Eerie Tales (1919)

Hast du Angst?

Well, hast du?

“Are you scared?” is a question that arises from an intertitle in the 1919 version of Unheimliche Geschichten (sometimes translated as “Uncanny Tales). The film, like the masterful Dead of Night, is composed of several stories, these framed by a brief narrative in a book shop.

We first see the three central actors in the film—Conrad Veidt, Anita Berber, and Reinhold Schünzel—smiling and nodding at the audience. Veidt even blows smoke at us. Cutting to the book shop, a nervous little man hops about, shooing his customers out. When he turns out the light, three pictures on the walls come to life. One is the Devil (Schünzel), one is a loose woman (Berber), and one is Death (Veidt). Each of them picks up a book and begins to read, the stories they peruse containing variations of themselves as different characters. No matter what happens to the people in the stories, the readers appear to be amused.

Story One "Die Erscheinung" (The Apparition) by Anselma Heine

On what appears to be a path through a city park, Veidt’s young man rescues Berber’s frightened divorcee from her mad ex-husband (Schünzel). The Stranger takes the Woman to a hotel and makes sure she is settled and comfortable. Telling her he will see her again in the morning, he then goes out for a night with some old friends. When he returns he peeks in to check on her and she is gone, her room completely disheveled. He thinks he’s in the wrong room, leaves and goes to bed. The next morning she is gone, the room is in perfect order, and the hotel staff denies that she ever existed. Who is she and what happened to her become the questions that consume him.

Story Two “Die Hand” (The Hand) by Robert Liebmann

Everyone seems to admire and fawn over a beautiful society woman, but two men are madly in love. One (Schünzel) murders the other (Veidt) by strangulation. The murdered man’s hands twist into talons and remain that way after death. Several years later, the killer meets the woman again (Berber) and she invites him to her debut as a dancer. In the theater he sees a taloned hand clutch the curtain, then the entire spirit manifests itself. A nice touch is added to the haunting when the ghost walks and we see that the invisible specter leaves tangible footprints in the dirt.

Story Three "Die schwarze Katze" (The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe)  

I’ll make a leap of faith here and assume you know this tale.

Story Four “The Suicide Club” by Robert Louis Stevenson

A man (Schünzel) finds a very private club the members of which gather to draw cards. Whomever selects the ace of spades is expected to die. The new man gets the ace and is told by the club’s president (Veidt) that he has ten minutes to live. We watch the clock counting down and at the final minute the man dies of fright. Or does he?

Story Five “Der Spuk” (The Specter by Richard Oswald)

This story ends the film on a lighter note as a husband, annoyed at a Baron to whom he has extended the courtesy of a few days recovery time after a carriage accident, carries out a false haunting to prove to his wife what a blowhard their guest really is. Veidt is the husband who tells us all that any tale ending with a man kissing his wife is an eerie tale indeed. 

Eerie Tales was thought lost until pieces from surviving prints were re-assembled and the resurrected film was debuted in Toronto in 2009. Director Richard Oswald reused the idea with sound in 1932, jettisoning stories One, Two and Five, and adding another Poe title, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.”

The cinematographer in 1919 was Karl Hoffmann and the sets were designed by Julius Hahlo. Sets and costumes are not Expressionistic, but the acting style borders that of Expressionistic films. Or maybe it’s just tongue-in-cheek. 

The film is frequently described as “horror” but nothing in it is actually horrifying. Even in “The Black Cat” the corpse discovered by the police is left off screen. No, Eerie Tales is not horrific but it is, well, eerie. And that’s all it promises to be.

The Coward (1915)

This Civil War drama was produced and co-written, with C. Gardner Sullivan, by Thomas Ince for Kay-Bee Pictures. It’s been praised for the restraint of its acting, a notable thing given the subject matter and the ease with which many early screen actors could have slipped in old theatrical, melodramatic ways.

Charles Ray stars as Frank Winslow, son of Col. Jefferson Beverly Winslow (Frank Keenan), a well-to-do southern gentleman of the Virginia of 1861. When word arrives at Winslow Hall that a recruiting office for the Confederacy has been set up in town, Frank immediately realizes that he is too fearful to enlist. He shames his girl (Patricia Palmer as Amy) and his parents by failing to sign on the dotted line.

Col. Winslow has a heart-to-heart talk with his son and convinces him, at the point of a gun, that the family honor will be left in tatters if he ignores the call of duty. Mrs. Winslow (Gertrude Clair) is torn between wanting to see Frank become a decorated hero and not wanting to see him carried home on his shield. 

Frank Keenan, as the Colonel, is being eaten alive from the inside but tries to keep the pain from showing on his face. He bottles the emotion, exhibiting but a slight tremble. 

After enlistment, Frank is given night time picket duty and every little sound frightens him. He is terrified by a rabbit in the bushes, drops his rifle and abandons his post to scurry home. There the black servants (Nick Cogley and Minnie Devereaux, white actors in blackface) try to protect him, but the Colonel discovers him in the kitchen. Brought nearly to tears, he decides to take his son’s place in the army so when Frank Winslow’s name is sounded at roll call, someone will be there to respond.

With Col. Winslow gone and Frank hiding in the attic, a group of Union soldiers quarter themselves at the Hall and discuss their plans for routing the rebels. Frank overhears them and “The blood of his fathers, the shadowy hands of past generations of fighting men shatter the fetters of cowardice,” and the film hastens to an ending that could have been written by Ambrose Bierce.

The cast also features Charles K. French as an understanding and sentimental Confederate Commander, and, somewhere, an uncredited John Gilbert.

Director Reginald Barker and cinematographers Joseph H. August and Robert S. Newhard make the most of the production’s reduced circumstances. The entire picture cost $18,000, so if the film seems a little like Griffith-Lite, that’s one of the reasons.

Fighting Blood (1911)

Before you dismiss this one-reel western as just more nickelodeon fodder you should know that it provides a couple of firsts, and is also rehearsal for one of silent cinema’s greatest achievements.

George Nichols stars as Ezra Tuttle, a Civil War veteran who, along with his wife and nine children, has built a cabin in the wilds of Dakota. The titles tells us that brood constitutes “the Grand Army of the Dakota Hills,” and the old man works them with military regularity. His wife (Kate Bruce) watches with pride as the kids practice close order drills. Note that the youngest two provide the aw-how-cute factor.

One evening after the workout, the oldest son, Richard (Robert Harron) requests permission to leave base to visit his girlfriend (Florence La Badie) at a nearby homestead and “the General” refuses. The two men argue the point until the old man wallops his son. Richard, furious, “goes AWOL,” a tear in his eye, while he leaves “the flouted father” sitting in sadness. 

After his visit with his girl and her parents (Kate Toncray and Francis J. Grandon), Richard returns home to face his punishment. Finding the door bolted against thim, Richard rides off to discover a rampaging war party. He rides back to his girl’s cabin and warns the family to load the wagon and “ride for your life. The Sioux are coming!” 

He gallops after the wagon, slinging shot over his shoulder. The father is killed (we assume mom is too) and Richard picks up the girl and takes her to his father’s cabin. The little army, fortified by some neighbors who have come to hole up with them, grabs rifles and starts firing through windows and cracks in the walls at the besieging Indians.

And here’s where director DW Griffith gives us a preview of the great action finale of Birth of a Nation which will follow this film in four years. He cross cuts between the homesteaders in the cabin, the encircling Indians, and Richard and the real Army galloping to the rescue. Cameraman Billy Bitzer even gives us some overhead shots of the Tuttle cabin so we can see the danger the settlers are in as the Indians fire the house.

IMDB assures us that somewhere in the crowd shots Lionel Barrymore, Mae Marsh, and Blanche Sweet can be found, but I can’t find them. If indeed Barrymore is present, it is one of the firsts—his first film, that is. Some sources say that he acted in an earlier film, The Paris Hat in 1908, but there is no proof that such a movie exists, and Barrymore was actually living in Paris in 1908.

The other first is that this is the first of over 100 movies based on a story by Zane Grey, one of the most frequently filmed writers in history.