In lit­er­a­ture, graph­ic descrip­tions of men­ace and dis­mem­ber­ment by mon­sters are as old as Beowulf and much, much old­er still, though it wasn’t until Horace Walpole’s 18th cen­tu­ry nov­el The Cas­tle of Otran­to inspired the goth­ic romance nov­el that hor­ror-qua-hor­ror came into fash­ion. With­out Wal­pole, and bet­ter-known goth­ic inno­va­tors like Mary Shel­ley and Bram Stok­er, we’d like­ly nev­er have had Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Love­craft, or Stephen King. But nowa­days when we think of hor­ror, we usu­al­ly think of film—and all of its var­i­ous con­tem­po­rary sub­gen­res, includ­ing creepy psy­cho­log­i­cal twists on good-old-fash­ion mon­ster movies, like The Babadook.

But from whence came the hor­ror film? Was it 1931, a ban­ner hor­ror year in which audi­ences saw both Boris Karloff in James Whale’s Franken­stein and Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s Drac­u­la? Cer­tain­ly clas­sic films by mas­ters of the genre, but they did not orig­i­nate the hor­ror movie. There is, of course, F.W. Murnau’s ter­ri­fy­ing silent Nos­fer­atu from 1922 (and the real life hor­ror of its deceased director’s miss­ing head).

And what about Ger­man expres­sion­ism? “A case can be made,” argued Roger Ebert, that Robert Weine’s 1920 The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari “was the first true hor­ror film”—a “sub­jec­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy” in which “unspeak­able hor­ror becomes pos­si­ble.” Per­haps. But even before Weine’s still-effec­tive­ly-dis­ori­ent­ing cin­e­mat­ic work dis­turbed audi­ences world­wide, there was Paul Wegener’s first, 1915 ver­sion of The Golem, a char­ac­ter, writes Penn State’s Kevin Jack Hagopi­an, that served as “one of the most sig­nif­i­cant ances­tors to the cin­e­mat­ic Franken­stein of James Whale and Boris Karloff.“ Even ear­li­er, in 1910, Thomas Edi­son pro­duced an adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s mon­ster sto­ry.

So how far back do we have to go to find the first hor­ror movie? Almost as far back as the very ori­gins of film, it seems—to 1896, when French spe­cial-effects genius Georges Méliès made the three plus minute short above, Le Manoir du Dia­ble (The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, or the Manor of the Dev­il). Méliès, known for his silent sci-fi fan­ta­sy A Trip to the Moon—and for the trib­ute paid to him in Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hugo—used his inno­v­a­tive meth­ods to tell a sto­ry, writes Mau­rice Bab­bis at Emer­son Uni­ver­si­ty jour­nal Latent Image, of “a large bat that flies into a room and trans­forms into Mephistophe­les. He then stands over a caul­dron and con­jures up a girl along with some phan­toms and skele­tons and witch­es, but then one of them pulls out a cru­ci­fix and the demon dis­ap­pears.” Not much of a sto­ry, grant­ed, and it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly scary, but it is an excel­lent exam­ple of a tech­nique Méliès sup­pos­ed­ly dis­cov­ered that very year. Accord­ing to Earlycinema.com,

In the Autumn of 1896, an event occurred which has since passed into film folk­lore and changed the way Méliès looked at film­mak­ing. Whilst film­ing a sim­ple street scene, Méliès cam­era jammed and it took him a few sec­onds to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem. Think­ing no more about the inci­dent, Méliès processed the film and was struck by the effect such a inci­dent had on the scene — objects sud­den­ly appeared, dis­ap­peared or were trans­formed into oth­er objects.

Thus was born The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, tech­ni­cal­ly the first hor­ror film, and one of the first movies—likely the very first—to delib­er­ate­ly use spe­cial effects to fright­en its view­ers.

The Haunt­ed Cas­tle has been added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films: Kubrick, Hitch­cock, Tourneur & More

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Watch 10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Fritz Lang’s M to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

For many Open Cul­ture read­ers, the Hal­loween sea­son offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty — not to say an excuse — to re-expe­ri­ence clas­sic hor­ror films: F.W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu from 1922, for instance, or even George Méliès The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, which launched the whole form in 1896. This year, may we sug­gest a home screen­ing of the for­mi­da­ble work of vin­tage cin­e­ma that is 1968’s The Astro Zom­bies? Writ­ten, pro­duced, and direct­ed by Ted Mikels — auteur of The Corpse Grinders and Blood Orgy of the She-Dev­ils — it fea­tures not just “a mad astro-sci­en­tist” played by John Car­ra­dine and “two gore-crazed, solar-pow­ered killer robot zom­bies,” but “a bloody trail of girl-next-door vic­tims; Chi­nese com­mu­nist spies; dead­ly Mex­i­can secret agents led by the insane­ly volup­tuous Tura Satana” and an “intre­pid CIA agent” on the case of it all.

You can watch The Astro Zom­bies for free, and new­ly remas­tered in HD to boot, at Kino Cult, the new stream­ing site from film and video dis­trib­u­tor Kino Lor­ber. Pull up the front page and you’ll be treat­ed to a wealth of tit­il­lat­ing view­ing options of a vari­ety of eras and sub­gen­res: “Dri­ve-in favorites” like Ape and Beware! The Blob; “gold­en age exploita­tion” like Reefer Mad­ness and She Shoul­da Said ‘No’!; and even clas­sics like Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Fear and Desire.

True cult-film enthu­si­asts, of course, may well go straight to the avail­able selec­tions, thought­ful­ly grouped togeth­er, from “Mas­ter of Ital­ian Hor­ror” Mario Bava and pro­lif­ic Span­ish “B‑movie” king­pin Jesús Fran­co. Those look­ing to throw a fright night might con­sid­er Kino Cult’s offer­ings filed under “hard­boiled hor­ror”: Kill­bil­lies, The House with 100 Eyes, Bun­ny: The Killer Thing.

Few of these pic­tures skimp on the grotesque; few­er still skimp on the humor, a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent in even the most har­row­ing hor­ror movies. Far from a pile of cyn­i­cal hack­work, Kino Cult’s library has clear­ly been curat­ed with an eye toward films that, although for the most part pro­duced inex­pen­sive­ly and with unre­lent­ing intent to pro­voke vis­cer­al reac­tions in their audi­ences, are hard­ly with­out inter­est to seri­ous cinephiles. The site even includes an “art­sploita­tion” sec­tion con­tain­ing such taboo-breach­ing works as Cur­tis Burz’s Sum­mer House. Among its gen­er­al recent addi­tions you’ll also find Dog­tooth by Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, per­haps the most dar­ing high-pro­file provo­ca­teur cur­rent­ly at work in the medi­um. Since Kino Cult has made all these films and more avail­able to stream at no charge, none of us, no mat­ter our par­tic­u­lar cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, has an excuse to pass this Hal­loween un-enter­tained — and more to the point, undis­turbed. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle (1896)

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films

Stephen King’s 22 Favorite Movies: Full of Hor­ror & Sus­pense

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

What Scares Us, and How Does this Man­i­fest in Film? A Hal­loween Pret­ty Much Pop Cul­ture Pod­cast (#66)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

It did­n’t take long after the inven­tion of cin­e­ma for its sheer pow­er of spec­ta­cle to become clear. Arguably, it was appar­ent even in the pio­neer­ing work of the Lumière broth­ers, though they attempt­ed only to cap­ture images famil­iar from every­day life at the time. But in a decade or two emerged auteurs like Fritz Lang, who, hav­ing grown up with cin­e­ma itself, pos­sessed high­ly devel­oped instincts for how to use it to cap­ti­vate large and var­i­ous audi­ences. Released in 1927, Lang’s Metrop­o­lis showed movie­go­ers an elab­o­rate vision, both fear­some and allur­ing, of the indus­tri­al dystopia that could lay ahead. But it also had danc­ing girls!

Or rather, it had a danc­ing girl who’s actu­al­ly a robot — a Maschi­nen­men­sch, accord­ing to the script — built by the film’s vil­lain in an attempt to besmirch the hero­ine who would lib­er­ate the tit­u­lar city’s down­trod­den work­ers. (Both the real woman and her mechan­i­cal imper­son­ator are skill­ful­ly played by Brigitte Helm.)

In the video above, you can see the scan­dalous and cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly inno­v­a­tive spec­ta­cle-with­in-a-spec­ta­cle that is Metrop­o­lis’ dance scene col­orized, upscaled to 4K res­o­lu­tion at 60 frames per sec­ond, and new­ly sound­tracked with a track called “Lemme See About It” by Max McFer­ren. This is rec­og­niz­ably Metrop­o­lis, but it’s also a Metrop­o­lis none of us has ever seen before.

The pro­duc­tion also com­bines visu­al mate­r­i­al from dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the film, quite a few of which have been edit­ed and re-edit­ed, lost and recov­ered over near­ly the past cen­tu­ry. (The run­ning times of the offi­cial­ly released cuts alone range from 83 to 153 min­utes.) Cer­tain dif­fer­ences in qual­i­ty between one shot and the next make this obvi­ous, though the con­sis­ten­cy of the over­all col­oriza­tion eas­es the sud­den tran­si­tions between them. A Metrop­o­lis fan could­n’t help but feel some curios­i­ty about how the whole pic­ture would play with all of these enhance­ments, not that it would resem­ble any­thing Lang could orig­i­nal­ly have envi­sioned. But then, no sin­gle cut exists that defin­i­tive­ly reflects his inten­tions — and besides, he’d sure­ly approve of how the film’s dance sequence has been made to cap­ti­vate us once again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch Fritz Lang’s 1927 Mas­ter­piece

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

If Fritz Lang’s Icon­ic Film Metrop­o­lis Had a Kraftwerk Sound­track

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

The Icon­ic Dance Scene from Hel­lza­pop­pin’ Pre­sent­ed in Liv­ing Col­or with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1941)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Time and again in inter­views, Quentin Taran­ti­no has straight-faced­ly declared that he will retire from film­mak­ing after his tenth fea­ture. He may already have reached that num­ber with 2019’s Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood, depend­ing on whether each part of Kill Bill counts as a sep­a­rate film. If not, we have one more Taran­ti­no pic­ture to look for­ward to. His dec­la­ra­tion of immi­nent retire­ment is unusu­al and even dispir­it­ing giv­en that he’s still in his late fifties, an age that has found many auteurs at the peak of their pow­ers. What lies behind it is the sub­ject of the short video above from Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer.

“I like the idea that there is an umbil­i­cal cord con­nect­ed to my first film, all the way to my last, and that is my body of work,” says Taran­ti­no in one of the inter­view clips includ­ed. “A bad film on the fil­mog­ra­phy affects good films.” Being known not just as a promi­nent direc­tor but an obses­sive cinephile, Taran­ti­no can sure­ly name off the top of his head dozens of mas­ter film­mak­ers who allowed their own bod­ies of work to be blem­ished.

“Artists don’t always notice when their skills are flag­ging,” as Puschak puts it. “Taran­ti­no is leav­ing ear­ly to pre­vent cross­ing that line unwit­ting­ly.” Though spec­u­la­tive, this notion has hard­ly been con­tra­dict­ed by the direc­tor’s own words.

Puschak writes about the pow­er of the oeu­vre — an artist’s body of work tak­en as a whole, even as an art­work in itself — in his new book Escape into Mean­ing. The con­tent of this video reflects only the first sec­tion of that essay, a med­i­ta­tion on what it means to con­sid­er every­thing a cre­ator has made as a piece of an inter­con­nect­ed whole. The tech­niques, ref­er­ences, themes, and obses­sions that recur promi­nent­ly in Taran­ti­no’s movies make his fil­mog­ra­phy prac­ti­cal­ly invite such an analy­sis, as well the ques­tion asked by Puschak: “Can a well-designed fil­mog­ra­phy bestow greater mean­ing onto the films that make it up?” No mat­ter how many more works Taran­ti­no will make, and what­ev­er form they take, the whole of his exist­ing oeu­vre assures us that all of them will be thor­ough­ly Taran­tin­ian.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Shoots a Film at 3 Dif­fer­ent Bud­get Lev­els: Reser­voir Dogs ($1 Mil­lion), Pulp Fic­tion ($8 Mil­lion), and Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood ($95 Mil­lion)

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Remix­es His­to­ry: A Brief Study of Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood

Quentin Taran­ti­no Releas­es His First Nov­el: A Pulpy Nov­el­iza­tion of Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.