Lon Chaney in "Flesh And Blood" (1922)

Cartoons start at 7:00 PM, feature at 8:00 PM. Tonight’s feature is silent movie legend Lon Chaney in Flesh And Blood (1922)!

Lon Chaney plays an escaped convict who disguises himself as a cripple to elude the police so he can see his daughter (Edith Roberts). But she is engaged to the son of the crook who framed him, complicating his plan of revenge. It features an interesting setting in San Francisco 's Chinatown . Although he was already an up-and-coming actor of note, it would be another year before Chaney became a major star (and future Hollywood legend) in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Nate At The Movies Goes Christmas I

Starting at 7:00 PM, we will screen cartoons and shorts with a Christmas theme. Then, at 8:00 PM, we’ll view an early silent film adaptation of Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol,” featuring your host Nate Butler on the piano. Following that we will “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” in MST3K mode!

Nate At The Movies Goes Christmas II

Nate At The Movies Goes Christmas! ALL AGES ARE WELCOME – no admission charge.

Starting at 7:00 PM, we will screen cartoons and shorts with a Christmas theme. Then, at 8:00 PM, we’ll view an early silent film adaptation of Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol,” featuring your host Nate Butler on the piano. Following that we will continue to watch cartoons and shorts, including the moving MGM classic “Peace On Earth.” The evening will end around 10:00 PM.

Georges Melies'
"A Trip to the Moon” (1902)

Georges Méliès’ classic “A Trip to the Moon”! Plus other short subjects by Méliès, who is arguably the father of film special effects.

Georges Méliès was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He was one of the earliest filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his films. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first "cinemagician." Before making films, he was a stage magician at the theatre Robert-Houdin.

He directed 531 films between 1896 and 1914, ranging in length from one to forty minutes. In subject matter, these films are often similar to the magic theater shows that Méliès had been doing, containing "tricks" and impossible events, such as objects disappearing or changing size.

His most famous film is “A Trip to the Moon,” made in 1902, which includes the celebrated scene in which a spaceship hits the eye of the man in the moon. Also famous is “The Impossible Voyage” from 1904. Both of these films are about strange voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne. These are considered to be some of the most important early science fiction films, although their approach is closer to fantasy.

Douglas Fairbanks in
"The Three Musketeers” (1921)

“The Three Musketeers” (1921) is an American silent film based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It was directed by Fred Niblo and starred Douglas Fairbanks as d'Artagnan.

The young Gascon D'Artagnan arrives in Paris , his heart set on joining the king's Musketeers. He is taken under the wings of three of the most respected and feared Musketeers, Porthos, Aramis, and Athos. Together they fight to save France and the honor of a lady from the machinations of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu.

The athletic Douglas Fairbanks's one-handed handspring to grab a sword during a fight scene in this film is considered as one of the great stunts of the early cinema period.

Buster Keaton in "The Haunted House” (1921)

“The Haunted House” (1921)
Directed by Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton
Starring Buster Keaton , Virginia Fox, Joe Keaton, Joe Roberts, Edward F. Cline

“The Haunted House” is a 1921 short comedy film starring comedian Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton is a bank teller who becomes involved in a hold-up, counterfeiters, and a theatrical troupe posing as spooks in a haunted house. The film ends with a famous sequence of Keaton ascending to heaven, and then descending to Hades. Another memorable sequence of the film involves bank teller Buster spilling glue all over his counter, reminiscent of a scene in his first film “The Butcher Boy”.

Also: Charles Bowers in "There It Is" and oodles of Halloween cartoons!

"Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages” (1922)

Häxan (English title: The Witches or Witchcraft Through The Ages) is a 1922 Swedish/Danish silent film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Based partly on Christensen's study of the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century German guide for inquisitors, Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts.

The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films. With Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish krona. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion.

Buster Keatron in
"Steamboat Bill Jr.” (1923)

The finest moments in Steamboat Bill Jr. come during its cyclone sequence, which was shot in Sacramento, California. Original plans called for the film to end with a flood sequence, but the devastating 1927 Mississippi River Flood caused the ending to be rewritten on short notice. The production built $135,000 worth of breakaway street sets on a riverbank and filmed their systematic destruction with six powerful Liberty-motor wind machines and a 120-foot crane. Keaton himself, who calculated and performed his own stunts, was suspended on a cable from the crane which hurled him from place to place, as if airborne. The resulting sequence on film is astonishing.

The sequence is punctuated by Keaton's single most famous stunt. Keaton stands in the street, making his way through the destruction, when an entire building facade collapses onto him. The attic window fits neatly around Keaton's body as it falls, coming within inches of flattening him. (Keaton performed a similar, though smaller scale stunt, eight years earlier, in the short film One Week). Keaton did the stunt himself with a real building section and no trickery. It has been claimed that if he had stood just inches off the correct spot Keaton would have been seriously injured or killed. Keaton's third wife Eleanor suggested that he took such risks due to despair over financial problems, his failing first marriage, and the imminent loss of his filmmaking independence. Evidence that Keaton was suicidal, however, is scant.

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American film starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda, and is directed by Wallace Worsley. The film is the most famous adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, aside from the 1996 Disney adaptation. The film was Universal's "Super Jewel" of 1923 and was their most successful silent film to date, grossing over $3 million.

The film is most notable for the grand sets that recall 15th century Paris as well as Lon Chaney's performance and spectacular make-up as the tortured bell-ringer of Notre Dame. The film elevated Chaney, already a well-known character actor, to full star status in Hollywood . It also helped set a standard for many later horror films, including Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera in 1925. Today, the film is in the public domain.

Original prints of the film were on cellulose nitrate film stock and were either worn out, decomposed or were destroyed by the studio (mostly the latter). Original prints were on tinted film stock in various colors, including sunshine, amber, rose, lavender and blue.

The only surviving prints of the film are 16 mm "show-at-home" prints distributed by Universal in the 1920s and 1930s for home-movie purposes, and no original 35mm negatives or prints survive. Most video editions (including public domain releases) of the film are derived from 16 mm duplicate prints that were distributed by Blackhawk Films in the 1960s and 1970s. A DVD release of a newly restored print of the film was released by Image Entertainment on October 9, 2007.

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Universal-Super Jewel. 12 reels, 12,000 ft. Released on September 6, 1923. In production December 16, 1922 to June 3, 1923. Presented by Carl Laemmle. Directed by Wallace Worsley. Scenario by Edward T. Lowe, Jr., Adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo by Perley Poore Sheehan. Photographed by Robert Newhard and Tony Kornman. Additional Photography by Virgil Miller, Charles J. Stumar, and Stephen S. Norton. Edited by Sydney Singerman, Maurice Pivar, and Edward Curtiss. Art Direction by Elmer E. Sheeley and Sidney. Cast includes Lon Chaney (Quasimodo), Patsy Ruth Miller (Esmeralda), Norman Kerry (Phoebus de Chateaupers), Nigel De Brulier (Dom Claude Frollo).

Douglas Fairbanks's
"Don Q - Son of Zorro” (1925)

Classic cartoons start at 7:00 PM, "Don Q - Son of Zorreo" starts at 8:00 PM. All ages welcome, no cover charge.

Douglas Fairbanks returns as the great Spanish swashbuckler in this sequel to “The Mark of Zorro” (1920). Don Cesar de Vega (Douglas Fairbanks) is the son of the famous masked avanger, Zorro; he's been sent to Spain to continue his education and learn the ways of his homeland. He soon becomes a favorite of the local dignitaries, but this does him little good when he's falsely accused of murder. Faking his own suicide, Don Cesar goes underground, and posing as Zorro, begins his own investigation of the killing; eventually his father arrives, giving us two Zorros for the price of one. Mary Astor plays Dolores de Muro, Don Cesar's love interest, with Warner Oland and Jean Hersholt highlighting the supporting cast; Donald Crisp, who plays Don Sebastian, also directed.

The film was well-received: the New York Times rated it one of its top ten movies of 1925.

Tod Browning's
"The Unholy Three” starring Lon Chaney (1925)

“The Unholy Three” was one of the major hits of 1925. Starring Lon Chaney and directed by Tod Browning (“Dracula”, “Freaks”), it was based on a 1917 thriller novel by Clarence Aaron (“Tod”) Robbins about a trio of sideshow performers – a ventriloquist, a midget and a strongman – who, when their sideshow is shut down, form an alliance to commit robberies. Using a bird store as their front, the ventriloquist (Lon Chaney) masquerades as an old woman, Mrs. O’Grady, selling parrots to rich customers who later find themselves the trio’s victims. The midget masquerades as O’Grady’s granchild.

The film was remade by Browning in 1930 as a talkie. In both the 1925 and the 1930 versions, the roles of Professor Echo and Tweedledee (the midget) are played by Lon Chaney and Harry Earles respectively. Lon Chaney, of course, was known as ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’ for his expertise with screen make-up, featured in such films as “The Phantom of the Opera” of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. Harry Earles later starred in Tod Browning’s notorious “Freaks”, and then left the picture business to tour with Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus. In 1939, Earles played one of the ‘Lolipop Guild’ Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz”.

Douglas Fairbanks's
"Robin Hood” (1922)

Classic cartoons start at 7:00 PM, "Robin Hood" starts at 8:00 PM. All ages welcome, no cover charge.

Robin Hood is the first motion picture ever to have a Hollywood premiere, held at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on October 18, 1922. It was one of the most expensive films of the 1920s, with a budget estimated at approximately one million dollars. Some sets were designed by Lloyd Wright. Director Allan Dwan later recalled that star and producer Douglas Fairbanks was so overwhelmed by the scale of the sets that he considered canceling production at one point. The film was produced by Fairbanks for his own production company, Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corporation, and distributed by United Artists, a company owned by Fairbanks, his wife Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin and D. W. Griffith.

This swashbuckling adventure was based on the legendary tale of the Medieval hero, Robin Hood, and was the first production to present many of the elements of the legend that became familiar to movie audiences in later versions.

Alan Hale, Sr. made such an impression as Little John in this film that he reprised the role sixteen years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) opposite Errol Flynn, then played the character again in Rogues of Sherwood Forest in 1950, 28 years after his initial performance in the original Fairbanks film, which is notable for probably being the longest period for any actor to appear in the same major role in film history.

D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance”

Director D.W. Griffith's expensive, most ambitious silent film masterpiece Intolerance (1916) is one of the milestones and landmarks in cinematic history. Many reviewers and film historians consider it the greatest film of the silent era. The mammoth film was also subtitled "A Sun-Play of the Ages" and "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages." Griffith was inspired to make this film after watching the revolutionary Italian silent film epic Cabiria (1914) by director Giovanni Pastrone.

After the widespread controversy surrounding his racist masterpiece The Birth of a Nation (1915), Griffith attempted to defensively answer his critics with this work. He took a smaller feature film that he was working on about the contemporary Progressive Era struggle between capital and labor [titled "The Mother and the Law"] and its theme of social injustice and combined it with three new stories to create a more spectacular, monumental, dramatic epic. All of the stories, spanning several hundreds of years and cultures, are held together by themes of intolerance, man's inhumanity to man, hypocrisy, bigotry, religious hatred, persecution, discrimination and injustice achieved in all eras by entrenched political, social and religious systems.

The film and its unorthodox editing were enormously influential, particularly among European and Soviet filmmakers. Many of the numerous assistant directors Griffith employed in making the film went on to become important and noted Hollywood directors in the subsequent years.

The evening begins at 7:00 PM with a few classic Betty Boop cartoons from 1934, including “Betty Boop’s Rise To Fame” and “Betty In Blunderland”. Then, we’ll watch a ten-minute excerpt from another 1920 version of “Dr. Jekyll”, this one starring Sheldon Lewis, followed by the 1925 Stan Laurel comedy “Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride”! Shortly after 8:00 PM we’ll begin the main feature, John Barrymore’s 1920 take on “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. The main feature will be followed by a Keystone Kops comedy.

“Broken Blossoms” (1919)

Broken Blossoms, or The Yellow Man and the Girl (directed by D. W. Griffith, 1919) stars Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess and Donald Crisp, and tells the story of young girl who is abused by her alcoholic prizefighting father but meets a kind-hearted Chinese man who falls in love with her. The difference in the lovers’ ages and ethnicity could be considered controversial even today.

Unlike D. W. Griffith’s more extravagant earlier works like The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance (which will be our featured film on May 14 and June 18), Broken Blossoms is a small-scale film that uses controlled studio environments to create a more intimate effect. The visual style of Broken Blossoms emphasizes the seedy Limehouse streets with their dark shadows, drug addicts and drunkards, contrasting them with the beauty of Cheng and Lucy’s innocent attachment as expressed by Cheng’s decorative apartment. Conversely, Lucy and her father’s bare cell reeks of oppression and hostility. Film critic and historian Richard Schickel goes so far as to credit Griffith’s gritty realism with inspiring “the likes of Pabst, Stiller, von Sternberg, and others, [and then] re-emerging in the United States in the sound era, in the genre identified as Film Noir."

Griffith was unsure of his final product and took several months to complete the editing saying “I can’t look at the damn thing; it depresses me so.” The scenes of child abuse nauseated backers when Griffith gave them a preview of the film; according to Lillian Gish in interviews, a Variety reporter invited to sit in on a second take left the room to vomit.

“The Man Who Laughs” (1928)

This remarkable film is as visually stunning as it is emotionally resonant. Conrad Veidt stars as Gwynplaine, a nobleman’s son who is kidnapped by a political enemy, and then is mutilated by a gypsy ‘surgeon’ who carves a monstrous smile on his face. Finding shelter in a traveling freak show, Gwynplaine falls in love with a blind girl (The Phantom of the Opera’s Mary Philbin), the one person who cannot be repulsed by his appearance. As years pass, the hand of fate draws Gwynplaine back into the world of political intrigue. He becomes the plaything of a jaded duchess (Freak’s Olga Baclanova), and his enemies renew their efforts to control him.

In an effort to top the critical and financial success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, Universal Pictures studio head Carl Laemmle recruited two influential artists of the German Expressionist school: actor Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and director Paul Leni (Waxworks). The shadowy exteriors, the carnival setting, the demoniacally misshapen ‘hero’ made The Man Who Laughs something entirely new to American cinema – the foundation upon which the classic Universal horror films would be built. Film critic Roger Ebert stated "The Man Who Laughs is a melodrama, at times even a swashbuckler, but so steeped in Expressionist gloom that it plays like a horror film." Oh, and it’s kinda dark.

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS
Universal-Super Jewel Pictures. 110 minutes. Premiered at the Central Theatre, New York City , on April 27, 1928. Presented by Carl Laemmle. Produced by Paul Kohner. Directed by Paul Leni. Screenplay by J. Grubb Alexander, adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo. Photographed by Gilbert Warrenton. Film Editing by Edward L. Cahn and Maurice Pivar. Makeup Effects by Jack Pierce. Cast includes Conrad Veidt (Gwynplaine), Mary Philbin (Dea), Olga Baclanova (Duchess Josiana), and Cesare Gravina (Ursus).

“Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” (1922)

This night we explore the history of early horror cinema by featuring the earliest film adaptations of two of our most beloved and enduring ‘monsters’ from literature, Frankenstein’s creature and Dracula.

The feature film is Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, a German Expressionist vampire horror film, directed by F.W. Murnau and released in 1922. It is the world’s first (unauthorized) adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the German studio could not obtain the rights to Stoker’s novel. (The legal battle between Bram Stoker’s aggressive widow and the German filmmakers is an epic that will be gleefully related to you by Mr. Butler.) Nosferatu eventually found its way to America , and went on to become one of the world’s seminal horror classics.

Frankenstein is a little-seen short film made by Edison Studios in 1910, written and directed by J. Searle Dawley. For many years, the film was considered lost. It was the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Shot in three days, it was filmed at the Edison Studios in the Bronx, New York City. Although some sources credit Thomas Edison as the producer, he in fact played no direct part in the activities of the motion picture company that bore his name. That’s just as well, because this isn’t a very captivating short when viewed out of context; it’s static and brief. But we consider it a rare milestone in movie monster history, so we’re gonna watch it!

NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR
Prana-Film. Black & White, with original color tints. (Our version: 81 minutes). Premiered on March 4, 1922. Directed by F.W. (Friedrich Wilhelm) Murnau. Script by Henrik Galeen, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Photographed by Fritz Arno Wagner. Art Direction by Albin Grau. Cast includes Max Schreck (Graf Orlock), Gustav von Wangenheim (Hutter), Alexander Granach (Knock), and Greta Schroeder-Matray (Ellen).

FRANKENSTEIN
Edison Manufacturing Company. Black & White. 12 minutes. Released on March 18, 1910. Directed by J. Searle Dawley. Script by J. Searle Dawley and Augustus Phillips, based on the novel Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus by Mary W. Shelley. Cast includes Charles Ogle (The Creature), Augustus Phillips (Dr. Frankenstein), and Mary Fuller.

"Metropolis" (1927)

Metropolis is a silent German Expressionist science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang. Set in a futuristic urban dystopia, Metropolis examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film stars Alfred Abel as the leader of the city, Gustav Fröhlich as his son, who tries to mediate between the elite caste and the workers, Brigitte Helm as both the pure-at-heart worker Maria and the debased robot version of her, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the mad scientist who creates the robot.

The most expensive film of its time, Metropolis cost approximately 7 million Reichsmark to make. The film was cut substantially after its German premiere, and there have been several efforts to restore it, as well as rediscoveries of previously lost footage. Due to recent discoveries, a definitive ‘final cut’ is actually due to premiere in Berlin on February 12, 2009; so join us on February 11 as we offer a final cut of our own!

METROPOLIS
UFA ( Germany )/Paramount Pictures (US). 153 minutes/24 frames (German premiere cut); 114 minutes/25 frames (US cut). Released January 10, 1927 ( Germany ), March 6, 1927 (US). Produced by Erich Pommer. Directed by Fritz Lang. Screenplay by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou. Cinematography Karl Freund, Günther Rittau, and Walter Ruttmann. Music for the original version by Gottfried Huppertz. Cast includes Alfred Abel as Joh Fredersen, Brigitte Helm as Maria/robot, Gustav Fröhlich as Freder, Joh Fredersen's son, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as C. A. Rotwang.

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American film starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda, and is directed by Wallace Worsley. The film is the most famous adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, aside from the 1996 Disney adaptation. The film was Universal's "Super Jewel" of 1923 and was their most successful silent film to date, grossing over $3 million.

The film is most notable for the grand sets that recall 15th century Paris as well as Lon Chaney's performance and spectacular make-up as the tortured bell-ringer of Notre Dame. The film elevated Chaney, already a well-known character actor, to full star status in Hollywood . It also helped set a standard for many later horror films, including Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera in 1925. Today, the film is in the public domain.

Original prints of the film were on cellulose nitrate film stock and were either worn out, decomposed or were destroyed by the studio (mostly the latter). Original prints were on tinted film stock in various colors, including sunshine, amber, rose, lavender and blue.

The only surviving prints of the film are 16 mm "show-at-home" prints distributed by Universal in the 1920s and 1930s for home-movie purposes, and no original 35mm negatives or prints survive. Most video editions (including public domain releases) of the film are derived from 16 mm duplicate prints that were distributed by Blackhawk Films in the 1960s and 1970s. A DVD release of a newly restored print of the film was released by Image Entertainment on October 9, 2007.

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Universal-Super Jewel. 12 reels, 12,000 ft. Released on September 6, 1923. In production December 16, 1922 to June 3, 1923. Presented by Carl Laemmle. Directed by Wallace Worsley. Scenario by Edward T. Lowe, Jr., Adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo by Perley Poore Sheehan. Photographed by Robert Newhard and Tony Kornman. Additional Photography by Virgil Miller, Charles J. Stumar, and Stephen S. Norton. Edited by Sydney Singerman, Maurice Pivar, and Edward Curtiss. Art Direction by Elmer E. Sheeley and Sidney. Cast includes Lon Chaney (Quasimodo), Patsy Ruth Miller (Esmeralda), Norman Kerry (Phoebus de Chateaupers), Nigel De Brulier (Dom Claude Frollo).