Dr. Caligari

1989 Directed by Stephen Sayadian

Horror Marathon 2024 Day 20 Film 41

It’s way past midnight and something has to give to keep me awake. Something juicy and delightfully grotesque. This is a chatter-infused blending of 80s music video pop reality via revamped German expressionism. It’s like some softcore Cinemax movie director really admired all of the works of surrealist filmmakers like Waters, Jodorowsky, Cronenberg and Lynch and wanted them to be sleazier.

I suppose there is a plot (secondary to aesthetics!)- the granddaughter of the original 1920 film has developed sexual therapy via body swapping involving a gland in the brain. The inmates at her asylum have various addictive needs- and sequences of desire for them display large abstracted sexual organs while dialog is delivered with non-sequitur glee. I’m surprised there wasn’t a musical number.

Large Dali-like tongues lick with abandon, with anxious male impotence becoming spliced with gender-fuckery and cooky cannibalism. Everything is a little forced, but that doesn’t detract from the atmosphere of overhyped dreamy horror visuals. It may be part of the point, in all of its excessive want for love and blitzed disaster.

Dr. Caligari’s portrayal by Madeleine Reynal is a rock out with nipples out, Frank-N-Furtur inspired calamity. This passionate love for itself is part of the film’s charm.