Alraune

This film is a quiet, Gothic kind of psychological film, and is interesting and well enough made so as to be watchable in a poorly dubbed US version. I found the actress in the title role to be strangely compelling, and convincingly portrayed sexual attraction with slightly disturbing aspects.

Eric Von Stroheim plays a perverted scientist, which is interesting because Von Stroheim is said to have induced an actual orgy among actors in order to film an orgy scene in one of the silent movies he directed. Stroheim, in his famous roles in Grand Illusion and Sunset Boulevard, was adept at playing formerly great and tragically flawed characters: this role is an interesting variation on this theme.

This film was made in 1952, in Germany, and is concerned with scientist who collects semen from an executed criminal and uses it to impregnate a prostitute; the offspring of this union is the title character. This movie would have had a strong resonance upon its original audience, just 7 years after the end of the Nazi period.

The Nazis, besides having many kinky sexual fetishes, instigated some strange 'breeding' programs designed to induce blonde-haired and blue-eyed people to reproduce. There were hostels, where these blonde and blue-eyed women could stay during their pregnancy, and where they and their offspring could live afterwords, free of charge and enjoying a comfortable lifestyle.

Alraune is the German word for the mandrake root. In folk legend, the mandrake grew beneath the hanged man, and it was the legendary discharge of semen from a hanged man which supposedly caused this plant to grow. In addition, there was another legend in which the mandrake, applied to a woman's nether regions, could instigate a pregnancy, with or without sexual contact from a living man.

This is a slow moving but strangely compelling film, and owes a lot to the beautiful actress in the title role. The subtext is also fascinating.

The title refers to the German word for Mandrake root. A disturbing and noir-like horror movie that viewers will either love or hate, it has a queasy quality with elements of camp that will either annoy or delight.

Charismatic actor and director Erich von Stroheim, who held his own in Sunset Boulevard, doesn't disappoint here.

Karl Boehm, the wide-eyed, eerily handsome actor who rose to stardom in the British cult horror classic Peeping Tom, is also very watchable.

Context is everything. This is an intriguing horror film that will reward a second viewing.

Brooding scientist Professor ten Brinken (a stern Erich von Stroheim), thrown out of Uni for his blasphemous beliefs, creates a "daughter" (Hildegarde Knef) from the sperm of a double murderer and the egg of a prostitute in his castle laboratory and raises her under the gallows, where the mandrake root grows. It's an experiment in genetic theory but true to the plant's legend, Alraune will bring good fortune just before death and destruction as the movie opens with the girl escaping from a convent and making her father rich when she divines a mineral spring on land he bought. Falling for her cousin (Karlheinz "Peeping Tom" Boehm), Alraune feels something for the first time but luck won't last long and although her "evil" isn't premeditated (much), she's responsible for an attempted suicide, a framing for theft, a fatal accident, a duel, death from exposure, bankruptcy, and public disgrace. The story ends with the inevitable: Alraune, crying tears she never could before, gives up the man she loves lest he be cursed, too, and her "father", who gave her life, takes it away and goes to the gallows in a fitting twist of fate. The film equates artificial insemination with the crimes of Viktor Frankenstein but blames the creator since love is what gives us our souls and Alraune had become human.

The German production's a handsomely mounted, atmospheric period piece with an Expressionism the original 1928 silent lacked, especially in the gloomy castle, and some thunder, wind, and rain are there to underscore a point or two. Obviously THE BAD SEED, a hit Broadway play and Hollywod movie about hereditary evil that came out a few years later, wasn't exactly innovative. The dubbed U.S. version, UNNATURAL: THE FRUIT OF EVIL, is missing ten minutes and eliminates any reference to artificial insemination.

I had watched the best-regarded (if still rare) 1928 Silent version of this much-filmed German melodrama with Sci-Fi undertones during a previous Halloween challenge; while I recall precious little of that one at this juncture, having re-read my review of it, I know the remake features a different conclusion – as well as a different method of creation for the titular figure (the more realistic one of artificial insemination here instead of her emanating from the mandrake root, though the plant remains much in evidence throughout even now). Still, offhand, I would say that both films are equally effective – with the lead roles being especially well-filled: Erich von Stroheim and Hildegarde Knef (at her loveliest) in this adaptation replacing Paul Wegener and Brigitte Helm respectively in the earlier movie; leading the supporting cast, however, is Karl Boehm (who would excel in his later genre role in the British-made PEEPING TOM [1959]). As I said, events are not exactly fantastic – indeed, leaning more towards romance in the vein of two other much-filmed and horror-tinged classics, namely "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" and "Trilby" (often filmed as SVENGALI and whose 1954 British version, incidentally, also had Knef as its leading lady!) – but, then, Stroheim does keep a caged ape (which comes to no use other than as an added bizarre touch!) in his laboratory and, in any case, the result is no less stylish for that; all in all, this is ample proof that the Germans did not lose their touch for the Expressionistic with the advent of WWII! The premise, too, of a femme fatale turning the heads of several men, all of whom know one another and naturally fall out over her, is interesting for its distinct film noir trappings – in this case, extending to the rethought doom-laden climax that includes a murder and subsequent execution steeped in irony.

Unnatural: Fruit of Evil/Alraune/Mandragore - I have not seen 1918, nor the 1928 or the 1930 versions of this film, so I have nothing to compare this 1952 with.

A scientist has taken the 'seed' of murderer and impregnated a prostitute by artificial insemination. The scientist thought the results would make for a more interesting study from bad people, because good people are so boring - as he explains.

It seems that artificial insemination sparked fears and ideas in people of the early 1900s... but a fairly interesting film came from it. There are better sci-fi horror films of the 1950s but this one is still worth a one time watch.

6.5/10