The Ghouls: Book One - horror fiction into film

THE GHOULS: BOOK ONE

The Stories Behind the Classic Horror Films

The Devil In A Nunnery by Francis Oscar Mann

The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether by Edgar Allan Poe
Feathertop by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Magician by Somerset Maugham
Spurs by Tod Robbins
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker
The Devil And Daniel Webster by Steven Vincent Benet

Novels that inspire horror movies are easy to find, but short stories might need more detective work. They might only be found in old anthologies or even magazines. So when I saw these two paperbacks, I pounced on them! The Ghouls: Books One and Two were edited by Peter Haining, with nine short stories in each, every one used as source material for a horror film.

I bought these paperbacks just after they were published in 1974 (previously available as a single hardback). All I know is that they were sold in the UK and US, and reprinted in the UK in 1994. Such a brilliant theme for a collection, I'm surprised that there haven't been many more.

As a tribute to a great idea, here's an over-ambitiously long article that took months to put together - I've read all the stories again and watched as many of the movies they inspired as was possible. While I'd disagree that all the films are 'horror classics', I've been led to some great films that I'd not seen before.

Haining's introduction, as well as the foreword and afterword from genre giants, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee respectively, contain insightful notes on the genre.

So here's a look at the films and stories of Book One, a second article on Book Two will follow...

Foreword by Peter Haining

Haining makes a case for a place in the world for horror films and novels, at a time when gory or scary films were still widely being dismissed by critics and scholars alike. He originally chose these tales to illustrate how fiction has inspired horror films through the years, from the very first decade of cinema.

His introductions to each story reminded me of the state of the genre back then. For instance he remarks that Freaks "was the most horrific film ever made" and that The Magician was a "missing" film. Thankfully, far more horrific films have been made since 1974, and The Magician is no longer lost. In fact, it's just hit DVD.

 

THE DEVIL IN A CONVENT

(1896, France)

Based on The Devil In A Nunnery, a Medieval tale retold by Francis Oscar Mann.

This ancient story tells of the devil tricking his way into a convent by posing as a troubadour. As he sings to the nuns, they start behaving completely out of character. There's a sense that the author is hinting about a multitude of sins without getting into trouble for naming them explicitly.

This premise became one of the short (just three minutes long) frantic films created by French pioneer and genius Georges Méliès in the first few years of cinema. Well ahead of Hollywood tradition, Méliès completely rewrote the story by having the devil pose as an old priest - a far more wicked disguise.

While the story depends on wordplay, this short silent film visually riffs on the mayhem that a pantomime demon could wreak in a church - summoning little devils and monstrous animals. Mischievous fun rather than anything too blasphemous, the film has a single camera angle but a constantly evolving set powered by trap doors, puffs of smoke and his trademark in-camera editing. Hardly a horror classic, but a gracious nod to cinema's first studio of the fantastic.

Thanks to the wonderful DVD boxed set of practically all of Méliès' existing works, I was able to see this. It's also on YouTube. I'm not sure the next film still exists though...

THE LUNATICS

(1913, USA)

Based on The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe.

Who else would early film-makers turn to for bizarre and scary ideas?

Two rambling holidaymakers are shown around a 'lunatic asylum' which is trying out a variety of unusual new treatments. On the tour, as they meet a variety of inmates, they're unaware of one of the most drastic cures on offer there...

This lesser-known tale from Poe is more of a comic twist than a descent into horror, though the premise has often been used in far more ghastly 'madhouse' movies, such as Ghost Story and Asylum. The slim short story would have been ideal as a short film, which lasted only 15 minutes. Incidentally, it was directed by Maurice Tourneur, father of Cat People and Night of the Demon director, Jacques.

The story was again officially adapted in Mexico as The Mansion of Madness (1973), directed by Juan López Moctezuma (Alucarda).

PURITAN PASSIONS

(1923, USA, also called The Scarecrow)

Based on Feathertop (1852) by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

From the author of The Scarlet Letter, is this dark fairy-tale of a New England witch who brings her scarecrow to life, looking like a human being. She then fixes on the idea that her scarecrow should find love, (a contrivance to set up this story of fateful romance).

While the premise of a living scarecrow is more usually horror nowadays, this tale (and The Wizard of Oz) present him as a friendly fantasy, despite the use of witchcraft.
 
I couldn't find any silent version of this, I'm not even sure if the early films (also 1912, 1916) still exist. A Broadway stage adaption, filmed for TV in 1972, had very poor reviews, despite having Gene Wilder as Feathertop himself.


 

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
(1925, 1929, USA)

Based on the 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux.

At this point Haining cheats a little, presenting a specially abridged version of Gaston Leroux' book. But this is a good way to enjoy the story and avoid the overlong sub-plots of opera house politics and romantic rivalry. This condensed version seems to have been trimmed to give us the passages that were translated to the screen for Lon Chaney's brilliant work. Conversely, this silent 1925 adaption (slightly reworked for sound in 1929) is a quite faithful adaption of events in the novel, apart from the completely revamped ending.

A ghost is said to haunt the Paris Opera House. A string of accidents force the directors to reconsider their choice of lead singer in their prestigious productions. Letters from 'The Phantom' threaten them to comply, or great tragedy will befall them...

I enjoy this movie version the most with its focus on The Phantom as the central character and the extensive use of gothic atmosphere in, well, everything - the cavernous sets and production design, the lighting, even the angry mob with torches. It's a horror epic.
 
Lon Chaney's Phantom is the most famous of his extreme make-ups and the movie is required viewing as America's first landmark horror film. The restorations available on DVD include the early two-strip Technicolor sequences that treat us to The Phantom in eerie colour.
 
Leroux' story is now well known, though most subsequent adaptions diminish the severity of the horror content compared to the first, silent adaption.


 

THE MAGICIAN
(1926, USA)

Based on the 1908 novel by Somerset Maugham.

Haining cheats again by offering just an extract from a novel. He chose the passage describing the hypnotised heroine's dream of Hell, which became the film's delirious highlight.

Maugham is a celebrated author in Britain and many of his stories have been adapted as movies through the years (most recently The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton) but at their most popular in the 1940s. Most of his novels were dramas, but The Magician was a dark fantasy focussed on a caricature of occultist Aleister Crowley, reimagined as the bragging Oliver Haddo, who might actually have discovered the mastery of dark powers. The silent adaption is faithful to the story and characterisations of the novel, right down to the French locations, though it adds a dramatic subplot to open the film.
 
Warner Archive have just released this influential silent horror. I was excited to see Germany's horror star Paul Wegener (The Golem, Alraune, Svengali, The Student of Prague) in his only American film. This was easy casting to arrange because director Rex Ingram shot the film entirely in France, boasting many actual locations. It was obviously easy for a German actor to appear in a Hollywood film when they were silent.

At the time, any news of Crowley was usually scandalous (he was still alive), possibly enough to damage the film's chances - it didn't do well. But Ingram implies much more than he shows, and also adds tongue-in-cheek humour to the melodrama. There's a wonderful moment when Wegener exaggerates his character's exit with a superbly haughty throw of his cloak over the shoulder.
 
A hunchback dwarf in a mountain-top tower housing a huge laboratory is intended as a ridiculous egocentric overly-dramatic setting. It manages to satirise Frankenstein five years before it was made. All that's missing is the flashy flashing electrical equipment. The scene in Hell is more serious and more sexual, a visually different depiction to Hollywood's usual reliance on Dante.
 
As well as pre-dating Frankenstein, suffering censorship problems with the subject of satanism, the story also veers into the world of Svengali, who Wegener portrayed the following year. Much of Haddo's success is due to his powers of hypnotism.

It's a fascinating and influential silent movie, beautifully made. If only it had been more successful in America, Paul Wegener and his early achievements as an actor might be more widely known, rather than just as the big guy who played the hulking Golem...

FREAKS
(1933, USA)

Based on Spurs (1923) by Tod Robbins.

Director Tod Browning chose this story to continue his love affair with circus life and trump the horror of Dracula (1931) more thoroughly than the studio actually wanted.

The short story Spurs provided the premise of the plot. A beautiful horse rider in love with a strong man laughs off the affections of a dwarf until he inherits a fortune from his uncle. She decides to marry for money, then murder him. The outcome of the story is very different to the film - brutal, sadistic and involves a pair of spurs...


The little person of the story is far from the helpless and sympathetic character of the film. He's a suspicious dwarf who has the upper hand because of a huge, fierce dog under his command. Author Tod Robbins earlier wrote The Unholy Three (in 1917) which Tod Browning had adapted as a silent film (in 1925) starring Lon Chaney. It was remade as a talkie (in 1930) and proved to be Chaney's last film.

Despite the parade of real-life physical abnormality in TV documentaries, this 1933 film still has the power to unsettle and shock, mainly due to the extreme nature of the circus people's disabilities and the lack of medical and public understanding they must have endured. While Browning had a circus background to draw on for realism and inspiration, his portrayal of the 'freaks' is two-faced, inspiring much criticism and censorship through the decades. Though they are sympathetically portrayed through much of the film, Browning switches to using them to prey on our fears, as scary monsters in the nightmarish climax.

But this would prove to be the only portrayal of many extreme physical disabilities for several decades and the largely positive portrayal was contrary to the regular movie rules that disfigurement equated with evil - scars or eyes/limbs missing visually meant that they were bad guys. Speaking of scars, Count Zaroff has a corker...

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
(1933, USA)

Based on The Most Dangerous Game (1924) by Richard Connell.

A classic and often reused story - a hunter who likes to hunt... humans. A simple short story that quickly unfolds as a shipwreck survivor learns that his ship was wrecked deliberately. Anyone left alive provides quarry for a mad huntsman living in an island fortress, from which there's no escape.

The story features a single (first-person) protagonist in a prolonged battle with Zaroff. The film would add a gradual realisation of the survivors' plight, a love interest and a nasty trophy room...


The first and best movie adaption also re-used the sets of King Kong (1933), with many of the same cast and crew (while the extensive animation was being finished). It's fun to see Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong together again, with Fay running across Skull Island's famous log bridge, but being chased by Count Zaroff and his pack of hell hounds. It's my favourite of the many versions because it's the purest telling of the tale - there are no subplots or mucking about - we're on the island the whole time. The film is almost too short, barely over an hour.

I also like this as a flipside of Kong's world. As if they got rid of the giant gorilla and made a prototype Battle Royale instead. For its age, it's still exciting and even brutal, though most of the explicit violence was toned down (cracking of bones removed from the soundtrack, torture and mutilation cut completely out).


This is the greatest character that Leslie Banks (Went The Day Well?) played -the insane Zaroff, with Joel McCrea (the star of Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent) and Fay Wray looking bedraggled, but gorgeous, even after dragging themselves through a swamp.

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER

(1936, USA)

Based on Dracula’s Guest (1897) by Bram Stoker.

This was first published in 1914, but was written in 1897 as the opening chapter of Stoker's most famous novel Dracula. It describes how Jonathan Harker encounters the weird and uncanny before he even reaches Castle Dracula.

It's hard to see exactly how this became the inspiration for Dracula's Daughter, only one late scene in the film bears any relation to the story. Presumably publicity was trying to hype up as many links as possible between the first ever Dracula sequel and the literary prequel.

Dracula's Daughter is an early good example of a horror sequel. The story continues directly on from the end of Dracula (1931) with Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan again) being arrested for murdering the Count! Meanwhile a mysterious hooded woman spirits away the corpse (a rather obvious dummy substituting for Lugosi) but continuing his work in obtaining involuntary blood donations. Like her father, she is also very interested in female victims...



This is a very good Universal horror, but would've been even better if it hadn't been restricted by new censorship rules for horror films. The gothic mood is constantly interrupted by bursts of comic relief, mostly provided by an unlucky policeman (silent comedy star Billy Bevan). But Gloria Holden is extraordinary and ethereal and her duel of wits with the living is more effectively dramatic than the staginess of Dracula.

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER
(1944, USA, also called All That Money Can Buy)

Based on The Devil And Daniel Webster (1937) by Steven Vincent Benet.

This story is in itself an adaption of a tale as old as the hills. A variation of the Faust legend given an American mid-19th century setting. Whenever you get a wish, there's always a catch. The film was famously referenced in The Simpsons' very first Treehouse of Horror, which is a good taster for the finale - a courtroom drama staged by the Devil himself.

A young farmer, Jabez Stone, struggling to raise a family, curses his luck and swears that he'd do anything to improve his life. Out of nowhere, a stranger helps change his fortunes for the next seven years, in return for a small consideration, his soul.

It helps if you know a little early American history (gulp), in particular Daniel Webster. Here he's a popular politician dedicated to helping the farmers. Luckily for Jabez Stone, he's also a great lawyer. In reality, Webster also ran for President no less than three times.

The story decribes many of Webster's achievements without detailing them. So all the dialogue for the famous legal scene had to be written from scratch.


The lighting in this film is extraordinary. It noticeably and literally adds shades to the performances, and transforms simple sets into frightening tableaux. The Devil, though he's never actually named, arrives through a barn door - doesn't sound like much - but the lighting makes it startling. It reminded me of the appearance of a demon, the highlight of the bonkers Esperanto Incubus (1966).

With Bernard Herrmann composing the music, sharp black and white cinematography, and ironic dialogue unafraid to highlight inhumanity and injustice, the film looks like a pilot movie for The Twilight Zone, but fourteen years early. As Jabez Stone gets closer to his fate, the denizens of Hell come up and meet him. These shadowy glimpses of half-seen apparitions are still scary.

Until I'd re-read The Ghouls for this article, I'd barely heard of this film, though I now realise its credentials are close to legendary, being produced at RKO Studios the same year as Citizen Kane, sharing some of the same production crew, like the composer (Herrmann) and editor (Robert Wise).

Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, And Then There Were None) plays 'Mr Scratch', constantly reminding me of his son, John (actor - Myra Breckinridge, director - The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon) who I've enjoyed in many films. John handled cigars just like his dad. Walter's performance is outstanding though subtle - I don't think he raises his voice throughout the film. This lack of threat enables him to gain friends and allies and then betray their trust...


I was delighted to see Simone Simon co-star as a mysterious temptress. The following year she'd of course take the lead in the first of two RKO horror films as Irena, one of The Cat People. Val Lewton's films had to be low-budget because of RKO's losses from Citizen Kane. Their loss, our gain. Simon plays Belle, a French nanny who casually appears out of nowhere...

The production design is ambitious and successful, portraying very similar situations to Days of Heaven but entirely on a soundstage. Director William Dieterle later directed the great version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1939.

A supernatural fantasy hinting at the horrors of damnation, this is a superb movie.

The Ghouls was first published as a single hardcover by W. H. Allen in 1971, then as two paperbacks from Orbit in 1974. I've always thought that the cover needed a stronger hint that these stories were connected to films - perhaps using photographs. I've changed my mind after seeing the US paperback edition (above).

The superior cover art for both paperbacks, painted by John Holmes, is the stuff of nightmares. More of his gruesome and surreal cover art can be viewed here on British pulp horror fiction site The Vault of Evil. (A big thank you to Johnny Mains, of Noose and Gibbet Publishing for the info.)

Wait till you see the cover of Book Two...

DANTE'S INFERNO (1935, 1924) - black and white visions of hell

Three films inspired by storyboards from the 19th century...
I'm not interested in the concept of hell as a final destination, but it's a great scenario for a horror movie - demons, chaos, torture and the like. The new video game (and spin-off animated movie) of Dante's Inferno demonstrates that the story still powerfully captures the imagination.

While 13th century poet Dante Alighieri wrote his Divine Comedy in three sections, the first part Inferno focussed on the punishments of hell. While Dante's epic poem is highly regarded in Italian literature, it's the 1857 illustrations by Gustav Doré that are regarded as definitive. Doré's printing methods off wood engravings make his visualisations appear deceptively older.


Doré's fantastic and evocative work also drives the cinematic visions of Dante's Inferno, able to inspire camera composition and lighting effects. The movie adaptions that I've seen (1924, 1935) are more interesting to me than any recent incarnations, because they bring to life the black and white gothic of Dore’s engravings. The scratchy faded quality of unrestored film even adds to their dreamlike quality. The films could almost be ancient newsreels of expeditions through the depths of hell.

I first became aware of the movies called Dante's Inferno from a few startling stills in Classics of the Horror Film and A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen (all shown here), before I encountered any of Gustav Doré's work. In both films, ambitious underworlds were realised through huge sets shrouded in flame and smoke, with special make-ups to transform actors into demons. The limited information around repeatedly guessed that the 1935 film had recycled the 'hell' footage from the 1924 version. But having seen both, this doesn't appear to be true.

The biblical morality and the classical precedents of art and literature also enabled film-makers the licence to fill the screen with torture and nudity...



 

DANTE'S INFERNO(1935, USA)

The title actually refers to a fairground attraction, the story is of the people who run it. Spencer Tracy plays Jim Carter, a lazy sailor who loses his job as a ship's boiler stoker. He hits rock bottom when he has to make up as a black guy, (gulp), poking his face through a hole in a sideshow tent as a target for Coney Island punters to throw wooden balls at! I shudder to think what that game was called... Tracy remains in blackface for several more scenes, even as Pop McWade (Henry B Walthall - a regular performer for D.W. Griffith, also the scientist in Tod Browning's The Devil Doll) shows him around his elaborate exhibit devoted to Dante.

The two team up when Carter drums up new business for the empty attraction by hyping up all the famous, beautiful women of history that have been damned for eternity and the tortures they now endure. (Ironically, the film also sold itself by exaggerating the horrors of hell and the nudity of its inhabitants.) As the exhibit becomes a hit, Carter builds up an entertainment empire, only to fall foul of too many shortcuts in health and safety and the results of bulldozering his rivals...

The meandering storyline fails to portray Carter as being that much of a baddie, as his business practices are infinitely less shoddy than Gordon Gecko's. At home he's such a convincing family man it's hard to dislike him. He's hardly 'hell' material and the story is often far removed from anything from Dante. The climax is also confusingly off-topic, a spectacularly fiery disaster at sea which, luckily, only an ex-boiler stoker can avert.
The movie's highlight is Carter's guilty fever dream - an eight-minute descent into hell that absolutely looks like Gustav Dore's engravings. This haunting sequence is quite extraordinary, the focus of the film's publicity and posters. Huge elaborate sets, incorporating pools, fires, smoke effects and stuntwork, covered in dozens of half-naked extras. Cavernous functional scale models and matte paintings blend with the live action. Admittedly it all looks like it's from an entirely different film.

Obviously the writhings of the nearly naked actors had to be sufficiently subdued to get past the Hays Code, but the visible lessening of their suffering makes hell look, well, not that bad, and even a place I'd like to visit. There are only fit young men and women in this underworld. The women's bodies are practically obscured by overlong wigs, leaving the men to bear the brunt of the nudity. Frankly, they're all rather hot.
The hooded figures trooping around the underground mountains obviously inspired the hellish sequence 'inside' Disney's The Black Hole. Most of the 'vision of hell' is on YouTube, re-edited to the music of Enigma...

This movie is of interest as a Spencer Tracy vehicle, and as a melodrama with two spectacular scenes of disaster. But the vision of hell is easily worth the price of admission. Dante's Inferno (1935) needs a release on DVD, though it can still be spotted on TV on Turner Classic Movies.

DANTE'S INFERNO(1924, USA)

To check if the 1935 version used any footage from the earlier film, I resorted to a 67 minute bootleg of this silent movie version. Here the story sticks closer to Dante's message, and spends far more screen time in hell.

Mortimer Judd is rich and ruthless. He kicks his pet dog, he's that bad. He's a slumlord during the depression, and his business has just bankrupted his next door neighbour, Craig, driving him to the brink of suicide. As a parting shot, Craig sends Judd a volume of Dante's Inferno, inscribed with a curse...

As Judd reads the book, the curse visits him in the form of a demon, causing him to visualise Dante's story. As the poet strays from the path, Beatrice summons Virgil to protect him (pictured) and lead him to safety, but the only way out is through hell... An angel even flies in with a blade of light, to force away attacking the demons and predatory creatures. As Judd watches Virgil leading Dante through hell, his life also descends in a downward spiral. The demon sends a few just rewards his way while he's alive, as a taster for his inevitable punishment in the fiery pit.

The story owes much to A Christmas Carol, though it's harder hitting in many ways, showing enthusiastic devils arriving to take away doomed souls from their expired bodies. The difference is that, unlike Scrooge, Judd can't see the supernatural visitor who is inspiring his visions and steering his fate.

Like the 1935 remake, hell is realised with huge sets, crowded caverns covered in naked extras, surrounded by flame and clouds of smoke. Foreground miniatures and forced perspective angles expand the scale of the vision, adding giant demons. The smaller devilish inhabitants are a lively lot, wielding flaming pitchforks and, ahem, whips. I noticed that the tableau of the naked girl being whipped (pictured above) had been censored out of this print, only showing the whipping, not the whippee. Possibly it was too sexual, too violent or too naked!
The damned being trapped under slab-like tombs, the curtain of fire, the forest of suicide victims, all come from the pages of Dante as drawn by Doré. But while several tableau are inspired by the same images as the 1935 remake, the footage has been filmed very differently, as far as I could see.

Coincidentally, this 1924 movie also has a character in blackface make-up, Judd's butler. A then-typical portrayal of slow-moving, eye-rolling comic relief. Watching some of his short films recently, it was interesting that Buster Keaton used black actors as incidental characters in his short films, around the same time and earlier, without such stereotyping or the need to use white guys in make-up.

This version of Dante's Inferno has the most lively and twisty plot, intertwined with many more ancient visions of damnation. But it isn’t available on DVD either. The consensus is that two reels (about twenty minutes) of the film has been lost forever (the original running time should have been 91 minutes), though the story didn't seem to suffer for it!

INFERNO
(1911, Italy, L'inferno)

While researching this article, I learned of an even earlier silent version from Italy. It's a straightforward recreation of Dante's tour through hell, led by the Roman poet Virgil. There's no 'wraparound' story set in the present day. Typical of the time, the action is presented wide and distantly, like a stage, with few cuts or close-ups.

This very early film starts off resembling the short films of George Melies, with very basic visual effects and pantomime devils, the main difference being the exterior locations, quarries and cliffs standing in for the caverns of the underworld, but rather overlit for somewhere that's supposed to be underground.

The achievements of the film become more evident further on. Dozens of near-naked extras portraying the damned in various stages of suffering, even being buried headfirst in the ground with their legs sticking out. Some basic splitscreen work to make the sky black, render a walking corpse headless, and portray the gigantic Lucifer.

More interesting costumes are the winged demons, and some elaborate animal suits of a lion, harpies and a gryphon. Though the wirework to make them fly is more like a scenery change. It's still an ambitious achievement for a time when movie-making was so young.

This version, the nearly-nude inhabitants of hell at least look like everyday folk, rather than the beautiful denizens of Hollywood's hell. Limbless people are even used to represent the damned, predating the climax of Michael Winner's The Sentinel!

According to a comment on IMDB, this was the first feature-length film to be screened in the US, breaking the feared 'one-hour' barrier, at a time when exhibitors didn't think audiences would sit still that long for a relatively new entertainment! Arguably this could then be described as the first ever horror film. Once again the main draw of the movie was a mix of nudity and torture.

Sadly this, the least interesting version of the three, is the only one out on DVD (pictured), as it was recently restored and rescored by Tangerine Dream.

The 1911 Inferno also has a website with more images.

Watching these again, my allegiances changed from 1935 to 1924 as my favourite film version, though the hell sequence in the 1935 version is easily the most spectacular.

 

J'ACCUSE (1919 and 1938) - return of the war dead

J'ACCUSE

(France, silent version 1919, sound remake 1938)

Powerful pleas for an end to war

Never thinking I'd get to see it, I was fascinated by the images from J'accuse in the 1975 book Catastrophe: The End of Cinema (an illustrated guide to visions of the apocalypse that predated the 70's 'disaster movie' craze, and also anticipated the climax of Inglourious Basterds). I saw my first clip in David Gill and Kevin Brownlow's brilliant 1996 documentary The Other Hollywood (which looked at six European countries that once had film industries to rival America, before they were all put on hold by the two World Wars - enough time for Hollywood to dominate the market).


Director Abel Gance rose to command the country's biggest budget for a silent film with the epic Napoleon (1927), pushing the medium to its technological limits. A James Cameron for silent cinema, Gance attempted to include a sequence shot in every film format yet devised, including his famous triptych of three side-by-side sequences, and even a 3D section (removed from the final cut).

But Gance's two versions of J'accuse interest me more, for their early anti-war theme and horror-themed climaxes, where the war dead rise up and march on the living. A zombie fantasy to convey the real horrors of war. But the supernatural isn't the central premise to the films by any means. Gance is trying to convey many aspects of the impact of war through emotion rather than shock, through reality rather than fantasy.

Such bold statements from a famous director, I thought these films would be easy to see. But the 1919 film has only just hit DVD (as a special edition restoration from Flicker Alley), and the 1938 remake was restored and last released on VHS in 1991 in the US. Such sparse access through the years has meant that films like All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, 1979) are better known for representing World War One.

J'accuse (1919)

Abel Gance wrote and directed both versions, and even shot actual fighting during the end of the war. I'd love to know how on Earth he was allowed to borrow thousands of soldiers for the climactic marching scenes, during wartime, for an anti-war film! The splendid photography, lighting and rapid editing help the film look ahead of its time.

The story starts in a small French village, where idealistic poet Jean Diaz (Romuald Joubé), and brutish huntsman Francois (the impressive Séverin-Mars) are both in love with the same woman. Their rivalry is interrupted when they enlist to defend France from the German invasion. I was then surprised by a little comedy as both rivals find themselves in the same regiment.


When their beloved Edith is captured by the advancing enemy, both men are driven to the edge of sanity amidst the bullets and missiles of the trenches of 'the western front'. The war-torn love triangle reminded me of Pearl Harbor (2001).

Eventually Jean is discharged from the army with shell shock, leaving Francois tortured that Jean can now see his wife, who is actually hiding another more terrible secret from her husband.


When the war finally ends, Jean dares the townspeople not to forget their dead relatives and friends. He tries to convince them that the dead soldiers will rise up and revisit them unless their consciences are clear. Is that really going to happen, or has he been driven mad?


For the most part this is more melodrama than war film, but it benefits from being made at the time. There's realism in the emotional effects of war on the families and soldiers alike. Even small details ring horrifyingly true - the extended scenes of families saying farewell to sons, fathers and friends as they head for almost certain death, the soldiers' growing immunity to being around corpses, Francois thinking of his hunting dog as he lies in hospital... all well-observed and still uncliched.

Gance demonstrates his skill in directing actors, using choice close-ups, symbolic superimpositions and even rapidfire editing, I found his overuse of the iris effect the only dated visual device. But this remains an accessible and sophisticated film for 1919, helped by a good score, authentic tinted scenes and a realistic projection speed. It's still very watchable, owing to the relatively natural performances.


The new DVD presents an often scratchy, jumpy print, but one that gives us the original version of the story. Despite being 90 years old, many of the film elements still look good today, preserving the carefully lit cinematography. The montage that visualises Jean's poem to the Sun is particularly beautiful.

J'accuse (1938)

The remake is a very different film, a far more emotional and direct plea, albeit a mysterious one. When he completed the 1919 film the war had just ended, but in 1938 Gance was desperate to prevent it happening again.

It plunges straight into the war, eliminating practically the first two hours of his original story. The rest of the scenario is drastically altered and tightened. I only spotted a couple of shots recycled from the first film, and that was actual war footage.

Jean and Francois are still rivalling for Edith's affections. But in an attempt to settle their differences, Francois makes Jean swear that if he dies, Jean won't hook up with his wife. Victor Francen (as Jean) is so intense when promising his friend, it's almost hypnotic, and frighteningly convincing. Throughout the story, Francen repeatedly and passionately laments the dead with enough tears and conviction for a dozen Oscars. I'm surprised that the only other film I've noticed him in was as the ailing concert pianist in the Hollywood horror The Beast With Five Fingers (1945).

Gance is harsher, angrier, inter-cutting between the actual victory parade in Paris through the Arch De Triomphe, and shots of graves and corpses, all while upbeat marching music blares out. As the world gets back to normal after the war, Jean returns to live on the site of the battleground, near the graves of his comrades. His only friend, the cafe owner who kept the soldiers spirits high during the war.


The centre section of the story then tries to rush through the love triangle plot of the first film, adding a second more unsettling triangle between his beloved Edith and her daughter (who confusingly look the same age)! The narrative then skips forward twenty years to the eve of World War Two, suddenly introducing that Jean works at a glass factory where new war technology is being prepared.

One night, in the only passage of the film that deliberately looks like a horror film, his hair turns white while he's off tunnelling among the tombs. What has he seen? What has he learnt? He hints that he's now tense about what's going to happen and the power he now has...

I wish the core of the film was Jean's promise to his fallen comrades and his progressively more mysterious connection with their graveyard, as the scenes in his hometown appear to be far less relevant here. He appears to have been driven insane by his connection with the dead, rather than by shell shock in the first film.

This is a much darker film, with many evocative passages pleading for sanity. The climax is far longer, more elaborate, a little confusing and pregnant with unused possibilities. The march of the war dead is realised both by stony (clay?) make-up and hundreds of actual war veterans who had been maimed and disfigured in the war, at a time when plastic surgery and prosthetic replacement were in still their infancy.


I suppose it's not important how Jean calls the dead back - it appears to be by sheer force of will - but with a two-hour running time, a little more time spent on his methods would have been welcome. For such a monumental build-up, the final pay-off is powerful, but relatively short and ultimately too simple. Obviously, the dead want the living to remember their sacrifice, nothing more. I'd like a sequel to see what the dead did next! With all the rage and sacrifice, I'd have expected more anger and choicer targets. In a similar vein, Joe Dante's Masters of Horror episode 'Homecoming' (2005) brilliantly brought all the dead soldiers back to life... to vote!

Again Gance uses real war footage, but by 1938 film projection speeds had changed, resulting in a marked difference in quality and far too 'sped up'. His use of cross-cutting is more jarring as a result. But I'd have thought this version of J'accuse was one to deserve a special edition DVD. The only copy I could find was this 20 year old VHS from Connoisseur Video.



I'd also recommend The Great War (1964) as a first hand guide to the First World War. Using only documentary and newsreel footage, as well as eyewitness testimonials from both sides, this BBC series exhaustively described the harrowing history of 'the war to end all wars'. It was recently released on DVD in the UK.

The World At War (1973) is an epic documentary series about the Second World War, and has just been restored and released on Blu-Ray. It's a harrowing and thorough history lesson, that I'd be reluctant to see again in any greater visual detail. Some of it is so gruesome and tragic.