The Cabinet of Caligari Reviews

This 1962 film written by Robert Bloch bears little similarity to the classic German-expressionist silent of 1919. If one does not expect the newer film to emulate the older model, this effort is respectable enough. Johns stars as a distraught young woman who seeks help at a creepy mansion when her car breaks down. The master of the house, O'Herlihy, invites her in and subjects her to nightmarish torture and humilation, evidently his standard welcome to strangers. In keeping with the story structure of the original film, Johns wakes up and realizes that it's all a dream. The audience sees that she is an inmate in an asylum and that the torturer in her dream is actually her doctor, Interesting sets and cinematography are not nearly so effective as in the 1919 version, but there is a good, haunting musical score by Fried. This was Bloch's first script after sketching Hitchcock's PSYCHO.