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Fritz Lang’s M is the greatest serial killer movie ever made. Of course, there have been dozens, even hundreds, of films on the subject with various innovations and evolutions along the way from the early days of cinema all the way to the most recent twists on the subgenre in MaXXXine and Longlegs. A few can be counted among the greatest films of all time regardless of genre, but all of them owe at least some measure of influence to M. Whether it is the best or not is a matter of opinion, but there is no real argument regarding its greatness. M is a true cinematic masterpiece, a touchstone of innovation in image, sound, performance, structure, editing, writing, and practically every other element of filmmaking. But as with most great films, audiences have been drawn to it again and again over the past ninety-plus years because of its...

Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster director Thomas Hamilton on his upcoming series Horror Icons on interviewing Roger Corman: “He not only worked with Vincent Price, he worked with Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney.” Photo: Thomas Hamilton

Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Conrad Veidt, Maria Ouspenskaya, George Zukor, Paul Wegener, Emil Jannings, Brigitte Helm, Gale Sondergaard, Gloria Holden, Claude Rains, Fay Wray, Duane Jones, Max Schreck, Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Lon Chaney Sr., Lon Chaney Jr, Fw Murnau’s Faust and Nosferatu, Arthur Lubin’s Phantom of the Opera, Rowland V. Lee’s Son of Frankenstein, George Waggner’s The Wolf Man, James Whale’s The Invisible Man, Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula’s Daughter, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen’s The Golem, Hanns Heinz Ewers and Stellan Rye’s The Student Of Prague, and George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead...

Germany has given the world some of its finest filmmakers, Lotte Reiniger, Ernst Lubitsch, Douglas Sirk, Wim Wenders, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, to name but a few, as well as groundbreaking movements like German Expressionism and New German Cinema. The country has also produced some of the best horror movies in history, from terrifying silent classics about the supernatural to gripping crime thrillers and nerve-shredding cyberpunk tales.

While it's impossible to cover the depth and breadth of German horror movies in a short list, we can touch on some of the greats. Listed below are the 12 best German horror movies. All of these films prove that horror has always been political, mining the fears and anxieties of the times in which they were created to make a point about the world around us and that the genre has always been — and always will be — a vital part of movie history.

The oldest movie with a 100 Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes is an under-seen silent horror film, which is still considered a classic in its genre. Achieving a 100 score on Rotten Tomatoes isn’t easy, but it doesn’t always indicate the true widespread popularity, critical acclaim, or recognition of a film. For example, Citizen Kane (1941), which has often been called the greatest film of all time, holds a 99 Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, whereas the emotional family-oriented Disney movie Old Yeller (1957) has a 100 score.

Nevertheless, it’s still a coveted achievement to reach 100 on Rotten Tomatoes, which very few films released before the 1950s have earned. Only 11 films from before the 1930s hold a Fresh 100 score from at least 20 critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Part of the reason why many older films aren’t included in the 100 club is that it’s more difficult to find them on streaming services or archives,...

Following the release of Frankenstein, Boris Karloff, at nearly 45 years of age and having spent twenty years as a professional actor, became an overnight sensation. As the film was still raking in its rewards, Universal signed him to a star contract and immediately began searching for a property for him. As it turned out it took nearly a year, between his outstanding commitments to other studios and Universal’s inability to find a suitable script, for Karloff to appear in his first starring role for the studio. The film was a decidedly different, but no less remarkable, from Frankenstein. Instead of being quickly paced and sensationalistic, The Mummy was deliberately plotted with a slowly unfolding story, but its restrained direction and masterful performances made it a unique entry in Universal’s growing library of horror cinema of the early 1930s.

Writer and journalist Nina Wilcox Putnam was tasked by Universal...

2021 poster for The Golem: How He Came into the World. Art by Johan Brosow.This gorgeous new poster for the 101 year old German expressionist silent film The Golem is the product of a lovely new endeavor by the Swedish distribution company NonStop Entertainment. In 2015 NonStop, perhaps the premier arthouse distributor in the Nordic region, launched a sister label, NonStop Timeless, to release their hundreds of repertory classics ranging from Dreyer to Lanthimos. Last year, in the early days of the pandemic, they decided to commission some of Sweden’s foremost artists, photographers, and designers to do their own take on a classic of their choice from the NonStop Timeless collection. The six artists selected chose seven films between them. The posters were printed in limited quantities on non-glossy paper in the Swedish cinema poster format of 70 x 100cm (very close to the US 27" x 40" standard) and were unveiled last week...

Co-Presented by Hong Kong Arts Centre and Goethe-Institut Hongkong

Machines Like Us: Desires and Technology in German Cinema

18 – 21/4/2021

Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre

Tickets are available at Hong Kong Movie now.

Co-Presented by Hong Kong Arts Centre and Goethe-Institut Hongkong, moving image programme Machines Like Us: Desires and Technology in German Cinema takes place at the Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre from 18 to 21 April 2021. Since the invention of the first stone tools nearly two million years ago up to the present digital era, technology has always been the means that humans use to fulfill desires, obtain resources, modify the world and explore possibilities. Film is also one of the means – by cinematically realising imaginations and establishing human connections.

Co-presented by Goethe-Institut Hongkong and the Hong Kong Arts Centre, this film showcase serves as an introduction to German science fiction films from the 1920s up till now,...

The 11th edition of Ukraine’s biggest film event will run from 25 September-3 October. The 11th edition of the Odesa International Film Festival (Oiff) is due to unspool its digital edition at a completely different time to its usual mid-July dates on the coast of the Black Sea, as this year it will run from 25 September-3 October. Despite the new format, Oiff will retain its traditional open-air performance, which will take place in its “physical” location at the Potemkin Stairs, where the silent horror film The Golem: How He Came into the World by Carl Boese and Paul Wegener will be screened, marking the 100th anniversary of the early German Expressionist oeuvre. The screening of the film on 2 October will be accompanied by a chamber orchestra, which will perform a soundtrack written by Israeli composer Betty Olivero. On the first day of the festival, the political comedy The...

"The Furniture" is our series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

by Daniel Walber

The story goes that Paul Wegener first heard of the Golem while shooting The Student of Prague (1913). Though he was clearly caught by the story, Wegener may also have been entranced by a glimpse of the old Josefov, Prague’s Jewish ghetto. Dating back to the Middle Ages, the neighborhood was almost entirely demolished between 1893 and 1913 to make room for Paris-style boulevards. Inspired, Wegener made two (now-lost) Golem movies during World War One - though not in Prague.

By the time he started on The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), the world had changed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was gone. Prague was the capital of brand-new Czechoslovakia, a Czechoslovak-speaking nation - which would be complicated for its mostly German-speaking Jews. Frankly, Wegener could have set his Golem movie in 1920 if he wanted.

A top movie monster is back from filmic perdition, restored to his full might and power. Rabbi Lowe’s answer to the persecution of the ghetto is a mysterious unthinking automaton capable of terrible destruction. Paul Wegener’s indelible clay statue stands as a core myth in Jewish lore. But he’s still here, usually in allegories about mankind losing control of its own creations. With its imposing architecture and impressive special effects, this early expressionist masterpiece is one of the design highlights of silent cinema.

The Golem

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1920 / B&w with tints / 1:33 silent ap. / 76 min. / Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam / Street Date April 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Lyda Salmonova, Ernst Deutsch, Lothar Müthel, Fritz Feld.

Cinematography: Karl Freund, Guido Seeber

Art Direction and design: Hans Poelzig, Kurt Richter, Edgar G. Ulmer

New Music scores: Stephen Horne, Admir Shkurtai,...

With the arrival of a new week comes a new batch of Blu-ray & DVD releases to keep you busy as you continue to hunker down at home. If you missed out on seeing it on the big screen earlier this year, now is your chance to finally catch up on William Eubank's Underwater, which is one of the best aquatic horror films to come out over the last few years. Scream Factory is showing some love to Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter on Tuesday with a brand new HD release of this cult classic from Hammer Films. Kino is resurrecting The Golem on Blu, and if you’re a big Sarah Michelle Gellar fan, her mind-bending 2008 thriller Possession is getting the HD treatment as well.

Other releases for April 14th include Hanukkah, Abominable, V: The Final Battle, Lycanimator, Getaway, and Ouijageist.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

In a small village in the remote English countryside,...

Jean Kerchbron is certainly a subject for further study, or would be if his available oeuvre occupied enough space to fill out a microscope slide. He worked mainly in French television and not much of that stuff has filtered out in a way we can watch. Intriguing works include President Faust (1974), clearly a film for our times, and yet another version of Saharan exotica L'atlantide (1972), both of which seem to show the same pop-art, surrealist, expressionist design ethic as his most famous work.Le golem ignores Paul Wegener's German epic and goes straight to Gustav Meyrink's amazing Czech novel, which uses the figure of the clay man more metaphorically than literally: but if you're looking for mysticism, mystery and magic, neither book nor film will disappoint.The novel behaves with Lynchian dream logic, tying its splaying narrative threads together with weird recurring images and phrases rather than rational cause-and-effect,...

We open today's roundup with reports on current projects by directors who've taken opposite approaches, Steven Soderbergh and Ilya Khrzhanovsky. Plus Hou Hsiao-hsien on The Assassin, Jennifer Lawrence on fairness, a new book on Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, another on Paul Wegener, reviews of Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running, David Cronenberg's The Brood, Mario Bava's Black Sabbath and Bay of Blood, Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Karina Longworth on William Haines, further thoughts on the late Chantal Akerman—and more. » - David Hudson...

We open today's roundup with reports on current projects by directors who've taken opposite approaches, Steven Soderbergh and Ilya Khrzhanovsky. Plus Hou Hsiao-hsien on The Assassin, Jennifer Lawrence on fairness, a new book on Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, another on Paul Wegener, reviews of Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running, David Cronenberg's The Brood, Mario Bava's Black Sabbath and Bay of Blood, Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Karina Longworth on William Haines, further thoughts on the late Chantal Akerman—and more. » - David Hudson...

Rex Ingram in 'The Thief of Bagdad' 1940 with tiny Sabu. Actor Rex Ingram movies on TCM: Early black film performer in 'Cabin in the Sky,' 'Anna Lucasta' It's somewhat unusual for two well-known film celebrities, whether past or present, to share the same name.* One such rarity is – or rather, are – the two movie people known as Rex Ingram;† one an Irish-born white director, the other an Illinois-born black actor. Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” continues today, Aug. 11, '15, with a day dedicated to the latter. Right now, TCM is showing Cabin in the Sky (1943), an all-black musical adaptation of the Faust tale that is notable as the first full-fledged feature film directed by another Illinois-born movie person, Vincente Minnelli. Also worth mentioning, the movie marked Lena Horne's first important appearance in a mainstream motion picture.§ A financial disappointment on the...

No, German Angst is not a Uwe Boll biopic, although that would seem pretty damned appropriate. What we have here, kids, is a new anthology film featuring the works of Jorg Buttgereit (Nekromantik, Der Todesking), Andreas Marchall (Tears of Kali, Masks), and Michael Kosakowoski (Zero Killed).

In 1920 Germany became the most influential production location for fantastic films. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Hands of Orlac, Paul Wegener’s The Golem earned the German cinema the label The Demonic Screen (Lotte H. Eisner). German filmmakers told stories of the underworld beneath urban life, about the invasion of the subconscious. The frontiers between reality and dreams blurred and the fear of dark eros emerged. These masterpieces of German Expressionist cinema are the ancestors of the contemporary fantastic genre. Their influence is still felt in almost every modern film. With the Nazi dictatorship...

From Nosferatu to Twilight, gothic films have explored what frightens us – and why we are willing victims of our fear. A few days before Halloween, and as the BFI begins a nationwide season, Michael Newton is seduced by horror, sex and satanism

Beyond high castle walls, the wolves howl. The Count intones: "Listen to them! The children of the night! What music they make!" And those words usher you into a faintly ludicrous cosiness, the comfortable darkness of gothic. For gothic properties are altogether snug, as familiar as Halloween costumes – a Boris Karloff mask, the Bela Lugosi cape, an Elsa Lanchester wig. So it is that many of us first come to the form through its parodies; I knew Carry On Screaming! by heart before I saw my first Hammer film. And yet, within the homely restfulness, something genuinely disturbing lurks; an authentic dread. And watching these films again, we...

The hit sound film The Jazz Singer (1927), starring Al Jolson and directed by Alan Crosland, fueled the mainstream appetite for newfangled "talkies"... and brought on the death throes of the ol' fashioned silent film. Over the next few years, silent motion picture production around the world slowed, withered, and died. Before this era came to a close, however, the horror genre took root, clawed its way into mainstream popularity, and spawned a wealth of atmospheric and unsettling thrillers. These films built the foundation upon which a century of horror movies would be constructed. The art of film was still in its infancy, and this silent era of experimentation gave rise to some of the most striking and fascinating horror movies ever made. While Germany would soon rise to dominate horror of the silent era, Italy helped get the ball rolling with their first feature length film, Dante's Inferno (1911), directed by Giuseppe de Liguoro.

The Loves of Pharaoh: Ernst Lubitsch early historical epic (photo: Emil Jannings [center] in The Loves of Pharaoh) Ernst Lubitsch’s The Loves of Pharaoh (1922) exists only in a truncated version, with some stills and title cards inserted into the lost footage. Lubitsch’s early epic was screened at the 2012 San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The film tells the familiar story of the lustful, evil King Amenes (Emil Jannings), Pharaoh of Egypt, and his unrequited love for the Greek slave girl Theonis (Dagny Servaes), who loves the gallant Ramphis (Harry Liedtke), who, for his part, is being kept prisoner in a rock quarry. Pharaoh Amenes makes Theonis his Queen, but she manages to avoid getting in bed with him. Then those pesky Ethiopians want their Queen / Slave for their own and invade Egypt. Needless to say, Ramphis escapes to claim Theonis. The Loves of Pharaoh‘s tale of treachery and...

From the narrow streets of medieval Prague to the rubbish dumps of Rio De Janeiro, here are five of the best ghettos featured in films

This week's clip joint is from Claire Adas - check out more of her writing on her blog here. If you have an idea for a future clip joint, email adam.boult@guardian.co.uk

Every city has its shantytowns, tenements, projects and favelas; ghettoes in which people are thrown together, joined by race, religion or, most frequently, poverty. Theses spaces form a teeming world of their own within the larger macrocosm of the city, connected but self-contained. Life is stacked upon life in a confined area, making the situation rife for story telling; a perfect stage setting of tension and drama.

The term "ghetto" has expanded somewhat from its original use in the 11th century, when it specifically described the part of a city where Jews could live.

The authors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the venues in which some version of this article previously appeared: Cinema Scope 24 (Fall, 2005), Trafic 62 (Summer, 2006), and the late and twice-lamented The New-York Ghost (Dec. 26, 2006).

In the Place of No Place

Every movie contains its alternates, phantom films conjured variously by excess or dearth: textures and movements that carry on their own play apart from the main line of the narrative, an obtruding performance or scene, an unexplained ellipsis or sudden character reversal, the chunk life of an object seizing the frame in an insert whose plastic beauty transcends its context.

Though the extremes of pure narrative economy (in which each detail exists purely for transmission of plot) or utter dispersal (in which no piece connects to any other) can never exist, we can tentatively use the concepts as limit-cases to differentiate films which make room for their phantoms (or, in the worst case,...

Unheimliche Geschichten (Uncanny Tales) is a remake... except it isn't. And it's an anthology film... except it isn't. Richard Oswald, Austrian movie master, made a film of that title in 1919, a horror film which blended stories by Poe, Stevenson and others into a single overarching narrative with Conrad Veidt as central character.

In 1932, four years before the Jewish Oswald was forced to flee the country, he made another Unheimliche Geschichten, a comic compendium that used some of the same source stories, including Poe's The Black Cat and Stevenson's The Suicide Club, but added a new one and used a different overall story to tie it all together. The film was intended as a parody of the whole German expressionist horror school, and if it lacks somewhat in the laughter department, it is nonetheless a fascinating summation of German silent cinema in the early sound era.

Oswald alternated between comedy and sometimes horror-tinged melodrama,...

Horror has had a rough year in 2011, both in cinemas and on our DVD shelves. As late into the year as October (the month in which horror is god) the only effective genre films have been those that merged together horror with comedy (Attack the Block and Tucker & Dale versus Evil for instance). Everything else has been shown on the festival circuit, which means they won’t see the light of public consumption until 2012. Failing that the peak of horror has potentially been saved for the final months of the year. Now instead of picking fault with the poor films that have been released thus far this year, let us travel back to the origins of the genre and to Germany where three select films were made that proved to be intrinsic in the development of the genre. Those three films are Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,...

They’re sometimes furry, sometimes scary, and always angry. Here’s our list of cinema’s 10 most underrated monsters…

King Kong. Godzilla. The terrifying creature out of Alien. They’re all household names. They’re the superstars of the monster world, hogging the limelight while their less charismatic brethren languish in obscurity.

To redress the balance a little, we’ve compiled a list of a few cinematic monsters that deserve more attention. And given that movie monsters are always being shot, stabbed and set on fire by square jawed heroes, it’s fair to say that even the rubberiest, most shambling ones deserve a little bit of love, so if there are any you think we’ve forgotten, feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Q: The Winged Serpent

Larry Cohen’s largely forgotten 1982 creature feature is a genuine trash classic, with some great stop-motion effects and memorable performances from Michael Moriarty,...

We delve deep into the mists of time to discover the origins of the sequel, and come up with an unusual prime suspect…

If you want to blame somebody in particular for the rise and lingering popularity of movie sequels, you may want to point an accusatory finger at Johannes Gutenberg. Several hundred years before the first moving image was projected onto a wall somewhere in the late Victorian era, it was with the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg and his contemporaries that the concept of the sequel almost certainly began.

The first book to go into mass publication was the Bible, which was hardly the kind of book you'd dare to attempt to follow up with a sequel (though Jerry Bruckheimer may have tried, had he been a 15th century publisher). It was the modern novel, an invention that properly came into being in the 1700s, that...

Netflix has revolutionized the home movie experience for fans of film with its instant streaming technology. Netflix Nuggets is my way of spreading the word about independent, classic and foreign films made available by Netflix for instant streaming.

This Week’s New Instant Releases…

Promised Lands (1974)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Documentary

Director: Susan Sontag

Synopsis: Set in Israel during the final days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this powerful documentary — initially barred by Israel authorities — from writer-director Susan Sontag examines divergent perceptions of the enduring Arab-Israeli clash. Weighing in on matters related to socialism, anti-Semitism, nation sovereignty and American materialism are The Last Jew writer Yoram Kaniuk and military physicist Yuval Ne’eman.

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2009)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Heino Ferch, Hannah Herzsprung, Gerald Alexander Held, Lena Stolze, Sunnyi Melles

Synopsis: Directed by longtime star of independent German cinema Margarethe von Trotta, this reverent...

Fellow monster fans, there’s a disturbing fact we must face around the same time each year: Few gift buyers immediately associate the post-Halloween holidays with horror movies! The everyday shopper can therefore be forgiven for not realizing that you’d be especially thrilled to receive one of your favorite chiller classics (past or present) in your stocking, or that mega-size gift set under the tree.

So, in the spirit of the holidays, I’m here to help you out and provide a service to relatives, longtime companions, and any other colleagues, best pals, or associates eager to please their beast fiends. If you don’t already own at least one of the following 10 fright-acular films, you may feel free to forward this post to all those concerned.

I’m going to endeavor to avoid some of most obvious of gift items. We all know that the Alien Quadrilogy has...

Francis Ford Coppola wasn’t around to give writer W. Somerset Maugham his father’s famous advice about “stealing” from the best to create your own art, but mystic Aleister Crowley accused the British author of doing just that after he read Maugham’s 1908 novel, The Magician. Maybe it was just sour grapes—seeing as how Maugham’s fantasy-terror tale was said to be inspired in part by Crowley’s life—but in Maugham’s story of a mad medical student who dabbles in the occult secrets of creating life (not to mention unnecessary surgery), Crowley saw elements he felt were directly lifted variously from Rosenroth’s Kabbalah Unveiled, as well as a book about 16th-century physician/alchemist Paracelsus and H.G. Wells’ man-beast classic The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Sounds like that could be a great movie? Not only has the obscure 1926 silent thriller made from Maugham’s book, produced and directed by Rex Ingram,...

That Pixies front man Black Francis is a savvy film fan is not exactly news. Film references have popped up in his lyrics for years, most notably nods to Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou making up the spine of Debaser. But Francis is taking his appreciation for film to a whole new level.

The 2008 edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival commissioned Francis to create and perform a live score to Paul Wegener's 1920 silent film The Golem, which he did, though chances to see the film with the Francis score have been scarce since.

Not any more.

Earlier this year Francis released an ultra-limited edition (only 500 copies) version of the score which he has since edited down to a single disc version which will be available on his web store November 16th. Better yet, he's also releasing a version of the film on DVD including his complete score.

“Black Francis’s Golem” a Starving Art world premiere art and film event in collaboration with Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow.

Black Francis, the musical-genius frontman of highly influential alt-rock band The Pixies, has created a new score for the German Expressionist silent masterpiece Der Golem. A recording of this new film score will be spun along with the movie at the Starving Art Drive-in. Accompanying the music/film presentation, Francis’s related art work will be on display at the Starving Art Gallery.

“A silent classic and an exemplary specimen of German expressionist cinema, Der Golem is set in 16th century Prague. A rabbi fashions a proto–Frankenstein’s monster, sculpted from rough clay and brought to life through sorcery, to protect the Jewish ghetto from a Christian emperor’s decree that it be dissolved. Through means both surprising and charming, the creature manages to stave off the wrath of the emperor and his court.

Topol, 74, a Best Actor nominee for Norman Jewison’s 1971 blockbuster Fiddler on the Roof (above), is attached to star in a Yiddish-language version of The Golem, Screen Daily reports. The $5 million British/Czech/German co-production will be produced by Stuart Urban, who also penned the screenplay. Filming is scheduled to take place in Prague next year. In The Golem, Topol (born in Tel Aviv in 1935) will play a 16th-century Prague rabbi named Maharal, who brings to life a clay statue to protect the local ghetto from anti-semitic pogroms. Paul Wegener co-directed (with Carl Boese), co-wrote (with Henrik Galeen), and starred as the giant, Frankenstein-like Golem in a 1920 German version. Albert Steinrück played the rabbi in that film. Photo: United [...]...

By Scott Essman

In the history of the modern American cinema, there are but few legacies of makeup artists. While the legendary Burman and Dawn names each include three generations of makeup artists, there is but one lasting family that features four working generations: the Westmores of Hollywood. With ties to virtually every studio in the annals cinema, the Westmores have created classic makeups in top contemporary film and TV shows back to the earliest years of silent film.

George Westmore, the patriarch of the Westmore clan at the turn of the century, worked as a wigmaker in his native England — where he was born in 1879 — and gave birth to sons Mont (born in 1902), twins Perc and Ern (born in 1904), Wally (born in 1906), and a daughter, Dorothy (born in 1907). The young family traveled to the U.S. to seek better opportunities and maintained a wig-making and beauty salon business which floated amongst various cities,...