Fear and Film: A Horror Retrospective 1910's

Hey, everyone, back again and looking at horror films. Also kicking myself for doing a project like this while also armpit-deep in Halloween, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s instead move into 1912 and talk about one of the two versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde made during this decade. Let’s get to it.

Now, as I said above, this is the first of two versions of this same story. I opted for the 1912 version over the one made the next year because to be honest, I just found I liked this one better. The 1913 film is fine, but it almost seems too long (which sounds strange to say for a film with a 26 minute runtime), since they don’t have a whole lot of variety in what Hyde does. The second thing was I liked actor playing Jekyll/Hyde in the 1912 one better. In the later version, the way he bounces and shuffles around as Hyde I found too comically distracting, and not menacing at all. But enough about the comparisons, let’s talk about the film at hand. 

The first thing I have to say I really enjoyed about this movie was the music, and how it was used to convey the dichotomy between Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll’s music is calm and sedate, almost dreamy. Hyde’s, on the other hand, is mischievous in an almost malevolent way. It was very striking and I found it fascinating to watch how it emphasized the personalities of both characters. It really adds to the film and heightens the impact of the action.  

The acting is very good, and as I said above, I preferred this version of Hyde over the other. In the 1913 film it was too over-the-top, and I didn’t get the same sense of menace like I did here. I mean, this Hyde straight up kills a man (his fiancée’s father no less!) after attacking her first. This is a huge contrast from the calm, kind Jekyll we see with her only a moment before. I didn’t think that anyone was hugely over-acting, either. They played this film totally straight without any camp. I really felt for the guy when things started going haywire and his evil alter-ego started taking over and wrecking things. Right after the police officer leaves when looking for Hyde, you see a brief shot where Jekyll drops down to one knee and just has this ‘what have I done’ moment. Then, at the end, you see even Hyde in a moment of desperation as his time has run out; he’s destroyed the laboratory and the police are breaking down the door. So then we see him find and take the vial of poison, and end to the madness for Jekyll and one last middle-finger to the authorities for Hyde.   

The transformations themselves are done mostly with cuts, and look good, and I like the way they really made Hyde look so much different from Jekyll. The ratty, opposite-color hair, the blacked-out teeth, the buggy eyes and big eyebrows, and even the way he holds his hands in a gnarled way really emphasize Hyde’s personality and his contrast from Jekyll. 

So, in conclusion, I really enjoyed 1912’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s only 12 minutes long, but it’s a very enjoyable film and a really good interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella. I definitely recommend it. Next time we’re going to be heading into the 1920’s, so I hope you’ll join me then! Until next time!    

Watch the film HERE

Watch the 1913 version HERE

Fear and Film: A Horror Retrospective- 1900’s

And we’re back! Sorry for the delay, but now we’re back to talk horror again! Today we are jumping to 1909 and looking at D.W Griffith’s The Sealed Room in our second installment of Fear and Film.

In watching The Sealed Room, you immediately find a number of differences from our earlier entry, The Haunted Castle. The first is that there is a much larger cast in this film, with a number of background people that, while not necessarily impacting the story, give the illusion of there being many inhabitants in the castle and serving as the retinue for the king and as maids for his consort. We have also upped our runtime from three to just over eleven minutes, allowing us time for a more in-depth story. It also delivers the horror aspect of the story in a different way from The Haunted Castle, but in a way that is similar even to us today. So let’s have a look.

The first thing I noticed when trying to decide which movie to choose from this decade was that descriptions for The Sealed Room compared it to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado. As someone who has been known to enjoy the works of Poe, I was intrigued, which led me to watch it. As I said above, the horror is done in a different, more realistic way than in The Haunted Castle, which relied on its special effects to bring you supernatural creatures that provide the fright. Here, the horror comes from much more mundane, human actions and doesn’t really come into play until the end. I thought this was a really interesting change between the two, and since I want to highlight different kinds of films within the genre, it seemed perfect.

The film depicts a king who has ordered constructed a special room for his consort that has only one door and no windows. When the king and his retinue leave, she and the court’s minstrel make themselves comfortable in the room. The king finds this out and, in a fit of anger, (spoilers, I guess?) has masons wall up the only door and mocks the two as they suffocate on the other side of the wall. So the Amontillado comparisons are certainly apt ones. As I said above, I like that this film has human nature as the cause of the horror element. It makes for a bit of a slower buildup to that element, but it’s more of a sinister and horrifying payoff knowing that it wasn’t anything otherworldly, but something very familiar that brought this end to these two. And it’s something that we as modern movie goers can relate to and appreciate even today, as those human actions are no different now than they were then.

As with The Haunted Castle, this film is silent. You could see that the actors were speaking as they were acting, but unless you’re a good lip-reader, the words will be lost on you. You don’t really need them, though, as the actions tell the story well enough. The version I watched did have musical accompaniment, which was nice. It was fairly upbeat, classical music, not turning dark until the end. That really helped with the feel of the movie, and the buildup I talked about earlier. The acting is again somewhat exaggerated to make up for the lack of sound, although not to such a degree that it is goofy. The set is actually based in two rooms instead of one; the aforementioned one-entrance room and a larger one outside it. The costumes are quite elaborate and invoking a more historical time period, even for the 1900’s.

In conclusion, The Sealed Room is a very interesting film. I love the timelessness of the themes and how they still resonate even more than a hundred years later. It is a slower burn in the horror aspect, but overall still conveys the genre well. I mean it must, we’re still making films in this vein even now, looking at themes of jealousy and revenge. I would highly recommend The Sealed Room, it’s well worth a watch, even just to see the advancement of filmmaking from our first entry.

Watch The Sealed Room HERE  

Fear and Film: A Horror Retrospective- 1890's

Hey, everybody! Happy October! Since its Halloween month I wanted to do something special. And so I’d like to introduce: Fear and Film, where we look at one horror movie per decade from the past one hundred and twenty or so years until now. I’m really excited to go on this trip through time and look at these films and how they change and evolve as we progress. So let’s start back at the beginning by looking at Georges Méliès’ Le Manoir du Diable (The Haunted Castle), released in 1896. 

I was thinking about looking at multiple films from this decade simply given the fact that films at this time are very short. To put it in perspective, The Haunted Castle has an ‘ambitious’ runtime of three minutes, 18 seconds. But it feels like a disservice to these films to do shorter reviews of multiple entries, so we will just be talking about The Haunted Castle, considered by some film historians to be the very first horror movie.

To start things off, what I found most fascinating about watching this film was the special effects. This film is 121 years old, what we’re seeing is special effects like the stop trick (or substitution splice) at the time of discovery. And these effects aren’t used sparingly, either. Méliès starts the story off with one, as a bat transforms into Mephistopheles and ramps it up in the ensuing chaos. Even though Mephistopheles is a demon, the bat transformation and other imagery such as the specters/brides have led some to call this a vampire (or perhaps proto-vampire?) movie. If that were the case it would also be the first of that genre. As to the effects themselves, they are really well done. Méliès wasted no time in making the most of this technique with awesome results as things appear and disappear throughout the runtime, from single items or creatures to entire groups of specters. Even jaded, cynical, modern me watched it bright-eyed, exclaiming ‘this is so cool!’ to myself. 

The story of the film is pretty simple: Mephistopheles appears and he and his minion make a woman in a magic cauldron. Two ‘cavaliers’ show up and he proceeds to mess with them as much as possible until he is finally scared off by a large crucifix. The acting is very pantomime, which makes sense for the time, Méliès’ theatre and magic background, and the fact they are conveying the story without the assistance of sound. There is one actually quite funny part near the end when one of the cavaliers decides he wants no further part of this and takes his leave rather… abruptly. There’s another part that I didn’t notice until my third or fourth watch where they actually jog the set and the whole thing moves. It doesn’t distract from the whole experience, though, and kind of adds to it. I looked to see if there was a (hand) colorized version to watch, but if any were made they do not appear to have survived the passage of time. Although to be honest, I don’t think that would affect my level of enjoyment one way or the other, but it would have been neat to see.  It's not scary in any way to a modern eye, but to audiences of the 1890's? Might have been a different story.

In conclusion, this was a fantastic way to start off a retrospective on horror movies. I had so much fun watching Le Manoir du Diable/The Haunted Castle, and I would one hundred percent recommend people check it out. This is the first time I’d ever watched a movie of this kind of age, and it was a wonderful start to exploring movies at their very beginning. I hope you all enjoyed this and come back next time when we are going to look at the film from the turn of the 20^th century!

Watch The Haunted Castle HERE