Unheimliche Geschichten

Richard Oswald uses Harald Paulsen as a reporter in pursuit of German horror star Paul Wegener to stitch together three stories. They are Poe's "The Black Cat", his "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" (as close as Poe came to a comedy) and Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Suicide Club".

Horror was coming into prominence as a movie genre in the early 1930s. Universal Pictures would begin with its production of FRANKENSTEIN. Wegener who had been appearing in this sort of role since the Teens, was a natural, and the similarities of some of the trial sequence here to that of Lang's M, is worth noting. Oswald, like Lang, had to leave the country eventually, but this doesn't have any political content so far as I can see. I know that standard film history would have it that every German movie from about 1924 on is supposed to be a commentary on fascism, but I don't see it.

Unfortunately, while the techniques of movie-making and the performances are fine, the movie is padded. Everyone moves slowly in this movie, and the insane move even slower. The sloth may have been intended to allow the audience the terror of anticipation. Unfortunately, it only rouses a sense of impatience. Twenty minutes could have been cut from this movie by movement and some judicious editing.

This is a movie that I found thanks to Letterboxd when looking for horror from 1932. I didn't know much about this aside from the title and that it was on YouTube. It wasn't until settling in to make sure I had the right movie that I saw it was from Germany and starred Paul Wegener. I recognized him as the director and star from 1920's The Golem. That was about the extent of what I knew.

Synopsis: a crazed scientist murders his wife, walls her up and then flees. A reporter sets out to track him down.

This movie starts with a couple in a car. The man driving is Frank Briggs (Harald Paulsen). He is a journalist. With him is his fiancée, played by Mary Parker. I believe she is a dancer or something along these lines and they're on the way to her performance. As they're going, Frank hears a scream and he wants to investigate. There is only one house in the area and it belongs to Wegener. He lives there with his wife. While working in his laboratory, she comes in with her cat. An accident happens, destroying what he's working on. He kills her in his anger.

Frank shows up and Wegener sends him away. He gets the police involved when he learns Wegener's wife is missing. Wegener is brash and annoyed with the cops being there. They make a grisly discovery that causes him to go on the run. Frank is hot on his trail. It leads him to a mental hospital with a dark truth and to a secret society where its members want to commit suicide.

That is where I'm going to leave my recap for this movie as I don't want to spoil things. This one is also difficult due to a lack of character names for people and they are also in German. Regardless, I enjoyed this movie. In the opening credits I saw that this was based off a couple Edgar Allan Poe's short stories as well as combining elements from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club. I never heard of this last one, but I'm now intrigued. We are also getting The Black Cat from Poe as well. The other story from him is one that I'm not familiar with and doesn't seem to be adapted much. It is interesting is that we would see Roger Corman do this with Poe stories, or just slapping the names of them on his movies, but this is what Brian De Palma would do with like Body Double or Phantom of the Paradise. What I mean here is taking elements and combining them together. It makes sense when dealing with short stories since they would need to be lengthened to make a feature.

To delve a bit deeper into this, I was explore the character of Wegener. He is credited as Mörder which I'm guessing is murderer. This character is diabolic. He is a mad scientist for one. I'm not sure what experiment he is working on when he gets mad at his wife, but he snaps. What I also like about him is that he's arrogant, which we see with the police when he comes to Wegener's house. There is also this odd sequence at the mental hospital which was quite creepy. I'll come back to that shortly. It shouldn't come as a shock, but Wegener's character also runs this secret society. This is where he becomes a Bond villain. I know that Fu Manchu serials and movies were out, so I'm wondering if that influenced here. Wegener's look and intensity he brings to the role is spot on for me. I wanted to make sure that was known.

Now there's not a lot to the story, but I did want to go over to the more important set pieces. The first is the mental hospital. Wegener goes in and hides when he flees from the police. Frank goes in as well. When he goes upstairs, we see people begging to be let out. The 'doctors' claim that they're all mad. What is terrifying here though, the people in the rooms might be the doctors and nurses. There is a dinner scene that pulled my attention. It is tense. The other one would be the suicide club. I think from this point, the movie is conveying an anti-suicide message from how things play out. This is a dark subject to deal with where all these characters who are members are waiting to see if they draw the ace of spades and for their time. We see that some want it to come up, while others not so much. This makes me want to see what elements were taken from the Stevenson story.

Next, I will take this over to the acting. I've already said my piece on Wegener. I thought that Paulsen was solid as the counterpart to him and our hero. He goes through a lot for this story, I will say that. While looking at the cast list, I saw Eugen Klöpfer as Chefarzt. I took German as my foreign language in college and I remember that arzt is doctor, making him the chief. He is creepier with how things play out. I would say that the acting across the board is good, especially for those in the hospital and the club we go to later.

The last things then would be with the filmmaking. I'd say that the cinematography is fine. It is early in cinema do they don't do a lot that stood out. I did like the sets from Wegener's house to the mental hospital and then to the secret club later. They were all good. The latter has an interesting set up when it shows how those that draw this card are killed. It is a bit out there, but I commend the movie for trying what it did. It is a bit futuristic, which I can always appreciate. Other than that, the soundtrack was fine for what was needed.

In conclusion, this is a movie I had never heard of and I thought that it was an interesting watch. I like that the movie is combing a couple Poe stories with a Stevenson one. It makes for some intriguing set pieces. There is dark subject matter that gets explored, something I wouldn't necessarily expect for the era. I thought that Wegener is solid as our lead, Paulsen is good as his counterpart and the rest of the cast was solid for what was needed. The filmmaking was fine as well. If I did have an issue, it ran too long and I lost interest for a stretch. Regardless, I found this to be an above average movie. I would revisit this to see what I might have missed now that I've seen it as well.

My Rating: 7 out of 10.

The format for Tales of the Uncanny (AKA The Living Dead) is an unusual one: it's based on several tales by Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson (with a bit of 1924 silent film Waxworks thrown in for good measure), but rather than take a traditional anthology route, the result is an amalgamation of the stories, each segueing into the next, with the antagonist and protagonist the common thread running through the whole thing.

The film opens with a version of the oft-told Poe story The Black Cat: journalist Frank Briggs (Harald Paulsen) investigates the case of a missing woman after hearing a scream one night while driving with his fiancée. Leading the police to the house where he heard the scream, he discovers that the occupant, Mörder (Paul Wegener), has killed his wife and walled her up in the basement. Mörder escapes and hides out in a wax museum, with Briggs hot on his tail; the pair have a fight in the museum, but Mörder manages to get away once again, this time seeking refuge in an asylum.

The next part of the film is based on Poe's The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (see also Juan López Moctezuma's House of Madness), for when Frank arrives at the asylum, he discovers that the lunatics have escaped, locked up the staff, and are now in charge of the place. This film may be a spoof of the genre, but the scene where Briggs is grabbed by the crazies and sentenced to death is genuinely frightening.

Thankfully, the police arrive in time to save Frank, but Mörder vanishes again. Briggs gets to meet his nemesis six months later when he investigates a 'suicide club' (this part based on Stevenson's The Suicide Club), where rich people gamble with their lives. Mörder is head of the club, and forces Briggs to play.

The freewheeling lunacy of the film is a lot of fun, and director Richard Oswald successfully balances the chills and thrills with the comedy whilst delivering some memorable moments with some great production design: the automated wax museum is inventive and very entertaining, and Mörder's HQ at the suicide club features a cool Bond-style booby-trapped chair and an amazing clock to countdown Briggs final minutes.

Paul Wegener, in his first talkie film, plays an evil inventor who is pursued by investigative journalist (Harald Paulsen) through four famous horror tales. The first is based on Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Black Cat'. Wegener kills his wife and hides her behind a wall in his basement. The reporter, who hears the wife's screams as he is passing by, calls in the police days later after she is reported missing. The journalist and the police eventually find her body thanks to her meowing cat, which was also accidentally walled with the body.

The inventor escapes, only to hide in a wax museum (spoofing Paul Leni's 'Waxworks'), where a sinister game of cat and mouse develops. The chase soon moves to an asylum (taken from another Poe story, 'The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether') and later, to a strange gentlemen's club which runs a sinister suicide game (from Robert Lewis Stevenson's 'The Suicide Club').

This is a remake of the director's own 'Eerie Tales' (1919), which also included adaptations of 'The Black Cat' and 'The Suicide Club'. All three stories here have been filmed since as well - 'Tales of Terror' (1962), 'Curse of the Stone Hand' (1964) and 'Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon' (1973) stand out as examples – so this may all feel quite familiar. Despite this, it's still very entertaining.

The novel approach of linking the separate well-known short stories into one adds a new dimension to the horror anthology sub-genre. It's intended as a spoof of Germany Expressionism, but while it may not exactly have your sides splitting, it still works as a creepy, atmospheric melodrama.

It's always fun to see Wegener, whose three silent portrayals of the Golem have ensure his place in horror history. He's great here as the villain; his stony face and narrow eyes make him appear every bit the devious killer. The rest of the less well-known cast do well too.

Austrian Director Oswald, who is accredited with directing the first vampire film in 1916 ('A Night of Horror' - now lost), does a fine job of creating a different atmosphere for each story. Of particular note is the 'Dr. Tarr' segment, in which a whole host of lunatics attempt to put our hero on trial.

This is a very difficult film to find which is a real shame. Highly recommended for fans of early horror.