Through a Glass Darkly-Ingmar Bergman

Fellini-Satyricon

Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf

An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past in Ingmar Bergman's only horror film, which takes place on a windy island. During "the hour of the wolf" - between midnight and dawn - he tells his wife about his most painful memories.

Olivier de Sagazan: Transfiguration

The Art of Austin Osman Spare

Decadence 12

Lethe
Come, lie upon my breast, cruel, insensitive soul, Adored tigress, monster with the indolent air; I want to plunge trembling fingers for a long time In the thickness of your heavy mane,
To bury my head, full of pain In your skirts redolent of your perfume, To inhale, as from a withered flower, The moldy sweetness of my defunct love.
I wish to sleep! to sleep rather than live! In a slumber doubtful as death, I shall remorselessly cover with my kisses Your lovely body polished like copper.
To bury my subdued sobbing Nothing equals the abyss of your bed, Potent oblivion dwells upon your lips And Lethe flows in your kisses.
My fate, hereafter my delight, I'll obey like one predestined; Docile martyr, innocent man condemned, Whose fervor aggravates the punishment.
I shall suck, to drown my rancor, Nepenthe and the good hemlock From the charming tips of those pointed breasts That have never guarded a heart.
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954).

Dante's Inferno (1935)

Dante's Inferno is a 1935 motion picture loosely based on Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy. It is primarily remembered for a 10-minute depiction of hell realised by director Harry Lachman, himself an established post-impressionist painter. PLOT SUMMARY: Jim Carter (Spencer Tracy) takes over a fairground show illustrating scenes from Dante. An inspector declares the fair unsafe but is bribed by Carter. There is a fatal disaster at the fair during which we see the vision of the Inferno. Carter establishes a new venture with an unsafe floating casino. Music by Alexander Scriabin, 'Mysterium - Prefatory Act'.

Arcana 6 (The Art of H.R. Giger)

Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger (born February 5, 1940) is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. He won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for his design work on the film Alien. Giger was born in Chur, Graubünden Canton, Switzerland, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a 'breadless profession', and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zurich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970.[2] Giger had a relationship with Swiss actress Li Tobler until she committed suicide in 1975. He married Mia Bonzanigo in 1979; they separated a year and a half later. Giger's style and thematic execution have been influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several records. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work. Giger got his start with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, Giger has worked predominantly in airbrush, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. However, he has now largely abandoned large airbrush works in favor of works with pastels, markers or ink. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, described as "biomechanical". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger Music by Robert Rich & Lustmord, 'Hidden Refuge'.

In Ghostly Japan (David Hochbaum)

'Kaidan Shu - Tales of Mist and Wind' is a cycle of works realized by David Hochbaum in 2011, inspired by Japanese ghostly legends and folklore. http://www.davidhochbaum.com/ A short glossary of the main Japanese ghosts: OBAKE (00:10) and BAKEMONO are a class of yōkai, preternatural creatures in Japanese folklore. Literally, the terms mean a thing that changes, referring to a state of transformation or shapeshifting. These words are often translated as ghost, but primarily they refer to living things or supernatural beings who have taken on a temporary transformation, and these bakemono are distinct from the spirits of the dead. However, as a secondary usage, the term obake can be a synonym for yūrei, the ghost of a deceased human being. Obake derived from household objects are often called tsukumogami. A bakemono usually either disguises itself as a human or appears in a strange or terrifying form such as a hitotsume-kozō, an ōnyūdō, or a noppera-bō. In common usage, any bizarre apparition can be referred to as a bakemono or an obake whether or not it is believed to have some other form, making the terms roughly synonymous with yōkai. KUCHISAKE-ONNA (00:52, 04:42) ("Slit-Mouth Woman"), in Japanese mythology, is a woman who is mutilated by a jealous husband and returns as a malicious spirit. The Kuchisake-onna legend became popular enough to cause some panic in Japan during the 1980s, and there are even reports of schools asking children to go home in groups for safety. YUKI-ONNA (02:34) appears on snowy nights as a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and blue lips. Her inhumanly pale or even transparent skin makes her blend into the snowy landscape. She sometimes wears a white kimono, but other legends describe her as nude, with only her face and hair standing out against the snow. Despite her inhuman beauty, her eyes can strike terror into mortals. She floats across the snow, leaving no footprints (in fact, some tales say she has no feet, a feature of many Japanese ghosts), and she can transform into a cloud of mist or snow if threatened. ROKUROKUBI (02:42) are yōkai found in Japanese folklore. They look like normal human beings by day, but at night they gain the ability to stretch their necks to great lengths. They can also change their faces to those of terrifying oni to better scare mortals. In their daytime human forms, rokurokubi often live undetected and may even take mortal spouses. Many rokurokubi become so accustomed to such a life that they take great pains to keep their demonic forms secret. They are tricksters by nature, however, and the urge to frighten and spy on human beings is hard to resist. Some rokurokubi thus resort to revealing themselves only to drunkards, fools, the sleeping, or the blind in order to satisfy these urges. Other rokurokubi have no such compunctions and go about frightening mortals with abandon. A few, it is said, are not even aware of their true nature and consider themselves normal humans. This last group stretch their necks out while asleep in an involuntary action; upon waking up in the morning, they find they have weird dreams regarding seeing their surroundings in unnatural angles. YOKAI (03:00) (ghost, phantom, strange apparition) are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for "otherworldly" and "weird". Yōkai range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them. Often they possess animal features (such as the Kappa, which is similar to a turtle, or the Tengu which has wings), other times they can appear mostly human, some look like inanimate objects and others have no discernible shape. Yōkai usually have a spiritual supernatural power, withshapeshifting being one of the most common. Yōkai that have the ability to shapeshift are called obake. Japanese folklorists and historians use yōkai as "supernatural or unaccountable phenomena to their informants". In the Edo period, many artists, such asToriyama Sekien, created yōkai inspired by folklore or their own ideas, and in the present, several yōkai created by them (e.g. Kameosa and Amikiri, see below) are wrongly considered as being of legendary origin. ZASHIKI-WARASHI (03:08). The name breaks down to zashiki, a tatami floored room, and warashi, an archaic regional term for a child. The appearance of this spirit is that of a 5 or 6 year child with bobbed hair and a red face. Zashiki-warashi can be found in well-maintained and preferably large old houses. It is said that once a zashiki-warashi inhabits a house, it brings the residence great fortune; on the other hand, should a zashiki-warashi depart, the domain soon falls into a steep decline. Music by Atrium Carceri, 'The Call'.

The Dark Visions of John Santerineross

A Short History of Decay (Emil Cioran)

Faust 1926

Faust (German title: Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage) is a silent film produced in 1926 by UFA, directed by F.W. Murnau, starring Gösta Ekman as Faust, Emil Jannings as Mephisto, Camilla Horn as Gretchen/Marguerite, Frida Richard as her mother, Wilhelm Dieterle as her brother and Yvette Guilbert as Marthe Schwerdtlein, her aunt. Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version. UFA wanted Ludwig Berger to direct Faust, as Murnau was engaged with Variety; Murnau pressured the producer and, backed by Jannings, eventually persuaded Erich Pommer to let him direct the movie. Faust was Murnau's last German movie, and directly afterward he moved to the US under contract to William Fox to direct Sunrise (1927); when the film premiered in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo of Berlin, Murnau was already shooting in Hollywood. * Gösta Ekman - Faust * Emil Jannings - Mephisto * Camilla Horn - Gretchen * Frida Richard - Gretchen's mother * William Dieterle - Valentin * Yvette Guilbert - Marthe Schwerdtlein * Eric Barclay - Duke of Parma * Hanna Ralph - Duchess of Parma * Werner Fuetterer - Archangel * Anderhusan von Arteblach - Gretchen's aunt Murnau's Faust was the most complex and expensive production undertaken by UFA. Filming took six months and a cost of 2 million marks (only half was recovered at the box office), until it was surpassed by Metropolis the following year. According to film historians Faust seriously impacted studio shooting and special effects techniques. Murnau uses two cameras, both filming multiple shots; many scenes were filmed time and again. As an example, a short sequence of the contract being written on parchment in fire took an entire day to film.

Salem-King Night