Horror Movies, Old Movies, Silent Horror Movies Part 2 Review

Lights, shadows, expressionism, gothic distortions formed the eerie creepy images of early silent Horror Movies.  As American film companies began to explore the horror genre they turned to stage productions, classic literature and the first Horror movie star, the man of a thousand faces-Lon Chaney, entered the fame parade.

Lon Chaney Sr. transformed himself, not just with make-up and contortion, but also with acting ability to play a assortment of grotesque, frightening, and sometimes comic characters.  He played brutes, murderers, crooks, clowns, women, freaks and monsters.

He was the most memorable Quasimodo in director Wallace Worsley's  The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923, and Erik, the Phantom of the Opera in the 1925 Rupert Julian classic.

He rose to fame with his collaborations with Director Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks).  They made several memorable films together including  Outside the Law 1921, The Unholy Three (1925)  remade by Browning as the only sound film, Chaney ever made (just before he died),  and  West of Zanzibar (1928).  Browning and Chaney made the first American Vampire film with 1927's  London After Midnight   a mostly 'lost' film. Chaney became one of the most popular box-office stars of his day.

1925's Phantom of the Opera was a truly groundbreaking film for several reasons; based on  Gaston Leroux's  1911 novel It has a two-color Technicolor Bal Masque sequence, the falling chandelier and the underground lake scenes.  It's expressionistic influenced dark tones created the bar for all horror films of the 1930s to match.  Audiences screamed and many fainted when Christine, the young opera house ingénue unmasked the Phantom to reveal a hideously distorted skull-like face, a lipless mouth, rotting teach, pig-snout nose and bulging eyes.

The film was remade several times.  Universal made a lavish (for Universal) 1943 technicolor musical version starring Claude Rains (a disfigured violinist rather than a Devil's Island escapee) as the Phantom and featuring Nelson Eddy as Raoul, and Susanna Foster as ingénue Christine.

In 1962, Hammer Films under Terence Fisher's direction attempted it again with Herbert Lom (Pink Panther) as the Phantom. It's watchable, but rather flat.

There was a made for television version movie broadcast in 1983 with Jane Seymour (miscast as Christine) and Maximilian Schell as the Phantom.

In 1986, Broadway audiences flocked to Andrew Lloyd Webbers' stage musical version of the classic tale, and eventually it became adapted into a so-so film from director Joel Schumacher in 2004.

There were other versions, like the one one that starred Robert Englund best known as Freddy in the Nightmare On Elm Street series which appeared very briefly on its way to video in 1989.

Dario Argento made a bloody, sexed up version with his daughter Asia Argento as Christine and Julian Sands as a suave, good looking Phantom (sans mask), who has telekinetic abilities and controls rats  in Il Fatasma Dell'Opera  which was unleashed in 1998.  (Don't confuse this odd gory twist on Phantom with the 1987 Argento film  Opera  aka Terror at the Opera which is a preposterous gore-fest, murder mystery with little relation to Phantom and for true Argento fans only.)  This 1998 twist doesn't work either as it veers from an almost stiff PBS sort of presentation to a grind-house gore-fest with only a few creative bloody murders and tortures (pins holding open eyes is pretty nasty). It does have its fans, however.

There was a 1990 NBC mini-series version directed by Tony Richardson and featuring Burt Lancaster in one of his last roles (as the Phantom's father).  Charles Dance played the Phantom and Teri Polo as Christine.

There we also many variations on The Phantom over the years.  My favorite is the rock-opera version that combines Phantom with the Faust story written and directed by Brian DePalma and first released in 1974: The Phantom of the Paradise.  It's quite a show.

The success of Hunchback and Phantom created a hunger for Horror films.   Universal Studio boss, Carl Laemmle recruited  Actor Conrad Veidt (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and  the superb 1924  Hands of Orlac) along with expressionistic German horror director  Paul Leni (Backstairs from 1921,  and Waxworks in 1924).   Leni directed what is considered the first American gothic haunted house film;  The Cat and the Canary in 1927 (re-made several times including the Bob Hope comedy classic of the same name) and then directed an almost forgotten masterpiece starring Veidt as Gwynplaine, a grotesque carnival freak (who obviously inspired Batman's Joker)  in the 1927 film, The Man Who Laughs.    Don't miss it!!!!

Back in 1920, John Barrymore, without much make-up at all, transformed himself memorably in the SECOND version of  Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde  (the Kino DVD boasts a clip from the earlier 1911 version-so those insisting this if the 1st version are wrong-it's possible it wasn't even the second version)  .  It was re-made several times and there were countless variations on the story as well.     Most notable re-makes included the first sound version from 1931  directed by Rouben Mamoulian, which won star  Frederic March an Oscar. The controversial whipping scene, cut from the film shortly after its initial screenings have now been restored on some DVDs.   And there's also the 1941 version directed by Victor Fleming and starring Spencer Tracy in the title role with Ingrid Bergman as the 'wicked' prostitute.    You can certainly skip the quirky revisionist version starring Julia Roberts as an innocent maid of the infamous Dr. Jekyll which was called  Mary Reilly (1995).    See the Barrymore and March versions and then if you are a Tracy or Bergman fan, watch the 41 version too.

In addition to the silent film suggested viewing I've made above (Man Who Laughs, The Unholy Three,  Phantom, Dr. Jekyll  etc., you might consider the following for your viewing pleasure:

 The Monster (1925)
All of this was fairly new in 1925 and so if you are able to pretend somehow that you've not seen the one about the mad scientist who works in a lunatic assylum and kidnaps strangers to use in his horrible experiments to bring the dead back to life, you might find this one very enjoyable. It's got another fine Lon Chaney performance and a lovely damsel in distress as well. It's dated, stiff and overly familiar but hey, it was pretty new and exciting stuff back then. This one tries too hard to be a comedy horror film and there's too much time devoted to actor Johnny Arthur a young man in training  training to be a detective.  He tries to protect a damsel in distress in a house that's been rigged with contraptions, secret panels and passageways.   It's all very old fashioned, but it was new and the pacing is fast enough that I'll suggest, Lon Chaney and/or silent film lovers might want to check this one out.

Hands of Orlac (1924)
This is the original Classic silent film version of the Maurice Renards' classic story (re-made several times- Mad Love with Peter Lorre, Hands of Orlac -1960 with Christopher Lee and Mel Ferrer)about a famed concert pianists hands which are mutilated in an accident. His hands are replaced with those of a murderer and a growing urge to kill overwhelms him. Starring Conradt Veidt and directed by Robert Wiene . Yes same actor and director responsible for the influential horror expressionist classic Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This one is also extremely expressionistic, and even better than Cabinet.

Next time:  Sound, Untimely death of Horror Star, ushers in Universal Horror classics and then the Production Code.....