Caligari A-Go-Go

Do you know what my favouritest film of all time ever is? It's Das Cabinat der Doktor Caligari, the 1919 German expressionist silent movie starring the exquisitely lovely Conrad Veidt (one of my heroes, a thoroughly wonderful man, a wartime humanitarian and a greatly underrated actor, for more about him check out the Conrad Veidt Society) and directed by Robert Weine. It's only 50 minutes long but I love it: I love the look of it, I love the twists in the plot, I love the way Veidt walks, I love the eerie underlying themes of control and insanity. It is, without doubt, a perfect film, and if you haven't seen it, well you're in luck dear reader. One of the lovely things about silent movies is they're almost all out of copyright and thus freely available online. Here's a version with rather melodramatic music dubbed in (remember that back in the day, films would be accompanied by live organ music)...




I'm sure you'll agree that even with the silly music, it's a thing of beauty. If not, get off my blog you fiend!

Anyway, it seems I'm not alone in my obsession. First, in 1962 Robert Bloch (best known for penning Psycho) created a film with a suspiciously similar title, but sadly it wasn't very good. Thankfully in 1979, Bauhaus (aka my favouritest band in the world) put some class back behind the title by using a still of the lovely Mr Veidt for their seminal single Bela Lugosi's Dead. But then a very odd (now cult) movie called Doctor Caligari in 1989 had a go at remaking/messing around with it too, resulting in a lot of weirdness and shoulder pads.

 

Then a Batman comic got in on the act









Then people started doing Caligari-esque music videos...


...like this 'un by that nice Mr Rob Zombie, the chap who makes gory horror movies and industrial-metal records, or this one...



...from the Queen of the Damned soundtrack, and whoever directed this one has obviously cottoned onto the fact that Cesare was one sexy somnabulist.

Now (well in 2005, but it's new to me) there's even a shiny new talkie remake:



And ooh look, it's Doug Jones (of Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth and that-episode-of-Buffy-with-the-voice-stealing-monsters fame) stepping into Conrad's leggings (not literally, mind you, I daresay the original tights would be a little on the threadbare side by now). Now, I was thinking that a talkie remake would be a bit redundant, but a talkie remake with Dougie Jones in? Count me in. (For the record, I like Doug Jones, not only because he's a fine actor,  but also because he has great taste in shirts, he's a contortionist, and he does really silly things on the red carpet,though to be fair I suppose he has to do the Silver Surfer pose or the Abe Sapien thing or the Pale Man hands-on-forehead thing else people won't know who he is. Either way, he's far too handsome and charming to spend quite that much time hidden under prosthetics.) Anyway seeing how tender, strange and downright fantastic he looks with the black under-eyeshadow on, I think Conrad would be deeply flattered. 

(This post is in no way a complete list of Caligari-related fun, just some of the stuff I could find to link to that's sort of official, and I do apologise if I linked to or used anything I shouldn't've. On the unofficial front, there's pretty art by Jade28 on deviantart and art by my true dear friend aliencatx also on deviantart.)

And now I'm off to find myself a copy of that talkie remake whilst wearing far too much makeup and carrying a very long knife and mouthing German to myself...