeing someone you love fall apart mirror the fears of other horror films of the 1980s like The Hunger, which also revolves around the fear of aging in the consumer and youth dominated culture of the 1980s.

2002-02-25 - 11:05 p.m.
So this morning, I went off to East Campus to watch two movies: "Paris is Burning" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Paris was a documentary about NYC drag queens in the late 1980s and their balls (note: not referring to their testicles) wherein they dance and strut trying to be things they're not, like being straight. It was funny (catty gay people are inherently funny (note: deadpanned to see who is paying attention)) and informative (I now know that Madonna stole voguing from the balls where it is a sort of way to insult other people by dancing rather than fighting) and eventually sad (one of the transsexuals was beaten to death and left for four days under a motel bed before his/hers/its body was found (remind me not to stay at that motel)). I waited around for [female friend] to watch "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and enjoyed it. Neat special effects, and lots of sexual innuendo. Although I did manage to embarrass myself when I was mocking Hyde's ridiculous overbite, and [classmate] from my Sexualities class walked by. She had just enjoyed "Paris is Burning" as well. Whoops.

Caseus Archivelox: We Were Soldiers

2002-02-24 - 3:01 p.m.
When I got to the theater around 6:05, there were already a lot of people in line for "We Were Soldiers". It was the typical sneak preview Freewater people running around with our heads cut off trying to figure everything out. That was compounded by the fact that the basketball team's managers didn't show up early enough to get good seats. But it worked out fine, as they got seats. I got to rip Coach K's ticket, and I think [girlfriend] still has his stub. We almost completely filled up Griffith, which is nice, because it only took an extra half an hour before we got started.
The movie itself was fairly good. Nothing incredibly new, but it wasn't as bad as "The Patriot" or most other recent war movies. It was an interesting take on early Vietnam, with not as much crappy John Wayne style heroics (like in "The Green Berets") and more about the fighting in Vietnam rather than emotional head games (like in "The Deerhunter", "Apocalypse Now", "Full Metal Jacket", and "Platoon"). Sam Elliott was good as the cranky Sgt. Major, although his (and most other) dialogue in the movie was mixed way too low. The sound effects and music were loud enough. [Girlfriend] was made really uncomfortable by the violence (and especially by the scene where the reporter (Barry Pepper, making up somewhat for his performance in "Battlefield Earth") tries to pick up the wounded mortar guy, but ends up ripping the charred flesh from his legs, which I found disturbing as well). The movie was sort of full of Randy Wallace pounding some things into the audience's heads. But the battle scenes were well done.
After hanging around to hear Randy defend the movie fairly well, and also "The Man in the Iron Mask", which I probably should rewatch at some point, and again ramming my thigh into the armrests in Griffith (in front of one of the co-producers of the film, who nicely asked if I was ok), and also walking by Marc "Riley" Blucas, but not being willing to talk to him (because I hate Riley), [girlfriend] and I went off to the Purim party.

Caseus Archivelox: Bride of Frankenstein

2002-02-11
This is easily the best movie we have seen so far this semester, and it is probably the best of the Universal horror films. The opening scene of Mary and Percy Bysse Shelley and Lord Byron is just the perfect opening for the movie, as it sets the tone of the rest of the film as a camp version of the monster movies that had been the vogue. It spoofs the very movies that it tops in quality. There’s the screaming annoying maid, the staid butler who in unperturbed by the strangest experiences, the sinister mad doctor, the virginal bride, the doctor who does not want to create the monster, but is forced to, and the monster who learns to speak.

The bride of the monster herself is an interesting character, as in about three minutes of screen time, she manages to make an indelible impression upon the audience, and cause observant viewers to applaud Whale’s sense of humor. He has the bride recoil from the monster’s touch into Frankenstein’s arms, a small oedipal twist, with the daughter being afraid of the new man in her life, and retreating to the comfort of her father.

But before that is the best character in the Universal horror films: Dr. Pretorius. He is the best evil doctor in movie history, with a hidden homosexual coded, blatantly devilish character, who moves between Frankenstein and his fiancée again. The devil-ness of Pretorius is made explicit when he compares the mini-devil to himself (predating Mini-me in the Austin Powers movies by over 60 years). The homosexual coding, which is all that was possible during the days of the Hays Code, extends to his drawing Henry from Elizabeth every time they are alone, and when Pretorius and Frankenstein are alone creating the bride for the monster, they are shot in a series of canted angles, but mirrored, linking them together even more.

I have not even mentioned the incredible scenes of the monster and the hermit and the Christ-like capture of the monster by the mob in the forest. The movie is just filled with incredible scenes, inventive camera angles (which must have been incredibly influential on Sam Raimi, amongst other directors), and memorable characters.

Caseus Archivelox: Poison & Frankenstein

2002-02-06 - 12:02 a.m.
I went off to watch Poison. Really weird gay movie. It was for my Sexualities in Film class, so at least that fits. Weird thing is that it was the first of two movies I watched today that included disfigured characters seeing themselves in reflective surfaces with no disfigured features (the other was Abre Los Ojos). Weird.
So I saw five movies the past two days: "The Seventh Seal", "The Magician", "Poison", "Frankenstein", and "Abre Los Ojos". That's too many movies.

2002-02-07
Why is it that the movies that are based upon the original source texts in the Universal horror genres are usually not as good as the later sequels (with the exception of “The Invisible Man” which had no sequels, and was excellent in its own right)? Probably some of that is due to the limitations of the source materials, but I think that most of it is due to the problem that Hollywood has had with most sequels: they are afraid to do anything special with the first movie, in the hope that it can spawn an equally conservative sequel due to high box office receipts. Both “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” do not challenge the audience at all, with simple characters, poor special effects, and laughable dialogue. Although later sequels would succumb to the Hollywood-ization of the stories by making them only for money, both “Dracula’s Daughter” and “Bride of Frankenstein” take the original stories further than before and add in lesbianism and psychiatry, along with dry wit, to make the stories more attractive than the relatively bland first entries in the series. Another point to make is that they waited for five and four years before making the sequels, which allowed for a good script to be written and imaginative ideas to be included. Most sequels today rarely wait more than a couple years, and do nothing special with the story.

I was upset to notice that it was not Fritz in “Frankenstein” and that it was a later movie that introduced Ygor to the audience. I love “Young Frankenstein” and could have sworn that Ygor was in this one, but it was fun to see so many other scenes that had been spoofed so well in “Young Frankenstein”. And “Bride of Frankenstein” has some scenes as well that are famous and incredible.

James Whale is really the reason why “Frankenstein” has any interest to modern audiences today, besides the obvious historical interest.

Caseus Archivelox: The Magician

2002-02-05
An Ingmar Bergman thinking man’s horror film. At least that is one description of it I have read. In the movie, a “magician” (Volger) who studied under Mesmer enters 1846 Stockholm with his wife, his grandmother, a drunk and dying actor, and his handler. He and his wife (Amanda) are disguised (and he has acted mute) in order to throw off the police who want them for undisclosed crimes, but likely related to the fact that they are frauds and do all their healing with mirrors and the like. They are lead to the house of a city council member, who is waiting with a doctor (Vergérus) and the chief of police who want to expose the magician as a fraud. That night, Vergérus tells Volger he wants the magician to make him feel something. During one of their tricks the next morning, one of the servants of the house “kills” the magician. I want to write about one of the later (9 min. long) scenes that is the only scary scene in the movie. The doctor takes what he believes to be the body of the magician up into the attic and performs an autopsy on it. The magician’s wife locks the doctor in the attic at the bequest of a muffled voice and a hand, and after he finishes writing the autopsy’s findings down, the doctor begins to hear and see strange things. First, he hears an extra chime on the clock, and when he tries to start writing more, he sees an eye in his inkstand. Then his papers are knocked off the desk, and when he attempts to organize them, a hand is put on the papers. He stands up, insinuates that it is the heat that is causing him to see and experience these weird incidents and tries to leave, only to find that he has been locked in the room. When the doctor tries to find some tools to break the lock on the door, he looks into a mirror and sees the disembodied head of the magician. An interesting cut to the face of the doctor is used to show that the head is not there for the uninvolved audience, but for the doctor alone, as only after the cut to the doctor’s face do we see the head in the background of the mirror. He tries to confirm that the head is not on the body that he has just autopsied, but something rips his glasses off right before he can do so, and then steps on them to break them. Assuming that he is dreaming, the doctor then sits down to wait until he wakes up, but hears the clock chime again, unnaturally. Right beyond the clock is a mirror, and the doctor sees the magician in it, standing right behind him. As a short bass drum roll is the first music in the scene builds, the mirror cracks, the music stops, and the doctor gets up and runs to the other side of the attic to check the mirror. He backs up against a slotted wall and is choked by a hand that comes through the wall as the drums begin again, and quiet down only to build slowly except for certain startling scenes. Escaping, he stumbles to the other side of the room, and falls into a dirty hole in the floor that could be construed as a coffin. Standing up again, the doctor begins to follow the magician through the slotted wall, until the magician sticks his hand out to stop him. The magician (in the rags of the now-dead actor) then begins to walk slowly towards the sitting doctor who flees, still sitting down. The drums build again, and a tambourine joins in giving the proceedings an eerie rattle, until he falls down the stairs and starts to scream. The magician is stopped from attacking the doctor by the timely intervention of his wife. The doctor says that all he got was a slight fear of death, when it is obvious that he was more than a little afraid for his life.

The scene is genuinely frightening, as the audience is not sure whether the magician is actually dead or not. Vergérus is the pinnacle of science and the fear in his eyes at the supernatural experience that he has (with the magician coming back from the dead to exact his revenge upon the doctor, in classic gothic fashion) is an interesting look at the tendency of all people to believe what they see rather than what makes rational sense when they are threatened. As for music, there is only a small amount of disjointed pizzicato string music at the very beginning as the hand tells Amanda to lock the attic, but for most of the scene there is little dialogue or music, and so the audience focuses upon the strange goings on onscreen. Whenever something strange occurs, the drums stop.

Caseus Archivelox: The Conversation & Training Day

2002-02-03 - 12:04 a.m.
I also saw "The Conversation". I can't believe I hadn't seen that before, it was great. Gene Hackman is such a good actor. The only thing was it sort of freaked me out, because I don't need more reasons to be paranoid.
I saw "Training Day" and it was horrible. Denzel was even bad in it. Fuqua can fuqu-off. Haha, I'm clever.

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Caseus Archivelox: Aaron McGruder speech

2002-01-22 - 9:44 a.m.
Anyway, last night, I went to see Aaron McGruder (writer of "Boondocks") talk at Page, and he was witty and intelligent. For one, he wants people to read Michael Moore's "Downsize This". But he also denounced things like "Ali" (problems with both Will Smith and Michael Mann, but also with the whole idea of the movie, which was derivative and could have been done better, and of course the fact that Mario Van Peebles is still working), "How High" (I didn't tell him that it played much better to the African-American audience than it did to the whites in the audience here at Duke), most of the really cheap "New Wave of Blaxspoitation" (my phrase) movies made for $6 million and that make $25 million, and most African-American actors currently working. He did say he liked Chris Rock (he had gone to see "Two Can Play That Game" with him) and Spike Lee, although he disliked "Bamboozled" as a deliberately false view of Hollywood, when the true version would have been just as skrewed up. He also said he liked "When We Were Kings", which is an excellent documentary, if you haven't already seen it. But he was most interesting on the war, as if you haven't been keeping up with his comic, he's one of the first people to have denounced the war as what it really is, an excuse to shut down the civil liberties of all Americans in the "defense" of a war that cannot be won, as any person with access to explosives can be a terrorist, and you cannot win a war against that. But of course, Bush can never declare the war over, because it just takes one person to blow up a building, and the FBI and CIA love being able to tap more phones and everything. Anyway, the speech was funny and fascinating, and it was great that some people in the audience were treating it as a sort of church meeting, screaming out "yes"'s and such (although no one said "Amen"), and it made the speech more interesting. The problem was that there was a video beforehand, with a white male in the Medical School who said after the MLK assassination (basically, I'm paraphrasing here) "I want someone to calm down the people and make sure they don't come for me". He was greeted with howls of derisive laughter, Bruce. The best guy (from a comedy standpoint, as both Major Dean and Dr. William Turner from the Divinity department were well-spoken about MLK and other issues) was Willie Burt who, at one point, said, "Since this is the only planet that has life on it, that I know of", which got more laughter. He seemed like he was trying a little too hard to sound intelligent.
After that, Alicia and I went to say hi to Aaron at the Mary Lou Williams Center. He was nice and intelligent in person as well.

Caseus Archivelox: Brotherhood of the Wolf & Tell Me Something

2002-01-20 - 11:21 a.m.
The weather last night was pretty bad, and the fact that we were soaked didn't help the movies pass. I sat next to [female friend] for "Brotherhood of the Wolf" and we were both laughing through most of it. Although we were laughing at different parts, as she was laughing at mainly bad translations, while I was laughing at how over the top it was. All in all, one of the stupidest movies I've seen in a while. But the fight scenes were well done, if not too believable, as there was this sword made of bone that would fly out on a chain or something, and all the bad guys always attacked one at a time. 1 on 20 is much easier when the 20 attack very slowly. And since when did French peasants know Kung Fu? Or Indians for that matter? Also, way, way too much slow motion, and not just during the fighting, and the next time I see someone dissolve from breasts to mountains will be way too many for me. Could you get any more juvenile?
"Tell Me Something" was much better. Very stylish, and just confusing enough to make sure that you needed to talk about various plot points to understand it all. I like movies like that. Others didn't, and I think that one or two plot points were sort of holes rather than points, but that could have been (and I think was) intentional. Koreans are like that. (Yes, that was an ethnic stereotype. But I didn't mean it.) Also the film broke in the movie, it was just like Freewater. And the main female character was channeling Gwyneth Paltrow through the entire movie.

Caseus Archivelox: Jezebel

2002-01-18 - 11:45 p.m.
I did see "Jezebel" at Griffith though, and that was sort of eh. It did have some good lines though. It also had a great incredibly uncomfortable conversation. I like them because it reminds me of how I talk to women.
Julie: Oh Preston, you forgot your stick.
Preston: So I did. I forgot to use it, too.
Julie: So you did.
Right after Julie basically emasculated him. Funny funny.
Buck: Well, you talk mighty like a black abolitionist.
Preston: I think you know I'm no abolitionist. I believe the tide has turned against us. But I'll swim against that tide just as far as you will, Cantrell.
That was one of many lines that made me cringe. The movie was full of African-American characters with big bulgey eyes, and at least 90% of their lines were "Yessim" or the equivalent. And I'm supposed to sympathize when these slave-owning characters get killed or die? Hell, I'm happy they die. Stupid racist jerks.
Then they had some silly "Yellow Jack" intertitles, and it was sillily orchestrated.
All in all, a silly movie, but Bette Davis was good. If I were Preston, though, I would have stayed up North and kept Amy. Bette Davis's eyes are too prominent and her chin is too small.

Caseus Archivelox: Dracula’s Daughter

2002-01-31
Considering the fame of “Dracula” and the fact that I’d never heard of “Dracula’s Daughter” before, I was somewhat surprised to find that “Dracula’s Daughter” seemed like much less of a hack job than “Dracula” was. Part of this can be ascribed to the lesser importance of the actual Dracula myth (which severely limited the ability of “Dracula” to create any new ground in cinema), but I think the more interesting feature of “Dracula’s Daughter” is its importance in queer theory.
Dracula’s daughter is the first filmic lesbian vampire, and as such is historically important to see how she is portrayed in the movie. Her male helper (who looks like a mixture between Phil Hartman and Christopher Reeve) is somewhat androgynous and is unable to leave what is obviously a one-sided relationship with the countess. He does her bidding with only one short whine that she had promised to turn him into a vampire instead of another character. The only interesting aspect of his character is his similarity to Cesare from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, another reference to one of the most influential movies of the silent era.
The countess herself is a fairly strong female character who, even after the first murder of a man, has a predilection for “painting” young women in various states of undress. If this movie had been made later, I have no doubt that she would have used nude models instead of just asking for her to uncover her shoulders. But she is a predatory lesbian, who destroys all the women she touches, and thus, the countess must destroy Lili. At least, from the dominant male and societal perspective, that is what occurs, although in reality, Garth’s inability to help the countess fight against her vampiric (lesbian) tendencies is more at fault for the deaths. Zaleska is, by far, the strongest female character in the Universal horror films, and that contrasts starkly with one of the most annoying male leads in Garth. He tortures the woman who loves him unconditionally, ignores warnings, and goes after a woman who is just using him. Zaleska fights against what has been her lot in life, and although she fails, that attempt is not seen in many of the Universal horror films, let alone by a female character. But in the end, she is destroyed not by a man, but by her failure to stay queer and her falling in love with Garth.
The fact that Zaleska looks to a psychiatrist to solve her vampiric tendencies is an interesting twist on the vampire myth. But she cannot solve her vampirism by psychiatry, as it is part of her, and is destroyed by opening herself up to the male psychiatrist. The same could be an argument for accepting lesbian tendencies. She cannot solver her lesbian by psychiatry, as it is an accepted part of her, and is destroyed from a queer view because of her falling in love with a man.

Caseus Archivelox: Dracula

2002-01-29
Considering how many horror films I have seen and enjoyed, my taste for the Universal Horror films of the 1930s and 1940s is mainly limited to James Whale’s darkly comic takes on the genre’s conventions and classic scenes. This movie did not change my mind on them one bit. Besides the inevitable shortening of the plot and the horribly histrionic acting of many of the actors (which is not as necessary for sound films as it is for silent films), there is little to like in this fairly drab version of the Dracula myth. Bela Lugosi labors over every word, as one would expect from someone who did not know any English before starting the role, and his Dracula “acting” is really limited to looking at the camera with a rectangle of light on his face. If someone with more talent had been directing or writing this movie, it could have turned into something much more rewarding, but instead it is a fairly weak Dracula story. Renfield is creepy, but should not have been raised to being the star of the film (as he has been here, because the other male characters are incredibly flat and poorly acted).
Anyway, I just wanted to complain about that movie. The horrible bat effects did not help it much either.
One of the nice things about the movie is the restraint with which it deals with what is normally a main feature of vampire films: blood. The only blood that I remember seeing was when Renfield poked himself with a paperclip. I do not remember even seeing Dracula bite anyone’s neck or seeing any bite marks on anyone’s neck. It is almost as if the vampire parts of the story are being hidden behind what is essentially a creepy story of a foreigner attempting to steal away a woman from her fiancée. Almost all parts of the supernatural aspects of the story have been removed. It is more of a gothic story, with extended scenes of people arguing about the existence of vampires, than a true horror film. Very little is scary in the strictest sense, with more emphasis focused upon the fact that it is almost a story that could occur today. Ignoring the times when Dracula turns into an animal, or the times when he cannot be seen in the mirror (which is driven into the audience’s mind to make sure that they do not miss that subtle shot), it is a fairly traditional spook story.
Another thing about the movie is the fact that it is subtly anti-Semitic, as Dracula wears a Star of David on his cloak and is scared by crosses. He is also a foreigner threatening the well being of the young women of England (and the American audience). “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, but I think that with Browning’s history, I would not be surprised if he was anti-Semitic.

Caseus Archivelox: Un Chien Andalou

2002-01-22
With little context or plot, “Un Chien Andalou” could play as a sort of insane person’s dream, and that is almost a definition of surrealism. Nothing makes sense from a rational viewpoint, and nothing is supposed to make sense. No meaning should be clear from the images. There is nothing to link any shot to the next, and, although some shots share the same characters, there is little to suggest that any shots should link to the next one. This is one of the first true surrealist films. Although Salvador Dali would eventually do more work in film, including designing the incredible dream sequence in “Spellbound” (which made sense from a psychoanalytic standpoint), this is the pinnacle of shock surrealism. The shot of the barber cutting open the girl’s eye is so shocking that nothing in film history has been able to come close in causing complete discomfort for the audience. This is, of course, precisely what Dali and Buñuel wanted to do. Although later scenes were not quite as shocking, it kept the dream aspect of surrealism very strong. Ants crawling out of hands, dead donkeys, priests, and the ten commandments on two pianos, two people almost completely buried in sand all defy any logical explanation that would be able to comfort any audience that attempted to watch the film. Surrealism is the attempt to make dreams real, and this movie does this well, as the man fondles the clothed woman, which, with a quick dissolve, shows what he really sees: her naked body. But this shot is only one of many in the film that would make sense from a logical standpoint on their own in a film of otherwise rational shots, contribute to the overall sensory and mental overload that the film forces upon the viewer.
While Buñuel has gone on to make more structured, and sensible films, this one will be his most famous as it was a very early film, scandalizing the audience, and setting out to do what it was designed to do: confuse everyone and not allow for easy deconstruction.

Caseus Archivelox: Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens

2002-01-17
This being an unofficial version of Bram Stoker’s famous novel, Dracula, due to the copyright issues brought up by the Stoker estate, the names were changed. Even with the different names, this version of the novel is far superior to most other versions, as there is not the sense of camp that dominates most entries into the vampire filmography. The first vampire film has some of the clichés of the vampire subgenre fully in place, as was inevitable from its being based upon Dracula. However, it does diverge significantly from most vampires, as this is the first time that a vampire is shown to be destroyed by direct sunlight and Nosferatu is the ugliest vampire in movie history: nothing has come close. And most significantly, from the name Nosferatu, which means “plague-carrier”, comes a thinly disguised treatise on the dangers of sex (i.e. venereal disease).
As Nosferatu must sleep every night in the dirt from graveyards that held plague victims, he can be seen as the embodiment of the plague. As he kills, rumors of the plague surround the murders. Hutter himself is an incompetent who is unable to either stop or kill Nosferatu, and the strong feminine character of Ellen is an interesting contrast. The book on vampires also says that the only way to kill a vampire is for a woman without sin to offer herself to the vampire and make sure that he is still there when the cock crows. The effect of offering herself to the vampire can be seen as sex, and coming into contact with the “plague-carrier” must cause her death, but the fact that the plague is brought out into the open, will save many others. The animal nature of Schreck’s makeup (especially the two front rat-like fangs, rather than the more recent use of canine fangs) emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of the plague. Also, instead of the main animal being linked to the vampire being a bat, a wolf and especially rats are more closely related to Nosferatu, making him seem even more abnormal (even for a vampire) than future versions, where the foreign Count part of Count Dracula was emphasized rather than the vampire aspect.

Caseus Archivelox: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

2002-01-15
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari contains one of the, if not the, first deliberately false flashback in movie history, Francis’s dream sequence, intended to confuse the audience. The set design during the dream sequence itself allows for the audience’s discomfort over the story to be heightened, as the lack of any right angles and exaggerated histrionic acting make the movie seem more unreal. The German expressionist set design causes a cinematically knowledgeable viewer to question the reliability of Francis’s version of the events, as the set design and acting have become the classic way to tell a dream sequence. That the framing parts of the story were added later does nothing to detract from the effectiveness of the sequence. Although it does detract somewhat from the theme of questioning authority, if we are to assume that Francis is not insane, it does cause the viewer to come to the conclusion that the authority in the asylum is more insane than the patients. However, the framing also forces the viewer to look closely at how his story of the somnambulist has allowed Francis to fulfill all of his dreams. Cesare kills by stabbing, using a phallic symbol to remove Alan, the main threat to his being the only lover of Jane. Although the first murder has nothing to do with his love for Jane, it could be taken as either the random murder is the main reason for Francis to be in the asylum in the first place, or, more likely, as a way to justify in his mind that he is not the one who committed all of these crimes, because he never knew the clerk. When he, in his alternate body as the somnambulist, comes to stab Jane, he is incapable of doing so, symbolically showing his impotence, and giving insight to the viewer the reasons for Cesare killing with a knife. After he realizes that he cannot consummate his relationship with Jane, in reality because they are both in an insane asylum, and fraternizing of the patients in that matter was probably discouraged, his mind fixates on the director, the reason that he believes he cannot be with the woman he loves, and invents his version of the events that have so far made up the story, including the linking of the director with the historically insane Dr. Caligari. The parallels between his suppression (in the Carrollian sense) and the director’s in his dream show that Francis has just taken what he knows and projected it upon the other inmates and doctors at the asylum.