(1920)
Dir - Robert Weine
Overall: MEH
Made and released the same year as his own seminal The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Weine's Genuine boasts a slew of noticeably similarities. Fitting entirely into the German Expressionism movement, the set design is superb and along with the twisted, abstract, and artificial scenery, even many of the characters seem like distortions with ludicrous facial hair and costumes. This story is also presented as a dream, though it is either preposterous or weakly conveyed as far as coherence goes. Two versions of the film exist; a brisk, forty-five minute restoration that was put out in 2014 and the original, one-hundred and twenty-eight minute one which is of poorer quality but at least complete. Whichever one you view, it is a strange, crudely simple story that has not aged all too well, becoming thoroughly underwhelming. More future horror elements are introduced such as the angry mob and the bewitching heroine, though the movie's alternate title of Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire is completely inappropriate and misleading as there is not a single blood-sucking undead element present.
(1924)
Dir - Paul Leni/Leo Birinsky
Overall: MEH
Though it is visually rather commendable, Paul Leni's Waxworks is too poorly structured and paced to really stand as a classic of its era. Assisted by Leo Birinski who handled the direction of all of the actors, the German Expresionistic look of the film was left to Leni who would go on to make The Cat and the Canary in the U.S. as his follow-up to this one. The sets are right out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; largely exaggerated and fantastical, appearing as if they are children's drawings come to life. Set up as an anthology film with only the most minute traces of anything horror-related in it, Waxworks lingers too long on its first two segments, each of which are over thirty-minutes longer than its last which seems randomly tagged on at the very end. On paper, the premise surrounding a poet who is brought in to write backstories to lifelike wax figures seems like it would wield some possible sinister results, but the tales just kind of present themselves straightly before the author just falls asleep for a few minutes at the end. The story revolving around Ivan the Terrible, (Conrad Veidt), is the strongest comparatively, but it is still lacking in any real real suspense and seems both sluggish and rushed all at the same time, as does the bulk of the film.
(1928)
Dir - Jean Epstein
Overall: GOOD
French surrealist Jean Epstein, (in collaboration with none other than Luis Buñuel who co-wrote the script), made a full-length adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher the same year that James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber made a short version on the other side of the Atlantic. Emerging near the tale-end of the silent film era, Usher in several ways represents a peak of the medium before sound would forever change it. With no shortage of near innovative techniques at its disposal such as slow motion, mobile camera movement, and double exposure, these techniques as well as filming them in elaborate, Expresionism like sets gives Poe's Gothic, gloom laden story as ideal a presentation as possible. The beginning appears to have directly influenced Universal's Dracula too, with its superstitious villagers refusing to transport an unsuspecting foreigner to its local, cursed abode. What actually happens in Usher is hardly as important as how immersed the viewer becomes in all of the dreadful mood that the stylistic elements convey, just as they are meant to. Sans Roger Corman and Vincent Price's adaptation just over three decades later, there arguably is not a finer version overall than this.
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