Silent SCREAMS
Retrofit Drive In
October is the best month for old movies on TV. Hulu has Huluween, TCM digs deep into the archive graveyard for classic shockers. Disney breaks out Hocus Pocus (1993), SYFY lights up with Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone marathons. The month bulges like a trick or treat trick bag, filled to the cauldron’s brim with gruesome tales of witches, vampires, and ghosts. Don’t forget the slashers and zombies who replaced ghouls and goblins. Hey, times change.
Unfortunately, our silent friends have long been cancelled. The most awesome works of early Hollywood lie sleeping in round tin cans. Thanks to nerds, preservationists, and computer advancements, these films no longer crumble into dust in the sunlight. We can view on our telephones what lit up the screens a century ago.
What horrors await! Le Manoir du Diable (1896), believed to be the very first horror flick, directed by French innovator Georges Méliès. He is remembered for the Man in the Moon getting a rocket in the eye in 1902.
Next, the first Frankenstein movie ever, released a mere 92 years after Mary Shelley, 18, scared the crap out of her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, 23, and his friend Lord Byron, 27. She taught them a thing or two when they wanted to play “let’s make up a scary story” while the Wi-Fi was down.
By 1922, the art of film had progressed to full length features. Nosferatu is bonafide bone-chilling. It is so mysterious and unnerving that it inspired Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a fictional account of the film’s production in which they hire a real vampire.
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) is only thirteen minutes long, but it represents the first adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story about the family that put the fun back into dysfunctional.
Finally, what would a silent horror fest be without the man of a thousand faces, a true son of Colorado Springs, Leonidas Frank “Lon” Chaney (1883-1930).
Music of the night was added later. In fact, this 1925 film was re-released in 1929 with a much cleaner print. How this masterpiece has been preserved, restored, and made possible for generations unborn is a story unto itself,
Run the cartoon at any point of the viewing. Felix the Cat in a silent classic from 1926! Something the kiddies can relate to, like Pixar.
But now it is time to sit back, plug in the headphones, block the Tweets and pop-ups, and get scared silent!
Le Manoir du Diable (The Devil's Castle) (1896)
Frankenstein (1910)
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Cartoon: Felix the Ghost Breaker (1926)
