The Hands of Orlac (1924), in which a famous pianist loses his hands in a train wreck, and has them replaced with one of the most oft-copied plot devices in the history of horror cinema…
Schizoid (1980), in which the infamous Golan and Globus hire the writer/director of the “Dallas” and “Dyansty” pilots to make them a much-belated wannabe giallo…
and…
The Student of Prague (1913), in which one of the earliest 30-year-old teenagers on record sells his soul to hell for a fortune big enough to impress a countess, and gets about what you’d expect from the deal.
#1 by Nathan Shumate on October 1, 2007 - 8:41 pm
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I just made a Hands of Orloc joke here with the family last night.
Then I had to explain it, of course.
#2 by Zack Handlen on October 3, 2007 - 12:03 pm
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I think I’ve seen that exact Student of Prague DVD here at the library. It looked el cheapo–I realize the age means you aren’t going to get a pristine print, but is it at least watchable?
Nice work as always.
#3 by El Santo on October 4, 2007 - 7:20 am
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Yes, very watchable. There are some splotches, scratches, and frame-skips, and the score is God-awful (one of the few instances I can think of in which a silent has been issued with an original score that was actually worse than a randomly selected classical CD left to play through until the movie ended), but the picture is reasonably clear, the intertitles don’t read like the result of a word-by-word consultation with a German-English dictionary, and the film appears to be playing at something close to the correct frame-rate. All things considered, I think Alpha Video did a pretty respectable job with it. And really, with a 1913 movie that was thought to be lost until– What? The early 90’s, wasn’t it?– how picky can you legitimately be about quality of presentation, anyway?