Dr. Caligari

I first saw this movie when I was about 14. I didn't really get it. It was definitely...different. Anyway, years later I had help from Mr.Leary's friend and finally figured out what it was about. It's about screwing with your head and making you enjoy it. Great impressionist sets and lighting. Truly bizarre acting and dialogue. Sometimes someone will just pop out of the bottom of the frame, say something and then drop back out of frame. The days of enhancing my viewing experiences are over, but I carry many fond memories of this film with me. Good luck finding a copy...a used one is your best bet.

This is unquestionably a WTF film. One of those strange films that seem made precisely to test the viewer's resistance to absurdity.

Loosely inspired by Robert Wiene's 1920 classic, takes from it, in addition to the name, a vague inspiration in the expressionist sets of the time and the surrealist theme.

With bright, plasticized colors, and an eroticism worthy of a Rocky Horror Picture Show, it misses, however, the music, the main attraction of the cult gay musical from the seventies. Here, we have some very eighties electronic sounds, which do nothing to help a weak and totally absurd script.

However, there remains a visual richness, in the sets, in the wardrobe, even in the surreal exaggeration with which some characters are embodied.

For some it will be enough to make a cult film. For me, however, it is complete nonsense and a waste of time.

It's better to see Rocky Horror Picture Show again, it's much more fun and above all, it has a memorable soundtrack and characters.

With all of the insane and colorful zest of a Douglas Sirk melodrama, the similarly unnatural bodily horror dysplazia of VIDEODROME, some incredibly witty, well written and razor-sharp dialogue to rival the likes of FASTER, PUSSYCAT KILL! KILL!! And even HEATHERS, finished off with equal parts ERASERHEAD. FORBIDDEN ZONE and THE CORPSE GRINDERS, the resulting abortion emerges as director Stephen Sayadian's brilliant, long overdue sequel (of sorts... not really, though!) to the 1919 classic German expressionist CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, this more recent incarnation, also titled DR. CALIGARI, reaches such insanely overblown, expressionistic and unlikely comedic heighths, that it is an immensely bizarre and enjoyably welcome, diverting hoot of a bad acid trip that consistently veers off in the opposite direction from the atypical genre fare one might easily anticipate from such efforts, that it really does emerge as a wholly original and consistently first rate breath of fresh abstraction, quite apart, above and far beyond anything one might wish to compare it to... the mere fact that DR. CALIGARI was produced, released and exists at all justifies it as achieving meritorious mention as the unheralded and unsung art/sex/grindhouse classic that it truly is, rightly belonging alongside all those other, better known underground cult classics of the last fifty years, and, to my reasonably well-educated, informed cinematic estimation, is nothing short of a minor masterpiece and truly one of the very finest horror comedies in all of film history.... That being so firmly stated : UNLESS sustained representations of abnormal psychology and psychotic situations, every kind of aberrant sexuality, highly stylized instances of day-glo color schemes, synchronized avant-garde staging beyond any rational, functional or logical reasoning and some of the funniest, most ridiculously realized puns & double entendres ever to appear so intentionally, consistently rhythmic and delivered with such hyper-realized absurdist aplomb as you're ever likely to experience from any other title in the library of contemporary adult genre films... If any of that doesn't exactly sound like your particular cup of angel dust, then I would earnestly suggest that you definitely steer clear of this queer grand guignol melting pot of ideas, genres and psyches! Sure, the film is far from perfect, but hell, even SUNSET BOULEVARD had it's fair share of mis-steps!

Stephen Sayadian's "Dr. Caligari" (1989) is a phantasmagorical fever dream that plunges viewers into a world more disconcerting and distorted than the distorted sets of its silent film inspiration, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". This film is a testament to the enduring power of German Expressionism, a perverse pastiche of its visual and psychological hallmarks warped through a lens of '80s cult cinema sensibilities.

At the heart of this bizarre spectacle is the asylum of Dr. Caligari's granddaughter, a cold and clinical space saturated with lurid neon colors reminiscent of a warped Dick Tracy comic panel. Here, sexual deviance is not merely a pathology but the very subject of experimentation. The film's psychosexual explorations are brazen and exploitative, channeling a dark, camp energy that borders on the parodic.

Sayadian uses dialogue as a weapon of disorientation. Characters deliver absurdist, stilted lines with unnerving artificiality, their words less meaningful utterances than sonic textures adding to the film's unsettling atmosphere. This mockery of 'arty' pretension contributes to the film's blackly comedic tone, as does the gleeful revelry in its own exploitation.

While some might admire its visual boldness and thematic provocations, "Dr. Caligari" is undeniably a film of extremes. Its blend of jarring style, sexual explicitness, and absurdist humor isn't crafted for a broad audience. Those with stomachs for the bizarre, a taste for the transgressive, and a fondness for the stylistic legacy of German Expressionism will find this film an intoxicating, if deeply flawed, curiosity. It's a warped mirror reflecting both the anxieties and guilty pleasures of its era, a fever dream of psychosexual perversion that remains both repellent and oddly compelling.

I absolutely love this movie. It has so many different levels to appreciate. Besides the main twisted storyline that should make any cult movie lover wriggle, there is an interesting use of colors in the film (bright pinks, neon yellows, etc) that reminds me of the Dick Tracy movie. It is also just full of catty one-liners that my friends and I use all the time (i.e., "I know what it's like when a girl needs her prescription filled." and "Ms. Koombs is less aware than the chair that you're squirming in now."). With the strong sexual themes and partial female nudity, I often refer to it as an "art film". I have watched this movie over thirty times, and I still find new symbolism and hidden meanings when I view it each time.

I feel that this movie would especially appeal to fans of the John Waters films (Pink Flamingos, Female Troubles, Desperate Living, etc), but if you're offended by sexual discussions involving drag queens and lesbians, this is NOT the movie for you.