Schloß Vogelöd (1921) YTS - Download Yify Movie

Reviewed by horroralt

This is a review of the Kino Lorber

This is a review of the Kino Lorber bluray release as found in The Haunted Castle/Finances of the Grand Duke combo pack with musical accompaniment turned off. It's become increasingly apparent that users are overzealous with the "Horror" tag. This film is not a horror film in the slightest. It contains less than a minute of a dream sequence, and that's all. The comedic sequence of the boy in the kitchen is longer and I wouldn't call this a comedy either. I have suggested the removal of the horror tag. This is a mystery film. This early Murnau bored the daylights out of me for the majority of its runtime! The film was functional from beginning to end, but lack of interesting direction, locations, performances, characters, drama, humor, tension, really anything, left this a dry and dull experience for me. It's a mystery film where the secret was obvious from very early on, and the rest of the film plods along behind the obviously telegraphed revelation. The brief dream sequence forsees Murnau's taste in spooky imagry which will be showcased in full in Nosferatu, a few of the outdoor scenes are pretty, and the film finds a small dramatic heartbeat in the last few minutes, but unless you're studying Murnau, this is not worth your time.

Reviewed by Bunuel1976 6 / 10

The Haunted Castle (F.W. Murnau, 1921) **1/2

I knew going in this was not a horror film, in spite of the English title: while not uninteresting in itself, it emerges as a very minor Murnau. Little of the director's trademark stylistics are present here; the film does constitute an early use of flashback, as it slowly divulges the events behind a past crime for which the wrong man was accused but the characters don't exactly set the screen on fire.The Sinister Cinema edition I watched was a mere 56 minutes in length, as opposed to the restored 74-minute version of the film; not surprisingly, the choppy editing (full of phony-looking transitions and an equally pointless establishing shot of the castle used ad nauseam throughout) made the plot somewhat hard to follow and the lack of detail in the print itself, not to mention the absence of an accompanying music score, didn't help matters either! Even so, the film is worth watching for the unethical way the elderly hero goes about discovering the real identity of his brother's killer and for a couple of brief if irrelevant dream sequences, one expressionistic (and which can now be seen as a dry run for NOSFERATU [1922]) and the other surreal. Some years back, Image Entertainment had announced a DVD release of THE HAUNTED CASTLE but, for reasons known only to them, it was summarily cancelled and has yet to appear officially on any digital format.

Reviewed by

Schloß Vogelöd

1921 [GERMAN]

Action / Crime / Drama / Horror / Mystery

Schloß Vogelöd

1921 [GERMAN]

Action / Crime / Drama / Horror / Mystery

Please enable your VPΝ when downloading torrents

Plot summary

Director

Top cast

Tech specs

Movie Reviews

This is a review of the Kino Lorber

The Haunted Castle (F.W. Murnau, 1921) **1/2

2 Comments