These pre-Halloween posts are usually a pretext to recommend cool horror movies at Gotham Calling. Like I explained last year, though, I can hardly keep up with new releases and my picks in terms of recent films are probably not all that original (yes, the ending of Weapons is incredible!), so I’d rather draw attention to older, less obvious choices for horror fans.
You know, like Häxan.
I suppose you *could* describe Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (released in the US as Witchcraft through the Ages) as a silent Scandinavian documentary from 1922, but that hardly does justice to what is one of the most original, fascinating, terrifying, surprising, clever, and generally unpinnable masterpieces I’ve seen in a long time.
Let me just quickly walk you through this ride, so that you get a glimpse of an idea of what’s in store. For the first ten minutes or so, you get to read a scholarly dissertation on the cultural history of demons and witches since ancient times until the Middle Ages, illustrated with a number of beautiful (if creepy) woodcuts and other still images. Then you start to get enactments of medieval superstitions, shot through the kind of expressionist cinematography you find in classics of this era (like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), enriching the black-and-white with various color tinting and toning, giving each scene a moody shade.
After some of these vignettes (including plenty of gothic imagery and a fair bit of kinkiness), we get a much longer section recreating the treatment of suspected witches by the Inquisition, so the film becomes a harrowing historical drama, with a truly disturbing torture sequence, chronicling a real-world tragedy. But that’s not enough: there is still a final segment in which Christensen turns Häxan into an even more experimental – and intelligent, and self-reflexive, and feminist – piece of filmmaking while casting his gaze on the modern treatment of mental disorder. If you thought this was just a Danish guy arrogantly asserting his society’s civilizational superiority over primitive beliefs, just wait until you see the brutal payoff…
Oh, and there’s also some stuff about kissing Satan’s butt. Literally.
And before you go check out this proof that cinema can be brilliant (and horrific), here is this week’s extra-size, horror-themed reminder that comic book covers can be awesome:
