A Great Collection That is Not To Be Missed! This is the perfect gift for any film fan. These are essential films for a fan's collection and enjoyable to boot. It's difficult to not enjoy them over and over again. I've loved Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for years. I used to borrow the Super 8 movies from the library and watch them again and again. They are so fun to watch especially in the dark. It is very meaningful to me and I believe others will love it too.
The Seeds of Modern Horror OK, if you have any other versions of these films, these are the transfers to get. I won't waste time doing a synopsis of each film. If you're interested in classic horror, you know the plots. KINO has unearthed some surprising new material and information on these nearly 90 year old films. I have virtually every version of Nosferatu from Super 8mm to Laser Disc. (the protean DVD)and this is the best, most complete transfer to date. All of the films contain newly translated title cards and there are nuances here which shed light on the original atmosphere of these films.
Overwhelming dread and conspiracy which are endemic to post 911 western culture will resonate with audiences of today. This is particularly true of "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" Watch this film first since it was the very first modern horror film. I have never seen a print of Caligari like this. It's hauntingly beautiful from frame one to the last. Note that KINO unearthed the original tinted version of this film. To colorize a film back then, it first had to be bleached and re-dipped into a new chemical color stain. This created a strange "melting effect" in certain parts of the images so it looks eaten away. This is used effectively at the beginning and has no modern technical equivalent. The image seems about to dissolve before your very eyes like some phantasm. It's very much like the look of an old Daguerreotype.
To fully appreciate these films you need to understand the role of WWI in European society. It was the greatest slaughter of human life in history, and in many ways more grotesque than WWII. Soldiers lived in underground trenches, with the bodies of friends and enemies unburied within arms reach for months. The whole conflict took place over a few hundred square miles of earth which looked more like a desolate moonscape than this world. All of the great horror directors and actors of the 1920's and 30's fought in this Hell that would make idiotic films like SAW look like kindergarten recess. If you don't believe me look at any good illustrated history of WWI. Both sides were constantly inventing new methods of death, such as burning skin away with mustard gas....
Back to this DVD box set. Each film has two scores: a modern orchestral accompaniment often featuring ambient music as well as traditional instruments. I generally prefer the modern soundtracks to the other option, which is a more vintage orchestral score from the time these films appeared. A note to those who prefer things like the Type O Negative "soundtrack" recently grafted onto Nosferatu; there is no death metal noise here. These are thoughtful musical interpretations of the mood and atmosphere created by these films. KINO has also transferred these to DVD at the Silent film rate of 16 frames per second. This is important because many lesser DVDs transferred at the faster 24 FPS and the movements are too rushed. The actors seem to float in trance like grace at this proper silent speed. Most films contain some original poster art work and film stills as well. Very complete.
So, if you're new to classic horror and want to see these close to the way they were meant, buy this set. Caligari and Nosferatu alone are worth the price. If you've got previous versions of these films and always found them lacking, this is the best set you'll likely see. Any future Blue Ray or HD transfer will likely be a moot point since the source film is 90 years old already. These are cerebral and creepy films. They get underneath your skin and strip it off from the inside out!
Great Films, but a Poor Deal After several years of begging, I finally received this box set as a holiday gift, and I'm surprisingly disappointed with what I received. I can't say enough about the quality of these amazing films, but these Kino Authorized Restored editions are not all they're cracked up to be.
This collection contains Kino Authorized Restored versions of Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Waxworks, and The Golem.
The Nosferatu edition, containing an overly experimental "period" soundtrack (that even uses voice in some places), inaccurate tinting, and some questionably translated title cards, has already been made obsolete by an even newer Ultimate Edition. Four years after this version's release, even Kino knew it had to be redone. But don't expect Kino's newer, better version in this box set.
The Dr. Caligari edition, while containing the original color tinting, is a terrible cut, containing frequent blurs, dark spots, and an excessive amount of scratching and contrast problems. As I said in a review for that edition, even the cheap Alpha Video edition has a clearer picture. Add to that another ultra-modernized soundtrack that doesn't feel authentic for the film, and you have yourself one poor Restored Edition. Count on Kino to release a fixed, Ultimate Edition of this film soon.
The Golem is perhaps the best deal of this boxed set, though it can easily be bought on its own. The film still suffers from a lot of scratching, but it's leaps and bounds beyond the quality of any other edition I've ever seen. While the soundtrack is also very modern, it matches the tone and period of the film far better than in Nosferatu or Dr. Caligari, calling upon traditional Jewish folk music for its inspiration.
Admittedly, I've yet to watch the version of Waxworks contained in this box set, though I doubt many people were thinking of Waxworks when they decided to purchase this set. It's certainly the least known of the films contained within. I would say the fact that two of the four films in this set are explicitly inferior to other editions out there makes this set a poor choice. Buy The Golem (and perhaps Waxworks), but go elsewhere for Caligari, and buy the better Ultimate edition of Nosferatu.
Great collection of German silent classics F.W. Murnau's interpretation of Dracula, "Nosferatu", is a visually powerful film and perhaps the eeriest of all of the cinematic versions of the tale. In Max Schreck Murnau seems to have found an actor who was born to play the role of vampire Count Orlok. This combined with the vision of Murnau produces several unforgettable scenes in a tale most people already know very well - Orlok walking through Hutter's bedroom door, Orlok rising from his coffin on board the ship, and the shadow of Orlok walking up the stairway to Ellen's bedroom door, just to name a few. Extra features on the "Nosferatu" disk include: 1. a still photo and promotional materials gallery (18 images) 2. More than 30 minutes of excerpts from the Murnau films "Journey into the Night" (1920), "The Haunted Castle" (1921), "Phantom" (1922), "The Last Laugh" (1924), "Faust" (1926) and "Tabu" (1931). 3. Scene comparisons between the Stoker novel, the script, and the film itself. 4. An excerpt from a 1938 Orson Welles radio performance.
"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" has a man, Francis, sitting in a garden reciting a tale of horror to another man involving a mad doctor, Dr. Caligari, and his sleepwalker, Cesare, who supposedly has the ability to tell fortunes that turns into a tale of murder. At the conclusion of the tale, though, you realize some things that make you doubt whether the tale as it was told is the truth at all. The story is very Hitchcock-like in its open-ended meaning, and the art design looks like it had a heavy influence on Tim Burton, with its oddly angled and decorated doors and hallways. Extra features include: 1. a 44-minute condensation of Caligari director Robert Wiene's "Genuine" (1920) which represents nearly all of the surviving footage. 2. a sketch, photo and posters gallery (40 images, not counting detail closeups) 3. clips of Wiene on the set of I.N.R.I. (1923) (3 minutes) 4. excerpts from a German language print showing the calligraphic artwork of a few of the original intertitles (7 minutes).
"The Golem" lays the cinematic groundwork for the 1931 motion picture version of "Frankenstein" . In character design, wardrobe, and interaction with its creator and the world around it, the two monsters do resemble one another. In this case, "The Golem", is a monster created from clay and magic rather than from spare body parts and science, and the monster's creator is a Rabbi. I think I was more shocked to see a Rabbi portrayed as someone who openly dabbled in the black arts and astrology than anything else the film offered. The Rabbi is even shown conjuring up a "god" - Asteroth - and forcing him to produce the life-giving word to bring "The Golem" to life. If this is how Germans perceived the practice of the Jewish religion in 1920, fifteen years before the Holocaust began, it might explain a great deal, but nothing about this aspect of the film is mentioned in the extra features. The extra features include: 1. an excerpt from a rough 1937 American print of Julien Duvivier's Le Golem (1936) [6 minutes] 2. a comparison of creation sequences from diverse sources such as Wegener's The Golem (1920), the Chayim Bloch book The Golem (1925) and F.W. Murnau's Faust (1926) 3. a gallery of stills, illustrations and promotional materials [15 images].
"Waxworks" is really more of a fantasy tale than a horror story. It has a young man applying for a job in a wax museum with the task of writing stories to accompany each of the exhibits. This allows the film to be turned into a series of rather imaginative short stories in various exotic settings. The extra features for this film are Paul Leni's experimental short film Rebus-film No. 1 (1926), and an excerpt from The Thief of Bagdad (1924).
The prints are all good quality and the accompanying scores really fit the mood of the individual films. This set is probably a good place to start exploring German silent film. My only real complaint was a lack of a commentary track on the films. Certainly, don't fall for the budget releases that are available for some of these films. They are usually incomplete and certainly not restored. Unfortunately, silent film restoration costs money, but in Kino products you get what you pay for in good transfers and complete works.
Awesome for those who get it! I purchased these as a piece of history and was not dissapointed. Kino obviously has their act together and I will be buying more of their high quality movies in the future. It is obvious that the greatest care was taken to make these DVDs as clean and clear as possible, and those of you who will actually enjoy watching something as facinating as silent expressionist films will totally love these. Those of you who laugh and crack jokes during the show (you know who you are!) won't appreciate the quality and should rent something stimulating like "Friday the 13--Part Seventy-Four" instead.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Not Available Comics
Trevor
