Classic era horror

Two reviews for one low price!

Many of the classic films that I will be reviewing were greatly influenced by German expressionism, with tonality and atmosphere playing a big part of “what is scary” about these classic movies. For scoring purposes, I am grading each film on a four part scale. 
Overall film quality - The general tone of the movie, and how it makes one feel.
Effects – How good are the effects? (Taking into account the technology at the time the film was made.)
Soundtrack – (Modern or original) Did the music help create atmosphere or distract from the overall theme of the movie?
Story – How well is the story told? Is it one that holds up to today’s hardened audiences?

Up first, L’Inferno (1911)

Hell, in many religious and folkloric traditions, is a place of torment and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations while religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations.
Hell is the setting of “The Divine Comedy” by Dante. Since this review is for the film based upon the epic poem, we won’t go into the history of the story too much and, focus more upon the film.

L'Inferno has the distinct title of being the very first feature film. Clocking in at over an hour, it becomes more unsettling the further you travel with Virgil and Dante.

Throughout L’Inferno, the camera remains wide and locked down like the proscenium of a stage. Instead, they focused their efforts on creating gloriously baroque sets and costumes. Much of the film looks like it was pulled straight from Gustave Dorè’s famed illustrations of The Divine Comedy. Yet seeing a picture in a book of a demon is one thing. Seeing it leap around lashing the naked backs of the damned is something else entirely. If you were ever tempted by the sin of simony, you’ll think twice after seeing this film. The use of the human form as both set dressing and scenery is unsettling to say the least. The imagery of writhing naked bodies coupled with the tinting process of various scenes unlocks a deep psychological horror within oneself that borders on everything we love about the Halloween season. The main feelings one experiences being the macabre, primal fear, and man’s basest evils. The sountrack of the edition I watched would be considered more modern, however it does not feel like it when coupled with the film.

L’Inferno – became both a critical and commercial hit worldwide, raking in over $2 million (roughly $48 million in today’s money) in the US alone. “We have never seen anything more precious and fine than those pictures. Images of hell appear in all their greatness and power,” gushed famed Italian novelist and reporter Matilde Serao when the film came out.

American film critic for The Moving Picture World, W. Stephen Bush, was even more effusive:

“I know no higher commendation of the work than mention of the fact that the film-makers have been exceedingly faithful to the words of the poet. They have followed, in letter and in spirit, his conceptions. They have sat like docile scholars at the feet of the master, conscientiously and to the best of their ability obeying every suggestion for his genius, knowing no inspiration, except such as came from the fountainhead. Great indeed has been their reward. They have made Dante intelligible to the masses. The immortal work, whose beauties until now were accessible only to a small band of scholars, has now after a sleep of more than six centuries become the property of mankind.”

Of course, the film’s combination of ghoulishness and nudity made it ripe to be co-opted by shady producers who had less that lofty motives. Scenes from L’Inferno were cut into such exploitation flicks as Hell-O-Vision (1936) and Go Down, Death! (1944).

Film: *****
Effects (for their time): ****
Soundtrack (modern or original): *****
Story: ****
Overall achieving a score of 4.5, the film is very surreal and unsettling even by today’s standards. You can watch the full movie here. Be sure to watch to the end where a triple mouthed Satan himself can be seen devouring Judas, Brutus and Cassius!

Since ancient times, ghost stories—tales of spirits who return from the dead to haunt the places they left behind—have figured prominently in the folklore of many cultures around the world. A rich subset of these tales involve historical figures ranging from queens and politicians to writers and gangsters, many of whom died early, violent or mysterious deaths. 
As far back as the very origins of film —to 1896, when French special-effects genius Georges Méliès made the three plus minute short above, Le Manoir du Diable (The Haunted Castle, or the Manor of the Devil). Méliès, known for his silent sci-fi fantasy A Trip to the Moon—(Referenced many times in various pop culture tributes!)—used his innovative methods to tell a story.

Maurice Babbis at Emerson University journal Latent Image, of “a large bat that flies into a room and transforms into Mephistopheles. He then stands over a cauldron and conjures up a girl along with some phantoms and skeletons and witches, but then one of them pulls out a crucifix and the demon disappears.” Not much of a story, granted, and it’s not particularly scary, but it is an excellent example of a technique Méliès supposedly discovered that very year.

According to Earlycinema.com,
In the Autumn of 1896, an event occurred which has since passed into film folklore and changed the way Méliès looked at filmmaking. Whilst filming a simple street scene, Méliès camera jammed and it took him a few seconds to rectify the problem. Thinking no more about the incident, Méliès processed the film and was struck by the effect such a incident had on the scene - objects suddenly appeared, disappeared or were transformed into other objects.
Thus was born The Haunted Castle, technically the first horror film, and one of the first movies—likely the very first—to deliberately use special effects to frighten its viewers.
Méliès’ work (though it may be considered rudimentary with the advancements of special effects in modern cinemas) still holds up today. I believe this is due to the primary reason of storyline. In my quest for old spooky movies, I have found that the story relies heavily on fright by emotion and tone, not by sudden, shocking imagery that you will find in most modern horror films.

Film: ****
Effects (for their time): *****
Soundtrack (modern or original): ***
Story: ***
So scoring an overall score of 3.75 stars, Le Manoir du Diable (1896) Was and is a great horror movie to this day as long as you take into account the “new technology” of that time period. It is nearly 125 years old after all! I can only hope to create something that would be in use 125 years later!