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Overview
We delve back into early horror with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In fact, many consider it the first true horror movie. And it’s definitely one to watch. The German expressionism gives it a bizarre look, kind of like if Chuck Jones was crazy when making Road Runner cartoons.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010323
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Transcript
[00:00:00]
Rhys: You want some salad with that? It’s time for another side dish.
Stephen: Do you, you spend a lot of time thinking these up? Cause they’re, they’re all like, you know, we’re doing the DJ thing on the radio here.
Rhys: It’s true. Yeah. What are we talking about today?
We are talking
Stephen: about the cabinet of Dr. Caligari today, if I assume that’s how you say it, it sounds like it. But before we start that if you go back earlier this season. We watched a movie Trollhunter and my partner got me a Trollhunter shirt.
Rhys: I’m
Stephen: very happy with this.
Rhys: Excellent.
Stephen: So yeah, thank you.
Rhys: Yeah, no problem. I saw that and just thought of you right away. So yeah,
Stephen: I love it. I, I, I think it’d be even better if it just had like some Blotches of like goo or something, you know,
Rhys: some troll essence. Yes,
Stephen: exactly. Yeah. All right. So dr Caligari cabinet, [00:01:00] dr. Caligari. What do we got here? It’s a, it’s a film in six acts, you know, like we’ve talked about before, a lot of these old silent films were still done very much like a stage play.
And I even, you know, Thought of that watching it because there’s a camera set up and you watch everything happen and the camera doesn’t move. There’s no panning, no dolly, no steadicam, nothing. So it’s a different time. Definitely. And this is a hugely unique movie.
Rhys: It is it’s widely regarded as like the first actual horror movie, a movie that was made to creep you out.
Not just like George Millet is where you’re like, Hey, I can do this. And this is kind of cool. And who kind of spooky this like has plot It’s got characters and it’s yeah, it’s a genuinely creepy film from 1920.
Stephen: Yeah. And, and part of what makes it creepy are the sets. It’s German expressionists and it looks like wonderland, you know, the doors are crooked, everything’s got weird angles done completely on purpose.[00:02:00]
Rhys: Yeah, it’s you know, it sets up this dreamlike setting. There’s six things that define a German expressionism. You have distorted, exaggerated sets. Chiaroscuro lighting, which you could see where you’re very bright and very dark, dark, sharp, jagged shapes, unnaturalized, stylized acting, psychological themes of madness and obsession, and a sense of unease and dread are all the six things you look for in a German Expressionist film.
Stephen: They’re all here. And I, you know, I even said, this is a good example of the first, we talked about this a lot also. You know, the first psychological horror is what we’re watching happening. Is it all in their head or what’s real? What’s not? And with the sets, it definitely puts that, you know, I have no idea if this is real or not going on, but they have a bookend bit that explains it.
And The, the writers didn’t want that, that was put in as executives later. So it’s a different movie than what the writers originally wanted. [00:03:00]
Rhys: Yeah. What the writers originally wrote was actually kind of this. For lack of a better word, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde kind of story where you have this guy who’s a villain, but actually during the days, a respectable guy and somebody figures them out.
But when you put the bookends on it, it turns out maybe the guy didn’t figure it out, maybe he was just crazy all along.
Stephen: Yeah, it does a very good job of that. I mean, I’ve seen more modern day movies that don’t do as good a job as this one did
Rhys: for sure. For sure.
Stephen: What one of the things I found very kind of funny and interesting.
It’s a different change in times. You know, the portrayal of mental health in some of these movies, especially these old ones. At the time, sleepwalking is a mental problem. And they, they pictured a sleepwalker as someone who sleeps all the time, except when they walk and do things that are not in their control, you know, it was very mysterious.
And I, I chuckled at that a bit.
Rhys: And it kind of vilifies the concept of the psychiatrist [00:04:00] really. And that’s kind of important when you consider what was being published at the time, Freud was actively publishing at the time. Basically building the whole concept of psychotherapy and Carl Young was also publishing at the same time on either sides of Germany.
I mean, they weren’t German, one’s Austrian and one’s Belgian, but, you know, on either sides. Yeah, so I don’t know if it’s a statement by Carl Meyer and Hans Young, what’s who wrote it. You know, this is what they think of psychotherapy. It’s a way to like trap people. And, you know, you know, it’s certainly not portrayed as something good.
Stephen: Definitely. Yeah. And, and that really kind of holds. Into today a lot, you know, still we’re, we’re definitely breaking that stigma, but it’s still a hold over a hundred years later, a hundred some years later.
Rhys: Yeah. Might be worth mentioning of all of the cast, Conrad Veidt, who played Cesar, the creepy guy who sleeps all the time.
Yes. The sonambulist he showed up in another [00:05:00] movie. You and I have both seen Casablanca. Okay. He played a major Heinrich Strauss or the head of the police force at Casablanca. He’s the only one who went on, I mean little dagger over who played Jane. She kept making movies into the seventies, but they’re almost all German, German films.
So but I thought that was kind of cool.
Stephen: Yeah. I just watched Casablanca with Colin and didn’t recognize him. The other. mustache and all, one of the things I like in some of these older movies, you know, Phantom carriage, the effect with the carriage you know, and some of the stuff they did in freaks and some of the Nosferatu, which, you know, we’ve both seen, I just watched recently when the doctor was going crazy and all the words were popping around on the screen, I was like, that’s a pretty cool effect for 1920, you know, yeah,
Rhys: And the funny thing was they did a marketing thing where they started pasting those all over downtown Berlin before the film came out.
And so people kept seeing these, you know, who is Dr. Caligari? [00:06:00] Who is, you know, they’re just like, what is this? And here it was kind of, you know, an early marketing scheme to try and get people to go out and see the movie when it came out.
Stephen: We get those still today to this day.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. So
Rhys: this, Was Nicholas Cage’s favorite film.
Stephen: Really?
Rhys: Yes. And Akira Kurosawa, you know, the guy who did seven samurai and stuff, this was one of his top film films of all time too. So
Stephen: it was definitely one to go watch and check out. So you can say you’ve seen it. If you, if you’re a horror aficionado, Oh, I got to use that as an SEO keyword. I like that.
And I did find an audible. There is a radio play, like on audible of this movie kind of rewritten a bit to fit for that. And John Delancey stars in it as front friends, fronds, whatever that guy was. So if you like cue from Star Trek, he’s done a lot of these types of things. And I also found one for Nosferatu also on audible.
So, [00:07:00]
Rhys: yeah, it just really struck me as I was watching this, like, It’s, it was ahead of its time for sure. And it started a movement, but just this plain scene when the Somnambulist wakes for the first time. Is a legitimately creepy scene. Yeah. Like the camera gets tight in on him and everything, and he looks ill.
And I was just like, that is really well done. Yeah. And his
Stephen: proclamation that that guy’s going to die by morning and his friends freaking out about it. Well, his friends is the one that killed him. And so later you find out, Oh, this is all just a fever dream of the crazy guy. It, he worked it all in the, the whole thing.
You know, it’s a well written story. I’m really surprised. Nobody’s wanted to pick this up and redo it. Cause with modern effects and stuff, you don’t need a lot, but there could be some good things I could do with this one.
Rhys: Oh, yeah. I mean, you could definitely see its influence through, you know, like shutter Island and stuff like that.
[00:08:00] This kind of theme has been done several times, but you’re right. No one has actually just been like, I’m just going to remake this movie.
Stephen: Yeah. It’s one of the few, you know, that doesn’t, we’ve got some coming up that have more modern remakes and stuff. So when we get to those, I’m going to watch both and do some comparison on them.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. But over a hundred years, come on guys. Yeah. Somebody pick this up and go with it.
Stephen: I’ll put, I’ll put links. If anyone listening, want to watch it, we’ll have a couple of links. Cause there’s a couple of different versions out. And from my understanding, the sepia colored version. One is the more accurate to what they wanted it to look like rather than the black and white one So I thought that was interesting
Rhys: Yeah
Stephen: So, all right and next coming up you’re going to love it.
We have vampire And the early early vampire stuff.
Rhys: I I actually enjoyed vampire So
Stephen: yeah, I I I don’t think i’ve watched it in Long enough that I barely remembered except some of the really cool You Kind of in your [00:09:00] head scenery. So we’ll, we’ll get to that
Rhys: post World War II. That’s when I started having problems with vampire movies before that.
I’m good with them.
Stephen: Well, you know, I, I, I did see an Asratu and I put a little thing up about it. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a well done remake from Edgar. It was Edgar’s right? Yeah, I think so. So, all right, there we go. Quick, short side dish. There it is. Hope everybody’s full. Talk