Dr. Caligari

1989 cult film

Rating: 11/20

Plot: The goings-on at the Caligari Insane Asylum where a doctor, the great-granddaughter of a more famous Caligari, conducts controversial experiments.

You could argue that Stephen Sayadian just needed a bigger budget to realize some vision he had with this project, but I don't think money was the main issue. The production design--minimalistic and quirky, like a mix between videos you'd expect to see from The Residents and, as you'd probably expect, day-glo 1920's expressionist films--made this worth watching, and Sayadian's perverse ideas, which he doesn't seem to have a shortage of, made this fascinating even as it didn't quite work. Giant tongues coming out of walls, failed scarecrow fellatio, a woman chanting "Chinchilla," elongated boobage. There's a lot going on within a screen that is largely black. By the end, the cheap avant-camp look wore me down a little, the aesthetics becoming a little tedious, but I never thought it was an issue with money.

The main problem is that Sayadian doesn't seem to know what tone he wants to establish and therefore fails to establish one. The dialogue and delivery of the lines are just a little too goofy. I'm pretty sure none of this is taken seriously--not by the writers, by Sayadian, or by any of the actors. I wish there was a little less Troma here, I guess. Actually, maybe I wish the movie would have been silent. It starts with 8 dialogue-free minutes, and I liked that part fine. There's a muted vibe that keeps the story, the dialogue, and the characters from ever being nearly as interesting as the props and visuals. The colors, the way characters kind of swoop in or pop from beneath the frame, and the perversity should have a little more zip than they do, but the writing kind of weighs on them. Maybe it was a lack of range. The inventiveness is easy to appreciate, but it's just not enough to give this movie a voice.

I don't think this is much different from a film I might have been able to make when I was in my twenties, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's something that I would enjoy.

Producer Mitchell Froom did the score for this. It's pretty good, especially if you enjoy pipe organs.