The Haunted Castle AKA Schloß Vogeloed (1921)
Distributor: Eureka Video
DVD Release Date: 22nd August 2011
Directed by: F.W. Murnau
Starring: Olga Tschechowa, Arnold Korff, Lulu Kyser-Korff
Review by: Keri O’Shea
An incredible ninety years old, The Haunted Castle predates what is arguably director and auteur F. W. Murnau’s best-known work, Nosferatu (1922) and also diverges from it in style in several ways. Originally adapted from a semi-successful Rudolf Stratz novel, it does have its share of feminine histrionics and a few great early horror sequences, but by and large it is a lot more sedate than Nosferatu or the also well-known Faust (1926). What we have here is an early ‘old dark house’ movie; it’s very watchable, but it’s perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of film as a new medium.
As with all the ‘old dark house’ movies which appeared in its wake, The Haunted Castle sees a gathering of people who have secrets – secrets which will be revealed before the folk concerned can leave. Chez Vogeloed, a hunting party kept indoors by the bad weather are surprised by the arrival of one Count Oetsch; this isn’t just because no one invited him but because he was suspected, though not convicted, of the murder of his brother some years before. And guess who else is due at the castle? – The murdered brother’s widow, Baronness Safferstätt (The fantastically-overblown Olga Tschechowa) and her new husband. The Countess is understandably not all that keen to hang around once she finds out who’s there, but she agrees to stay when she finds out that a priest (and relative of her first husband) is coming from Rome especially to see her: she has one or two things she would like to speak to him about, after all. The rather put-upon Oetsch meanwhile professes to have learned powers of prophecy during his travels, and – as you might expect – he predicts trouble, in the form of ‘two gunshots’ which will occur while everyone is together. So, a nice relaxing weekend, all told…
Would horror fans enjoy this? Well, they might, although The Haunted Castle is rather slower and not as quirkily engaging as other movies along similar lines – such as The Cat and the Canary (1927) with its more horror-attuned excess. This Masters of Cinema presentation certainly plays down any links between The Haunted Castle and the horror genre: in the accompanying booklet, there are two influential scholarly essays, one of which explicitly states that to identify The Haunted Castle with horror is a mistake. Compared to Nosferatu – also an adaptation of a novel, and one which got Murnau into hot water with the widow of author Bram Stoker – The Haunted Castle is much less ghastly, with hardly any of the Expressionist style sets used in the later film, and with the exception of Frau Tschechowa, the performances here are rather lower-key too. That’s not to say this is a naturalistic film but compared to some of Murnau’s best-known films, it’s positively staid. It’s just that film fans might find this more fascinating as a document in its own right than as a piece of entertainment – certainly as a piece of horror entertainment. This is high drama, but the horrible is kept to a minimum here.
As a document, though, you get a glimpse of a relatively new artistic medium and how it is handled by an incredibly talented early director. So, for example, we have a film still divided into 5 acts as per a theatrical production, with actors closely choreographed and obviously unused to the concept of appearing on screen. We also have an array of interior/exterior shots and long and close shots which would put a lot of modern directors to shame. Here’s evidence of someone with distinct, ambitious ideas of what he wants to achieve with his cinema and, all thing considered, Murnau does an incredible job. This all comes across so clearly thanks to the staggeringly high quality of this version of the film, which must have been a real labour of love for the team responsible. With no fug of damage to intercede between us and it, this remaster appears crisp, vibrant and…very modern somehow, despite its great age. What we have here is a very proximate-feeling piece of history.
The Haunted Castle doesn’t affect to be horror and has rather little in common with the famous vampire horror which followed on its heels, but it’s interesting in its own right in terms of what it does, rather than what it is: the excellent quality of this version alone makes it worth a look.