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Cabinet of Caligari

Play trailer Poster for Cabinet of Caligari Released May 25, 1962 1h 45m Horror Play Trailer Watchlist
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Tomatometer 3 Reviews 31% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
When Jane Lindstrom (Glynis Johns) has car trouble, she seeks help at a nearby mansion. The owner, Caligari (Dan O'Herlihy), invites her to stay the night, but he proves to be a bizarre host as he begins questioning her about her sex life, showing her pornography and peeping on her in the bath. The next morning, she realizes that she is being held against her will, but her entreaties for help from Caligari's other guests go strangely unheeded. Was it really car trouble that brought her here?

Critics Reviews

View All (3) Critics Reviews
Chris Alexander Alexander On Film The film serves as an ultra-sexualized exercise in pop-psychology and increasingly bizarre, hallucinatory exchanges of dialogue. Mar 30, 2022 Full Review Dwight MacDonald Esquire Magazine Its flatly realistic style is not appropriate to the subject and the snatches of arty camera work the director throws in when he thinks of it merely add to the confusion. Aug 1, 2019 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (16) audience reviews
Stephen W I was surprised as to how good this is, a lovely intrigueing strange mystery! Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/10/24 Full Review nick s The production quality of the film was fine, but it was too drawn out... especially if you guess the plot early. I was bored. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/16/24 Full Review Steve D Some interesting twists but it never quite works as a whole. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 07/18/23 Full Review Audience Member Blobbo not understand low rating. Movie pretty good representation of paranoid schizophrenia from patient point view. OOPS - BLOBBO REVIEW GIVE AWAY SURPRISE ENDING! Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member The differences between this movie and its silent film inspiration are significant. Here Caligari is a controlling Freudian madman, keeping Jane against her will and taunting her with scarcely glimpsed perversities. Kay and Bloch do away with the somnambulist Cesar and the carnival setting, focusing instead on the implications of the earlier film's ending. But while the majority of the action seems much more "real world"than in Weine's film, the climax in which Jane descends fully into madness is a real stunner. One particular sequence in which Jane sees a baker pulling loaves of bread shaped like infants out of a blazing oven even seems to prefigure David Lynch's Eraserhead in both theme and imagery--in fact, I would not be surprised to learn this film was a direct influence on that one. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member A strange tale that is a long wind up to a final twist ending of the Twilight Zone sort. Impressive acting by an ensemble cast but with a script filled with quite pretentious and stilted dialog. Horror is something of an overstatement in describing this movie. If you are expecting a remake of the 1920 silent classic, this is definitely not it. What it really is the viewer only learns at the end, at which point a lot of pretentious dialog makes more sense than it seemed to when you initially heard it. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Cabinet of Caligari

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis When Jane Lindstrom (Glynis Johns) has car trouble, she seeks help at a nearby mansion. The owner, Caligari (Dan O'Herlihy), invites her to stay the night, but he proves to be a bizarre host as he begins questioning her about her sex life, showing her pornography and peeping on her in the bath. The next morning, she realizes that she is being held against her will, but her entreaties for help from Caligari's other guests go strangely unheeded. Was it really car trouble that brought her here?
Director
Roger Kay
Producer
Roger Kay
Screenwriter
Robert Bloch
Distributor
20th Century Fox
Genre
Horror
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
May 25, 1962, Original
Release Date (DVD)
Sep 6, 2005
Runtime
1h 45m