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Krissy Victory💋’s profile

Krissy Victory💋 uses Letterboxd to share film reviews and lists. 1,440 films watched. Favorites: Helter Skelter (2012), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2

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🎃 31 Days of Halloween – Day 30 🎃

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

★★★★★ Rewatched 30 Oct 2025

You can’t really overstate how strange The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari must have looked in 1920. Even now, over a century later, it still feels alien, like it was beamed in from another dimension where geometry had a hangover. Every wall leans, every shadow has a knife edge, and even the trees look like they’re screaming. It’s the first true horror film in the modern sense, and it’s still one of the weirdest ever made.

It’s not just some old silent movie with funky sets; the entire world looks insane because the story is insane. The film’s central twist (no spoilers, even if it’s over a hundred years old) reframes everything as the product of a disturbed mind, in ways that still echo in cinema today, like Shutter Island (2010). Before Caligari, film was mostly content to show you things that were happening. After Caligari, filmmakers realized movies could also show you things that were not.

The performances are broad, in keeping with the times, but that actually fits the tone. Werner Krauss’s Caligari is like one of Tim Burton's stop-motion puppets incarnated in flesh. But Conrad Veidt, as Cesare the somnambulist, was probably the real influence on Burton, his gaunt frame and melancholic performance recalling that of Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands. But it would be a disservice to imply that it took that long for the film's influence to be felt. Cesare was reincarnated in every movie monster from Frankenstein’s creature to Count “Nosferatu” Orlok, decades before Tim Burton was even sperm in his old man's balls.

There’s also a prophetic quality to it. Made in post–World War I Germany, Caligari is often read as an authoritarian tyrant with Cesare as a brainwashed soldier, “just following orders.” Even if you ignore such interpretations, Caligari is one of the few films that’s been analyzed to death in textbooks, yet it doesn’t feel dry. It’s alive, and a reminder that horror is about more than monsters. It’s about the instability of our perception of reality itself.

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🎃 31 Days of Halloween – Day 14 Bonus Post 🎃

The Horror of Frankenstein (1970) ★ Watched 14 Oct 2025

The Horror of Frankenstein (1970) is a cheap, boring reboot of Hammer’s series that recasts the Baron with a bland leading man and drops Peter Cushing, the only anchor these films had. According to the internet, this is supposed to be a “black comedy,” but that’s a Tommy Wiseau–style dodge, and the comparisons to The Room don’t stop there.

There’s a scene where Frankenstein’s assistant suggests they switch to more ethical experiments. Victor pretends to agree, asking him to hold some electrical equipment… then kills the assistant by switching it on when he stupidly complies. It plays like the horror equivalent of “Oh hi, Mark,” except that scene in The Room at least conjures unintentional laughter. Another highlight is when the creature attacks a little girl. She cries to her father that he hurt her, and after the monster's apparent demise, she’s suddenly sad and says he was “a nice monster, really.”

In terms of production values, the film is bargain-bin even by Hammer standards. The “monster” looks like a circus strongman with an oddly shaped head; you’d never call him a monster if the script didn’t insist on it. He doesn’t even show up until more than an hour in, and then his death—like most of the film’s key events—happens offscreen.

Another example is a scene that implies Victor plans to kill an old man for his brain, then it just cuts to the funeral. Did Frankenstein kill him? Did the man die naturally? Who knows? The sound design in the old man's final scene is so bizarre; complete silence (not even a musical score or ambient noises) while the old man is talking. I thought something was wrong with my device until the dialogue returned, confirming this was meant to show Frankenstein “zoning out.”

By the time the whole sordid affair has concluded, it feels like Hammer just ran out of money, because the movie doesn’t end—it just stops. If Hammer really wanted to resurrect their franchise, they should have started by resurrecting a script. At least it’s not Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, that’s about the only good thing I can say.

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