[A favourite] horror remake*

“I never thought I could be friends with a German again. But here I am… Werner is somehow like Murnau brought back to life.”

– Lotte Eisner visiting the set of Herzog's Nosferatu (via)

Coming back to Murnau's expressionist masterpiece was Herzog's bridge between the films made by the grandfathers of German cinema and his era. Herzog, born in 1942 Munich, noted this void created by that philistine regime and felt that, by picking up the thread cut a quarter of a century earlier, German culture could see a restoration to its (non-nationalistic) greatness. Thus a menagerie of rats and actors was released in a reluctant, bourgeois Dutch town.

 

But that's a story for another generation to draw upon.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

A favourite horror film adapted from a book or short story*

“Everything in this masterpiece contributes to its unity: the absolute mastery of editing and rhythm; slow motion, superimpositions, tracking shots, the mobile camera all play their roles and never gratuitously. The photographic quality, worthy of the most learned German operators, the lighting of the sets which envelops them in mystery, the sets themselves, neither realistic nor stylized, but as if sketched; the acting neither realistic nor expressionist, and yet adapted to the fantastic, to the violence; to the pauses; to the blur.”

– Henri Langlois, via

A groundbreaking expressionist interpretation of Poe's inner horrors. Many of the tropes so common in later horror films, are fully fledged and present here.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

[A favourite] Alien [“alien”?] movie*

 

Three segments envision the future of the Swiss Confederation. In the Fredi M. Murer instalment 2069 – oder wo sich Futorologen und Archäologen gute Nacht sagen, an alien visits surveillance state Switzerland. The visitor in question is designed by H.R. Giger, and glimpses of the XX121 xenomorph are present in its exoskeletal core.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

The day of the court case. Numerous other dates are mentioned, all in flashbacks.

– The Paris Court of Appeals, meeting on October 15, 1959, pursuant to the charges against Dominique Marceau.

– With a girl like that, truth may be the best defense for once.

A [favourite] silent horror film*

 

Incomplete and, despite the generally accepted popular Occidental opinion, not a horror film. Oh, to have seen this narrated by Musei Tokugawa…

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

Set 278 days before the start of the Tokyo Olympics.

“One can meet only god at such hour.”

– You expect me to eat that?

– Americans live on ketchup and milk. I'm a whiz at geography.