Bloody Good Film

Vincent Price as The Abombinable Dr. Phibes -- your organist for the evening.

It's hard not to associate classical music with horror. The concert hall has a natural spookiness that lends itself to the giving of the creeps.

That music has mysterious and penetrating power goes without saying. Long before film, myths and legends about cursed musicians abounded. The primal musician, Orpheus, was torn to pieces by the Maenads, worshippers of Dionysus, by ceasing to honor the god of ritual madness and ecstasy.

The first memorable film to merge classical music and horror was The Phantom of the Opera (1925, Dir: Rupert Julian). Gaston Leroux's 1909 novel inspired this monument to Lon Chaney Sr.'s genius.

This primal document in the tradition is so powerful that it spawned at least six film versions, including Brian de Palma's 1974 rock parody/pastiche "The Phantom of the Paradise," before the Lloyd Webber Broadway adaptation came along, obliterating previous memories.

Underneath the Paris Opera House lurks Erik, a deranged musical genius (natch) who guides the career of the innocent, beautiful and talented Christine. He's also a homicidal maniac. However, he is a wounded, tragic figure as well, as Chaney creates his most disturbing monster makeup, then acts his way out from under it to gain our sympathies.

Leroux may have been inspired by the organ-playing antihero Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea:

"Sometimes I heard melancholy sounds reverberating from the organ, which he played very expressively, but only at night in the midst of the most secretive darkness, while the Nautilus slumbered in the wilderness of the ocean."

Later, the sinister/pathetic character of Max, Norma Desmond's servant played by Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard (1950, Dir: Billy Wilder) plays the organ. In campier titles such as Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970, Dir: Ted Post), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971, Dir: Robert Fuest) and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976, Dir: Blake Edwards), the organ makes tongue-in-cheek appearances.

An even older horror novel that was wildly popular in its day my have pointed the way for Leroux. George du Maurier's Trilby, published in 1894, told the story of a poor, beautiful, tone-deaf artists' model in Paris, Trilby O'Farrell, and how she is taken under the wing of the evil hypnotist Svengali, who induces in her trances in which she becomes the greatest diva of the period.

Svengali (1930, Dir: Archie Mayo) is the best-remembered of the dozen-plus movie versions. John Barrymore is at his hammy best as the manipulative mastermind.

The Hands of Orlac (1925) Dir: Robert Wiene. Wow! Didja hear about the one where the concert pianist loses his hands and gets replacements - THE HANDS OF A MURDERER!?!?!?!

Well, this is that, and it spawned its own string of remakes. It, in fact, is taken from a 1920 novel by the criminally overlooked early sci-fi writer, Maurice Renard. The director is best known for his groundbreaking Expressionist horror classic "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," and Conrad Veidt is great in the starring role. The best version is:

Mad Love (1935) Dir: Karl Freund.

Peter Lorre is the evil surgeon and Colin Clive (best known as James Whale's Dr. Frankenstein) is the pianist with homicidal digits - and there's even Ted Healy as the jerky reporter/comic relief.

Another great horror movie/music moment is in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, Dir: James Whale) when Boris Karloff's Monster finds shelter in the hut of a blind hermit (O.P. Heggie), who accepts and shelters him. For a few minutes, the Monster is calmed by the sound of the hermit's violin.

This trope was repeated in Son of Frankenstein four years later, when Ygor (Bela Lugosi) summons the Monster and controls him, in part, through the use of his flute. Mel Brooks' parody Young Frankenstein (1974) makes hilarious and full use of the violin gag.

Hangover Square (1945, Dir: John Brahm). Composer George Harvey Bone (Laird Cregar) has a little problem. Every time he gets stressed, he blacks out and kills people. One of the great overlooked thrillers, it features Cregar's last performance. It features a score by Bernard Herrmann -- his "Concerto Macabre" that ends the movie actually made it to a post-cinematic concert-hall life, and supposedly it inspired Stephen Sondheim to write "Sweeney Todd."

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953, Dir: Roy Rowland) is the only live-action film Dr. Seuss ever wrote, and it bombed. However, in plot, dialogue and design, it's like a Dr. Seuss book brought to life - and that's a lot scarier than you think. In fact, it makes Theodore Geisel seem a lot closer to Luis Bunuel than to Beatrix Potter.

It's the story of young Bart (Tommy Rettig, of "Lassie" fame), who hates his piano lesson so much that he drifts into a dream world in which the evil Dr. Terwilliker (a delightfully snide Hans Conreid) hypnotizes his mother with the intent of marrying her -- and plans to force 500 little boys to play his giant piano!

Death and the Maiden (1994, Dir: Roman Polanski) is a well-staged version of the play by Ariel Dorfman, with the well-matched Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley as opponents. A released South American political prisoner recognizes and torments her former captor. In her prior captivity, the man raped her while the music of the title, a string quartet by Schubert, played in the background.

A beautiful melody marred by its association with violence echoes the dilemma of the brutal protagonist Alex and his love for Beethoven in Kubrick's 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and even earlier in Brute Force (1947, Dir: Jules Dassin), in which sadistic prison guard captain Hume Cronyn beats convicts while he plays Wagner on the big fancy record player in his office.

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The Red Violin (1998, Dir: Francois Girard) is a turgid melodrama about those who come in contact with a legendary instrument (hint: it's red with the blood of its makers' wife, worked into the varnish - gross!). The generations of sorrow generated are enough to make you want to toss that fiddle into the fire. (Nice score by John Corigliano, though.)

The Piano Teacher puts horror in an entirely plausible context. This 2001 anti-love story by the master of misery, Michael Haneke ("Funny Games", "Hidden") stars Isabelle Huppert as the titular sadomasochist whose desire for a young man triggers an onslaught of horrors. In this case, the control of the mentor, unlike that in Svengali, leads to nothing but monstrosities made flesh.

Next: Melodic metaphor - the best classical music films

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