Stuff: Video killed (and skinned, and bled, and ate) the radio star.

The Believer, the lit crit and human interest rag spun off the pop-indie McSweeney's franchise, has an interesting profile of Arch Oboler: Skinning the Americans, by the wonderfully named Jason Boog. Clickee the link to get the teaser intro.

From 1936 to 1943, Oboler (on the left in the pic above) wrote and produced radio horror programs for the program Lights Out. While his name is no longer common currency among horror fans, no less a fright-figure than Stephen King called Oboler the "prime auteur" of radio horror. To get an idea of the sort of punch Oboler's radio dramas had, let me quote a bit of the article:

In the course of his research, [Kurt] Kuersteiner [radio historian and host of an online guide to radio horror shows] met a World War II vet who recalled listening to one of Oboler's most famous episodes during basic training . . . "It had just ended, late at night," Kuersteiner told me. "Just then, the power went on the base and the whole barracks freaked out. These weren't housewives reacting to War of the Worlds. These were battle-trained soldiers panicking when the power went down. It goes to show you how Oboler had the pulse of America back then.

Oboler tried to make the jump to film after television killed off the radio drama, but he never really made it. He helmed such forgettable oddities as Bwana Devil, a great white hunter pic that was the first 3-D feature film.

Through a comparison of Oboler's plots and scenes in modern horror flicks, especially the works of the so-called Splat Pack, Boog tries to make a case that Oboler is the father of that unique brand of extreme horror. I don't know if I buy all that Boog's selling, but he's done a great service in bringing Oboler's neglected work to light.

To hear some of Oboler's plays, check out Kuersteiner's wonderful site.

Movies: Official ANTSS 31 Greatest Horror Flicks of All Freakin' Time

Happy Birthday, you big ol' blog you. Today, we're going to let drop the Official ANTSS 31 Greatest Horror Flicks of All Freakin' Time. Bold it when you say it. And by "Greatest" I mean: I like them. And by "Of All Freakin' Time," I mean: as of this morning.

Look, we could ramble on about this, or, you know, we could just get to stepping.

I agree, Screamers and Screamettes. Let's go.

And they're off!

31. Tarantula (1955)
Dir: Jack Arnold
This film has a giant freakin' tarantula in it. I remember watching it on the late night monster flick show with my pops back when I still wore footie pajamas. Is it good? I guess not. Is it important? Well, since it started my love affair with creature features, monstrous movies, and fright flicks, then, yeah, it's important to me. (Strangely, the strictly workman director Jack Arnold appears on my list twice.)

30. Les Revenants (2004)
Dir: Robin Campillo
Normally, I don't have no truck with ostentatiously displaying the un-translated title of a flick as a badge of my filmic coolosity, but in this case – where the English title is the clunky They Came Back - I'll make an exception. At the very cusp of a zombie pic glut, this quiet, somber, thoughtful flick re-invented the entire genre.

29. Frailty (2001)
Dir: Bill Paxton
A creepy and effective story about a family in the grips of religious mania – or are they really plagued by angels and demons? Think Jim Thompson's Exorcist.

28. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Dir: John McNaughton
Here's a little story about this nihilistic bit of work. When the filmmaker submitted Henry to the ratings board, it came back NC-17. Normally, when that happens, the board sends the filmmakers a list of what could be cut to achieve an R rating. No such letter came back with their film. They wrote the board requesting the letter. They were told that their film, which is actually light on explicit gore and sex, received the rating because of its tone and its attitude towards its subject, real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. There were no content cuts that could be made which would make the flick acceptable.

27. Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004)
Dir: Brett Sullivan
Fueled by the success of the Buffy television series, their was a slew of fright flicks that used monstrousness as a metaphor for the teen years (a pomo rehash of a crucial 1950s horror theme). The best of this lot was the teen-girl/werewolf flick Ginger Snaps. But, that perfectly acceptable film was topped by its inky dark sequel. That flick took the characters over the deep-end and took the monster/teen metaphor to it ultimate, grim conclusion. This flick combines genuine suspense with a sense of humor that is almost sadistic. Fuzzy head and hairy shoulders above the neo-slasher flicks that clogged the market at the time.

26. I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
In '43, Val Lewton got the rights to a fairly stale series of non-fiction articles on voodoo. He wed the dry stuff to the plot of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and then handed it all to Tourneur. Sounds like a disaster in the making, but it ended up producing a remarkably effective and stylish fusion of melodrama and horror.

25. Nosferatu (1922)
Dir: F. W. Murnau
With a plot that streamlines Stoker's novel to essentials (while keeping the best bi, ignored by most adaptations: the scenes on the ship) and monster make-up that is still instantly recognizable, this film is one off the foundations of modern horror cinema – and I dig it.

24. Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)
Dir: Herschell Gordon Lewis
I'm not a big gore for gore's sake type of horror fan, but there's something about this Southern revenge fantasy/cannibal flick that warms my sesch heart. As an aside, I actually watch this flick and ponder if, through a display of mad endurance, I could survive any of the traps in it. Which brings us to . . .

23. Saw (2005)
Dir: Darren Lynn Bousman
Unjustly shares the blame for the brief mainstream interest in "torture porn" with the justly maligned Hostel. What set Saw apart was its genuine dramatic tension, the fact that the protagonists in Jigsaw's traps might, in fact, escape by something other than the ghost-in-the-machine intervention of the director. This real tension made it something more than a straight up endurance test.

22. House of Wax (1953)
Dir: Andre De Toth
This could have been any of a hundred Vincent Price films. On my right arm is a tattoo of the "devil," though, really, it is just a stylized portrait of a young Vincent Price. That's why this movie is on my list.

21. The Hitcher (1986)
Dir: Robert Harmon
C. Thomas "Tommy" Howell, the same year as his famous blackface role in Soul Man, went up against Rutger "I'm Creepy" Hauer (his mom actually gave him that nickname – true story, swear to God) in this mean-spirited little flick. Basically, the road film as nightmare. Has one of the greatest "no they didn't" moments in '80s horror.

20. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Dir: Robert Wiene
Possibly the most famous of all silent horror flicks. The amazing set design and circular plotting continue to inspire.

19. Devil's Backbone (2001)
Dir: Guillermo del Toro
Before Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro shot this haunted house tale featuring children trying to make sense of the Spanish Civil War. I might be alone in this, but I actually thing this beats Pan. It is more thoughtful, better looking, and scarier.

18. Godzilla (1954)
Dir: Ishiro Honda
The big rubber lizard's first outing is actually a surprisingly effective film. Even setting aside the obviously political overtones, the images of Tokyo's destruction are haunting. If you haven't seen the original Japanese version, I recommend it highly. It's a real eye-opener.

17. Freaks (1932)
Dir: Tod Browning
An elaborate form of career suicide – the director of Dracula followed up that smash hit blockbuster with a flick so controversial that is pretty much eighty-sixed his Hollywood success story. Built around a melodramatic carny suspense story, the real draw of this flick is the live sideshow performers who fill out the cast. In an age of CGI and larger than life special effects, there's something magnetic about this strange little flick.

16. Häxan (1922)
Dir: Benjamin Christensen
Intended as a documentary proposing a psychological cause for the witchcraft trials of Europe and colonial America, Christensen's imagination and runaway talent got the best of him and he ended up making a film that transcended his pedagogical aims. This trippy flick was fave of the French Surrealists and was later remade with narration by William S. Burroughs. And amazing and often overlooked gem from the early days of cinematic horror.

15. 28 Days Later (2002)
Dir: Danny Boyle
I should probably hate this flick for rejuvenating the zombie genre and, therefore, being directly responsible for the fact that we've had to wallow in cut rate zombie flick crap for half a decade now. But who can stay mad at you 28 Days Later? Since it is bound to come up, I prefer the American ending.

14. Susperia (1976)
Like some gorgeous foreign supermodel you meet at a bar, Agento's flick is beautiful, stylish, and completely incomprehensible. Though you know that it isn't going anywhere, you buy the drinks and hang out anyway – after all, how often are you around such hotness?

13. Alien (1979)
Do you go with Alien or Aliens? A tough call, especially as I dig the "army versus monster" subgenre of horror. But, in the end, the first film shows more flair and visual style. Plus, the original's claustrophobia is simply more frightening.

12. The Thing from Another World (1951)
Dir: Christian Nyby
Archetypal '50s creature feature. Even if the rumors that Howard Hawks directed most of this flick aren't true, you can feel is influence throughout.

11. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Dir: Edgar Wright
In a sane world, folks would have seen Shaun and realized that there was simply no point in continuing to make zombie flicks.

10. Frankenstein (1931)
Dir: James Whale
Part off the Class of '31: American horror's watershed year. I know that critical conventional wisdom holds the sequel Bride to be the better flick, but I stand by the iconic original. Whale's film didn't so much adapt Shelly's novel as it distilled it to primal basics – and it retains that raw and savage grace that is at the root of its continuing attraction. I should point out that the brilliant Dwight Frye, who plays Fritz the lab assistant, appears twice on my list (see Dracula). Frye's deliciously unhinged performances always please.

9. Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Dir: Jonathan Demme
"You know what you look like to me, Clarice? With your good purse and your bad shoes? You look like a rube."

8. The Haunting (1963)
Dir: Robert Wise
Just two years after West Side Story and one year before The Sound of Music, the peripatetic Wise squeezed in a black-and-white adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting off Hill House. Pauline Kael (who would later lose her job at McCall's for completely thrashing Wise's Sound of Music) held up this brilliant flick up as an example of what smart, adult, complicated horror could be. Is the best example of the "they can't hurt you, but can scare you into hurting yourself" subgenre of ghost story.

7. Psycho (1960)
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Because a boy's best friend is his mother.

6. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dir: George Romero
Later, the shambling zombie stars of Romero's Dead franchise would nearly vanish under the weight of Romero's increasingly ham-fisted political allegories. But this first flick manages to pack in scares and insight by allowing the story to unfold without overt moralizing or speechifying. This is an almost perfect horror machine, a simple and hellish tale told with brutal efficiency.

5. Dracula (1931)
Dir: Tod Browning
Browning might deserve some sort of an award for being the worst director to mange to create timeless films. Never fully comfortable with sounded and hobbled by a stagy and static film sense (see the simultaneous Spanish production for a Dracula produced my a more talented and innovative director), Browning none the less managed to permanently rework Bram Stoker's novel, making sure everybody thought of Bela Lugosi the moment the name Dracula was uttered. Though the scary edge may have long dulled on this classic, it continues to have a sort of lavish, dream-like pull on the imagination.

4. The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Dir: Jack Arnold
No sane wannabe arbiter of cinematic quality has any right placing Creature so high up on their list; but, well, screw that. This is my list, not your list. Get your own list if it means so damn much to you. Great monster design, a wonderful fusion of horror and sci-fi tropes, some near flirtation with environmental themes, a classic "trapped" plot, and wonderful cheesy 3-D effects. Even I, Lucas, cannot resist the Fish-Man's film.

3. Jaws (1975)
Dir: Steven Spielberg
Though elitist film-buffs and critics may now turn their noses up at the thought of Spielberg, Jaws used the then-young filmmakers storytelling talents perfectly. Editor Verna Fields also gets credit for teaching the fledgling filmmaker that teasing us with the sight of "Bruce," rather than revealing the shark immediately, was the way to go.

2. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Dir: Tobe Hooper
This remains the only real must-see in the long and disappointing career of Tobe Hooper (assuming the Poltergeist was, in fact, the work of Spielberg). But still, if you're only going to have one film, this is a hell of flick to have. The verité-feel and sun-bleached look of the flick are perfect for framing this bloody and surreal tale that Hooper tells with a dead-pan tone that just heightens the horror. The workman-like manner with which Leatherface gets about his grim deeds still gives me the shivers. Later remakes missed the point when they drenched the film in shadows and other conventional spookshow trappings. What made TCM so T was the fact that is all seems to happen in these sun-baked open plains.

And, finally, drum roll please . . .

1. The Shining (1980)
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Perhaps the greatest counter-argument to the lazy chestnut that "books make bad movies" this side of The Godfather. Though Kubrick was probably intellectually slumming it, he brought his A-game and dedicated his relentlessly precise brand of film craftsmanship to a genre that's too often home to half-talented hacks. Case in point, the scene where young Danny is riding his big wheel through the hotel and runs into the ghostly daughters of the previous caretaker. Though everybody remembers the ominous sound of the wheels as the alternate from hardwood floor to carpet, what most people don't realize is that the cycle of sound gets shorter and shorter until we finally meet the daughters. It is a subtle, tension-building countdown. That sort of insane attention to detail makes this one of the most meticulously constructed horror films ever. And it pays off. The Shining is scary.

Whew. That's something you can only do once a year.

A big ANTSS thanks all the readers – especially the Screamin' regulars: cattleworks, Sassy, Heather, spacejack, and dave. And thanks to the wifey, who actually hates horror films with a passion, but puts up with my crap because she's amazing like that.

Meta: Tomorrow, tomorrow . . .

I hope you've enjoyed the first ever series here on And Now the Screaming Starts. Let me know if you'd like to see more silent flicks, or series, or movies with William S. Burroughs narration, or whatever it is that floats your boat. I just want to hear from you. Would it kill you to write your friendly neighborhood blogger now and then? Would it? I'm worried sick about you.

Tomorrow, dear Screamers and Screamettes, marks the big one-year anniversary of And Now the Screaming Starts. In the course of a single year, we've been through a lot together. We've laughed and we cried. There have been contests and reviews, jokes and hatchet jobs. We started this blog as mere boys (unless you were a girl, which is none of my business, really) and we reach this milestone as men (unless you're a woman, but, again, that's between you and your gender and is none of my bee's wax).

So, just how do we celebrate the anniversary of a blog that has given so much and never, ever asked for anything in return?

Well, my loyal screamin' horde, sometimes the answer is thrust upon you.

In the comments to my review of Haxan, the last in our Silent Scream Series, I got this invite from one Ed Hardy, Jr., movie-buff extraordinaire:

Sorry, this has nothing to do with this post. But I wanted to invite you and any other interested parties to submit a nominating list to Shoot the Projectionist's survey of the 31 GREATEST HORROR FILMS, to be published on Halloween.

Here's a link to the original announcement:

Click upon this very link to be magically transported to your destination!

Thanks.

What better way to cap of a year of horror blather than a bit of ol' fashion canon creation?

Calm down, folks. We won't be making a weapon of mass destruction.

Instead, we'll be rolling out the Official ANTSS 31 Greatest Horror Flicks of All Freakin' Time.

See you tomorrow, fright fans. You could miss it, but then you'd like totally suck.

Silent Scream Series: What the Häx?

According Casper Tybjerg, the scholar who provides the DVD commentary for Criterion's excellent edition of Häxan, the film once induced something like Stendhal Syndrome in a viewer. In 1941, during the film's commercial re-release in Sweden, police found a man roaming around outside the theater, hands held out before him, dazed, and gasping for air. The police assumed he was drunk. The man was taken to the hospital where he was treated until normal breathing returned. There, the medical staff determined that the man had not been drinking. The patient indicated that the attack – his stunned shock-like state and his shortness of breath – had been induced by watching Häxan. He'd simply been overwhelmed by the film.

This wouldn't be the first or last time Häxan was equated with extreme mental states. The film became popular among the surrealists who dug on its heavy anti-clericalism (than, as now, there's no better way to easily secure your artistic status as groundbreaking than by spicing your work with a dash of the ol' anti-Christian themes) and special effects, which brought the dream-like confessions of those accused of witchcraft to life. Later, in the 1960s, an English-language re-release featured the drone/drawl narration of that elder statesman of altered states: William S. Burroughs.

Until you've seen Häxan, it sounds itself a bit like the subject of a horror movie: an obscure silent film that has obtained fetish-object status among the outsider class and has the power to render people temporarily insane. That's quite a reputation to live up to.

Well, Screamers and Screamettes, while I didn't go stark raving mad, nor was I convinced to shoot my wife and flee to a life of drug induced creativity, I am now convinced that Häxan is among the greatest silent films ever made.

Häxan is supposedly a documentary. It was intended to advance the theory that the witchcraft prosecutions of the Middle Ages were caused by a mass outbreak of hysteria, further fuelled by religious intolerance that convinced otherwise good people that the more abhorrent crimes are justified in the defense of Christianity from an enemy that could be anywhere, do anything, and take any form. However, it is the dramatic "re-creation" of a witchcraft trial and its fall-out that forms the core of the film. It's these scenes that one imagines the surrealists and folks like Burroughs thought was the good stuff. Here we get the phantasmagoric presentation of the visions of witchcraft hunters and the accused. There are scenes of torture (including one scene in which we break the fourth wall and one of the actresses, out of character, agrees to let the directors actually apply a thumb-screw to her), erotic fantasies, images of monks scourging themselves, and so on. Unlike, say, The Crucible, which used the a Salem witchcraft trial as a ham-fisted and ultimately unsatisfying metaphor for the Red Scare, the witchcraft trial presented in Häxan is meant to illustrate the methods and typical progress of a trail. In this, it feels less like piece of propaganda (though even the film's creator cleared intended it so) and more like some weird, nightmarish, Medieval version of Law and Order. With its mix of detailed realism and precise attention to the dreams and visions of its main characters, to get an equivalent, you'd have to imagine somebody turned Pan's Labyrinth into a police procedural.

Given the unwieldy mix of fact and fiction, and the forced marriage of dramatic and propagandistic purposes, it is no surprise that some of the sections of the film fall flat. It gets off to a slow start as the director walks us through the cosmology of the Middle Ages. The models he uses here to illustrate his point are interesting, but don't hold the attention like the trial sections do. Also, at the end, when Christensen attempts to generalize he thesis to modern times, his political aims are at their most naked and the film's artistic power suffers for it.

Still, even with those weak spots, Häxan is a unique and powerful film. Though it isn't as famous as Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the two bedrock works of cinema horror, it is, I think, more artistically accomplished than either of those films. If the Silent Scream Series gives you the bug to check out a silent film, make it this one.

Meta: A death in the family.

All good things must come to an end, Screamers and Screamettes. It is with a heavy heart that I announce that sidebar-icon and gay-horror info site Camp Blood seems to have called it a night. Good luck and Godspeed, you noble purveyor of all things queer and horrific!

As a tribute, here's the just shy of 10-minute teaser for Camp Blood, the slasher musical. Fright fans, the cheese factor on this little clip is just shy of "epic." (For those still at work, watch out for suggested sex, dirty language, and garden tool related death.)

Silent Scream Series: Seven things about the 1920 "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

1. The first version of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous short story was destroyed in manuscript. His wife read it, was horrified by it, and consigned it to the flames of their family fireplace. Though we have nothing of this original left, we know that the story differed from the current version in that Hyde was not a second personality created through scientific misadventure, but simply an alter ego Jekyll consciously and deliberately assumed in order to do evil. Stevenson's wife reportedly felt that the duality of the main character, without the inclusion of the plot device of scientifically induced MPD that basically lets Jekyll off the hook for Hyde's behavior, was beyond the pale.

2. Punching Jekyll's name into imdb gets you nearly 60 film adaptations of Stevenson's story, including oddball variants like the 1915 silent film gender-swapped variant Miss Jekyll and Mistress Hyde, the driver-safety instructional film Gentleman Jekyll and Drive Hyde, the Spanish trash flick Dr. Jekyll and the Wolfman, the transsexual Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Rock n' Roll Musical, and, of course, the obligatory Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson's tale is so popular with film producers that three different versions of the tale were released in 1920 alone: two live-action versions and one animated adaptation that starred a ten popular comic strip character called Mr. Zip.

4. John Robertson's 1920 adaptation, starring John Barrymore a the titular protagonist, is not only one of the best versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it stands up as one of the best horror flicks made in the silent era. This is in no small part due to the excellent performance of Barrymore. John, yet another of the legendary Barrymore acting clan (his brother Lionel appeared previously in the Silent Scream Series in the flick The Bells), was nicknamed "The Great Profile" for his stunning good looks. At the height of his career, he was the most recognized and bankable actor in film and on stage. He famously quipped that he liked being introduced as America's foremost actor: "It saves the necessity of further effort." Unfortunately, he fell victim to the tendency towards hard living that was popularly known as "the Barrymore Curse." When asked about his acting, John answered, "There are many methods. Mine involves talent, a glass, and some cracked ice. His playboy lifestyle wrecked his health and looks and, after a film career that began in 1912, he closed out his career almost 30 years later drunkenly playing drunken parodies of his drunken self.

5. A key scene in any Jekyll/Hyde flick is the transformation scene. Often, this scene is a showcase for the make-up and special effects crews. In this film, Barrymore manages to pull off the first transformation scene without the aid of special effects or facial make-up. In one long take, Barrymore just acts the crap out of the scene, contorting his classically handsome mug into the disturbing visage of Mr. Hyde. It is, to this day, an excellent scene – as believable and effective as anything cooked up by later make-up and effects artists. The only make-up Barrymore uses in this scene is a pair of prosthetic hands, giving him inhumanly long, slender, claw-like fingers. Similar fake mits were later used to great effect by Max Schreck as Orlok in Nosferatu.

6. One of the more amazing scenes in the Barrymore's Jekyll and Hyde involves a Jekyll laying in bed, staring at the roof, pondering his rapidly disintegrating grasp on the direction of his life. Suddenly, from behind the bed, crawls a large creature: half giant tarantula, half Hyde. The creature crawls to the foot of the bed, climbs on top of Jekyll, and then fuses with him. This causes him to transform into Hyde. Like Barrymore's first transformation, this scene still holds up remarkably well.

7. The Alpha Video release of the film suffers from a poor picture and a lousy soundtrack. In fact, the soundtrack is so intrusive and mismatched that I eventually just turned the volume all the way off. Another curious feature of the Alpha Video release is the presence of several different styles of title cards, revealing the multiple film sources Alpha needed to splice to recreate the entire film. There are at least three distinct source films for Alpha's version. Unintentionally, this recreates one of the more interesting aspects of watching silent films now versus how they were viewed back in the day. Unlike modern films, films in the silent era were constantly cut, re-cut, and edited. Between releases, studios would change title cards, remove entire scenes, splice in establishing shots from other films, and even cut longer features into several shorter films (D. W. Griffith's epic Intolerance was cut into three shorter films for one of its many re-releases). In extreme cases, studios would create entire short films by splicing together fragments of older works. You can see "Boo," a nonsensical short made in just such a manner, in the Universal Frankenstein Collectors Edition boxed set. Studios weren't the only ones taking scissors to the films. Local exhibitors and censorship boards would cut films up, either to adjust running times or excise naught bits. Consequently, during the silent era, the Jekyll and Hyde you saw in New York was probably not the same Jekyll and Hyde you saw in Buffalo. The strange patchwork feeling of the Alpha video release actually captures something of the experience film-goers must have had at the time, watching flicks stitched together by a mix of pros and local yahoos.

Silent Scream Series: The look of love.

Ernst Lubitsch is famed for his classy, mature, controlled, and perhaps slightly cynical comedies. Films with "the Lubitsch" touch include Heaven Can Wait, To Be or Not to Be (perhaps the funniest film ever made), The Shop Around the Corner, Ninotchka (with its famous "Garbo laughs" tagline), and Trouble in Paradise. Collectively, these landmark films secure Lubitsch's rep as one of film's greatest directors.

But as this is And Now the Screaming Starts, we won't be talking about the cinematic masterpieces that elevated Lubitsch to the status of filmmaking titan. Instead, Screamers and Screamettes, we'll be exhuming Lubitsch's first feature film: an obscure horror lemon titled The Eyes of the Mummy - an inspirational little obscurity that proves even the truly great have to start somewhere.

Shot in 1918 for Germany's Projektion-AG Union (two years before PAGU brought out the silent horror classic The Golem), The Eyes of the Mummy begins with a lone white explorer trudging through the Egyptian desert in his best colonial dress whites. He encounters a beautiful young local girl, played by silent film hottie and Lubitsch regular Pola Negri, fetching water from a well. Their eyes meet. And cut . . .

. . . to the crowded porch of first class hotel in Egypt. Touring Euros lounge about soaking up the exotic scenery. One of the tourists, a prince no less, asks to be taken to the tomb of Queen Ma. Locals tell the Prince to forget it. Everybody who visits Ma's tomb ends up in a bad way – then they point to the explorer from the opening scene, now an invalid under the care of a nurse. The Prince decides to explore somewhere else, but the rumors of a curse catch the attention of a vacationing artist, Albert. Al finds a guide to take him to Queen Ma's tomb, where he finds Negri's character and "Radu the Arab," played in blackface by Emil Jennings (last seen on this site in the silent flick Waxworks). Radu and Albert scuffle and Al delivers the beatdown. With Radu now semi-conscious, Negri's character explains that Radu kidnapped her long ago and has kept her in Queen Ma's tomb. Al and the girl now somewhat inexplicably called Ma (though, I assume, she's not the dead queen) head back to civilization, leaving Radu for dead in the desert. Al decides to take Ma back to Germany as his new girlie.

Fortunately for the plot, the vacationing Prince finds the near-dead Radu. Radu, as is the custom of third-world folks in films, promises to serve the Prince forever. Thrilled to have a new servant so cheap, the Prince takes Radu back to the Germany with him.

Back in Germany, Al holds a coming out ball for Ma. After some social awkwardness, Ma blows high society away with a sultry dance (which, to this viewer, seemed a little more goofy than sultry, but whatever floats your boat) and she gets a gig doing this exotic little number at a local music house. As luck would have it, Radu happens to be attending her debut as the manservant of the Prince.

Obsessed with revenge, Radu contrives to get Al out house. He then breaks into Al's mansion and attempts to stab Ma. Ma, overcome with fear, faints and falls down a flight of stairs, breaking her neck. Radu, on seeing his dead slave/lover crumpled at the bottom of the stairs (see image above), is overcome with guilt. He carries her body to the couch and then stabs himself in the heart. Enter Albert, who throws himself on Ma's corpse. A title card coldly tells us that "It's too late!" and, then, "The End."

Weirdly, there's actually a second way to view the movie. Though I can't tell whether this is the product of sloppy storytelling or an intentional bit of narrative slight-of-hand. Ma's story about being a captive doesn't seem to hold together well. We see her out alone, by herself, at the beginning of the flick. Later, when Al approaches the tomb, we see her outside the tomb, talking to Radu, both of them acting conspiratorial. If one decides that the cards represent Al's mistaken notions of what's going on, then you get an interesting gloss on the whole plot. Basically, Ma and Radu are lovers that have been luring victims to the cave. Albert overpowers Radu and Ma, left alone, cooks up an alibi that makes her look like Radu's victim. Then Radu's revenge makes more sense as he's not angry at Al for stealing his girl, but angry at Ma for betraying him. Like I said, you've got to decide that the title cards are red herrings to read the flick this way; but once you've made that leap, it all sort of holds together. It even adds a bit to the story, giving the whole tale a "colonial's misunderstanding of the native scene" theme that gives the story extra dramatic weight. This would almost threaten to make the movie interesting. Almost.

Even if the whole "hidden" plot is true, it doesn't cover up the fact that the film's a bit of a clunker. The whole mummy's curse thing gets buried in the absurd plot. Much of the acting is clumsy (with the exception of the oddly suggestive acting of Jennings and Negri). Visually, the film's inert. Without snappy dialog to help him, Lubitsch touch doesn't amount to much. Finally, the DVD edition I saw, from Alpha Video, has a washed out, un-restored print and an original soundtrack that is distracting and repetitive.

All in all, Eyes of the Mummy is little more than a cult curiosity best suited for those interested in what is often claimed to be the first mummy flick or those who want to see early work from Lubitsch. Otherwise, like the Prince, take the warning and stay away.

Silent Scream Series: Hell's bells.

Welcome back, Screamers and Screamettes. This the third in ANTSS's special anniversary series looking at the primordial beginnings of fright flicks.

Today's soundless screamer is 1926's The Bells. Produced by the long defunct Chadwick Pictures Corporation (the company that produced the first adaptation of Wizard of Oz back in 1925) and helmed by silent film actor turned director James Young, this melodramatic suspense flick stars Lionel Barrymore – great uncle of Drew and member of the famed and infamous Barrymore clan – and features, in a small but noteworthy part, Boris Karloff. It was Karloff's 31st film in a career of more than 200 film roles – almost 40 films before Frankenstein – people cranked 'em out back then.

This whole thing starts a little soap opera-like, so those who have trouble keeping up might want to bust out a not pad or something.

Barrymore plays Mathais, a tavern and mill owner in a small European mountain near the base of what the title cards inform us is Mount Snowtop. I think that's near Running Water River just a-ways down Supports Traffic Road. Mathias is a nice enough guy. He likes to be liked by the townsfolk and he's hoping to be appointed Burgomaster. That's Austrian for "Master of the Burgo," or "mayor." To ensure he's got the popular support, he quick to extend credit and always ready to float tavern regulars a few free drinks. This drives his penny pinching wife and his father-in-law, the manager of Mathias's mill operation, crazy. It has also driven Mathias's family in debt. The man who holds Mathias's markers is Frantz, the village a-hole played to thuggish perfection by the unlikely named Gustav von Seyffertitz (a silent era character actor who you might recognize from Son of Frankenstein and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town). Frantz, being the village a-hole, let's Mathais know that he'll forget the debt if Mathais will arrange a marriage betwixt Frantz and Mathais's lovely daughter, the cutie-patootie Annette. But Annette's already got her heart set Christian, the new sheriff (or gendarme, as the Europeans like to call their new sheriffs) in town.

The domestic story takes shape over the first half hour or flick or so, then we come to our first set piece: the Carnival. The town throws a big party and Mathais, eager to take his mind off his worries, joins the partying crowd. There, among the various tent shows, is Boris Karloff as "The Mesmerist" – in costume and performance a clear lift from Caligari, the mad doctor of Cabinet of fame. After performing a few tricks, the Mesmerist offers to hypnotize Mathias, telling the audience that, once hypnotized, good men tell of their good deeds and bad men confess their crimes. Mathias is not down with that, so he breezes on to the fortune-teller's tent. Though that goes all pear shaped on Mathais when, on viewing his palm, the fortune-teller recoils in horror, refuses to tell him what's in his future, and refunds his money. Mathias should have known the moment a carny gave him his money back, that something was very amiss.

Jump to Christmas: Mathias, increasingly in debt, throws a party for the tavern regulars. At this party, Christian the cop proposes to Annette and there is much marry-making. Into this boisterous Christmas party wanders a traveling Jewish merchant who is looking to spend a few minutes out of the brutal storm raging outside. Mathais welcomes him in and, eventually, they end up the last men standing of the party. Several sheets to the wind, Mathias learns that the merchant is wearing a money belt full of gold. Shortly after the merchant leaves, the drunk and debt-ridden Mathias bundles up, grabs an axe, takes a shortcut to incept the merchant, and kills him for his gold.

Mathias ends up passing his sudden windfall of an inheritance from a rich uncle and pays of Frantz. But his problems are far from over. He is soon haunted, literally, by what he's done. As he was giving the merchant the business end of his axe, the merchant shook the bell-bearing reins of his horse. That sound haunts Mathias, like the heartbeat in Poe's Tell-Tale Heart. He's also haunted by visions of his victim, sulking around like a Hebraic Banquo whenever company shows up. To add to these worrisome events, the merchants brother shows up looking for the murderer – and he's brought the Mesmerist with him!

As much a domestic melodrama as it is a ghost tale, The Bells is effective entertainment if not always creepy. The exception to this being Karloff, who actually makes a better Caligari as a rip-off than the original did. This is a very minor role but Karloff fans will want to check it out. The style of filmmaking is interesting. The film makes numerous nods to German Expressionism, all while assimilating it into the effective and non-intrusive film narrative film vocabulary that is identified as American and is so universal that we tend not to think of it as an expression of artistic talent and intent. This is a solid flick on its own and a special treat for those who want to see early Karloff at work.

As an aside, the Image disc twins this flick with the French short film The Crazy Ray, an early sci-fi film about a group of air-travelers who arrive in Paris only to find everybody is frozen except them. This short has some amazing shots – especially of the group wandering through a deserted 1920s Paris. Some of the plot devices are contrived, but several scenes pack an uncanny punch. If you end up checking out The Bells, do yourself the favor and take a peek at the The Crazy Ray too.

NB: The disc cover makes the claim that the flick was inspired by a Poe poem. As far as I can tell, this is untrue. The film is an adaptation of a stage play, which was actually made into a movie several times during the silent era. Several Poe works did get turned into silent films – "The Fall off the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," "William Wilson" – but this is not one of them.