It’s December here at B-Movie Enema Industries, and that means things are getting a little cold. But I’ve got something to warm the bones. By that, I mean something really weird. This week, I’m looking at the avant-garde 1989 Dr. Caligari.

I don’t want to say this is a remake of the German expressionism classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but let’s try to sort all this out. That original version I just mentioned was released in 1920. This was during a time of massive film experimentation in post-World War I Germany. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the most influential early films in history. While 1922’s Nosferatu is a more influential monster film, Caligari twisted the way a story could be told. That wasn’t just a clever way of using the word twisted to describe the look of the film. There are multiple reads about how the narrative plays out.

Dr. Caligari, in the original that is, was a man who went from town to town and did sideshow-like performances with his somnambulist, Cesare, who is forced to obey his every command. Cesare is Caligari’s instrument of revenge against those who wronged him. It turns out that the character who is telling this story is actually a patient in an asylum. Caligari is actually the head doctor there. The other main characters, Cesare, and the girl whom Cesare falls in love with, Jane, are also inmates. It’s an early example of a twist ending and an unreliable narrator in a film.

Now, let’s move forward to 1989. THIS version of Dr. Caligari is not really a remake. Instead, it’s a quasi-sequel. Our lead character, the titular Dr. Caligari herself, is a relative of that original asylum director. Whereas the original film was a product of German expressionism, the new version is more along the lines of “mondo weirdo” cinema. This version is co-written and directed by Stephen Sayadian. Sayadian is referred to as a multimedia artist. What does that mean? Well, he did a few different things in various media. For example, he designed 1980s VHS box art and posters for movies. He served as an art director for Larry Flynt Publications, most notably Hustler.

In the 80s, Sayadian dabbled in making pornos. One was a horror porn film and another was a post-apocalyptic porn film. By the end of the 80s, he made this film which is also called kinky and full of things like cross-dressing and nymphomania. Considering what he did early on in his 20s as a satirist and his 30s as an art director and filmmaker, you can see how he likes to mix various styles, media, and genres. By the 90s, he made films that can be best described as “alt porn” films. Basically, that means they are surreal and not very linear or follow the same, typical tropes and such.

Sayadian co-wrote the Dr. Caligari script with Jerry Stahl. Stahl’s an interesting character. In the 80s, he worked on several popular TV series like Thirtysomething, Moonlighting, and, yes, ALF. He’s written several episodes of CSI and Maron. In the early stages of his career as a writer, also working for Hustler for a period, Stahl would hit hard times. He became addicted to heroin and eventually contracted hepatitis C. He’d write about addiction in a memoir called Permanent Midnight. In the late 90s, Ben Stiller would adapt the book into a memoir.

Fun true fact about Stahl: He co-wrote the script to 2003’s Bad Boys II.

The lead of this movie, the aforementioned titular Dr. Caligari, is played by Madeleine Reynal. Now, Reynal is all over this movie. She’s on the cover with her syringe and weird posed stance. She’s got that really sharp shoulder-length raven hair with bangs. She’s a striking character. I never saw this movie when I was visiting the video store throughout the 90s, but I remember the cover. It might have been the way she was standing. It might have been her haircut. It might have been the really short dress that kind of looks like a sexy nurse’s gown or doctor’s coat. Whatever it is, If you showed me the picture of her below, I would have immediately said it was from Dr. Caligari.

Anyway, Reynal has been in two things. In this movie, she plays a peculiar doctor doing all sorts of kinky and weird experiments on people in her insane asylum. Her other credit? Oh, it’s this little role called Jennera. Who was Jennera? Well, she was a Bellerian. In fact, she was the lead Bellerian. Does that sound familiar? It should, because the Bellerians were the weird Stevie Nicks-lookin’ space ladies in the all-time space opera classic, Space Mutiny! Yeah! Reynal’s only other credit is as the lead Bellerian who comes aboard the Southern Sun just as the mutiny is about to happen.

But if you search for Madeleine Reynal, you don’t see too much on Google outside listings for mostly Dr. Caligari which was recently released on Blu-Ray. There’s a picture of a woman who likely is about the same age as the actress and possibly could be the same person from a LinkedIn profile, but it is in Spanish as that lady is from Argentina. Interestingly, there is a movie called Madeleine Collins that features a character named Madeleine Reynal. I can’t tell you too much more about her. I suspect she was a model based on her two roles and what she was used in those two films. I don’t know if that is what she mostly did or if she was an artist or what.

Either way, it’s likely Madeleine Reynal is one of those examples of an actress who had a very finite, but memorable, list of roles in cult classics and disappeared into the night.

I do like how the credits of this movie use stills from the original 1920 film. It is definitely tipping its hat to the classic and either purposely making you draw the connection to that masterpiece, or doing a thing where it shows that stuff like it’s doing a recap to tie this even more to being a sequel of sorts. Either way, seeing stills from a silent film framed by very late-80s/early-90s doozits and whatzits in neon color is interesting, to say the least.

Alright, so the movie opens up panning across a floor that looks like it’s made from dirt and has standing pools of green sludge. There’s a sign that reads “Dr. Caligari’s Insane Asylum” with another that says “Better Living Through Chemistry”. Inside, we have some of those inmates. One has tied herself into a pretzel. Another is staring blankly and rocking back and forth. Yet another looks a little like the guy who played Dracula in Dracula vs. Frankenstein. Trust me. If you’ve seen that guy I’m talking about and you watch this movie, you’d see what I’m saying.

Anyway, there’s a constant dripping of water. I’m sure that would drive anyone insane. Following the beat of the drops, we see our lady Dr. Caligari practically voguing with each drip. It’s like she’s posing for pictures no one is taking.

Again, Madeleine Reynal is a striking figure. She’s interesting to look at and she draws your attention, even by doing strange things… Maybe BECAUSE she’s doing strange things. Anyway, She’s got what appears to be coconuts on her tits. That’s something.

Anyway, that guy who looked like Dracula goes through a door that Caligari’s movements almost lured him to do. There’s maybe an attempt at a modern version of expressionism in this movie. The camera on Caligari is at a Dutch angle. The door she beckoned the dude through is trapezoidal in shape. After he goes through that door, we see another door outside that seems to be placed in the middle of a yard, and not attached to a building like you’d expect. There’s a woman watching a TV with barbed wire rabbit ears in the middle of another outdoor landscape. What she’s watching is a man squeezing puce from a woman’s injured leg. It’s all very peculiar. Only to discover the wound is on her leg before it disappears and she runs into another door.

We’re only five minutes in too.

This is absolutely performance art. It’s the only way I can describe it. No dialog has been spoken. Imagery is out of the ordinary and seemingly makes no real sense. That woman watching the TV went into that room which was a bathroom. She took off the towel she was wearing and a man wearing a mask that looked like a baby doll’s face comes out of the bathtub and slices her wrists. She then crawls through what appears to be mounds of dirt with the other patients’ bed frames sticking out of it and they reach out toward her with a single hand like they are handcuffed to the headboards.

You know what this reminds me of? Black box theater. The sets are minimal. People move in somewhat exaggerated motions. In this case, this movie’s actors move in very short, exact motions. That woman watching the TV eventually sees another woman on the screen through the static. They talk about their inner thoughts. the woman watching is not a fan of her thoughts or Caligari. She then takes off her bra and recites what seems to be something of a mantra.

The girl then lies back on the floor and masturbates.

Guys… This might be something of a bizarre journey I will find myself on. Okay, yes, the director worked for Hustler. He made porn films. Sure. I ain’t unaccustomed to seeing that sort of stuff. What I might not have been ready for was just how truly weird and campy and stylized and… artsy… this movie is. This is not my usual forte, you know. I’m all about dem tittaes and horror and gonzo mad scientists and what have you. I was not ready for all of it to be given this weird Warhol-esque spin.

I really am not sure how to explain what you get from this movie. The energy is relatively bonkers. I would love to try to explain what neurons are firing off when I watch this movie. I’m not sure if they are the good ones or the bad ones. I do know this movie is incredibly weird. That’s fine for the movie to be. However, I don’t know if the movie is necessarily satirizing anything, or if it’s just going with whatever it wants to do, or if it’s like a Jackson Pollack of bizarre thrown at a movie screen.

In the above scene, that woman we saw earlier watching the TV and had the puce wound on her ankle began masturbating and saying weird things. Her husband, the guy who looks like David Dastmalchian, calls Caligari and says she’s out of control. It’s quick cuts and quicker dialog back and forth. Then the woman seemingly is going to attack her husband with a straight razor only to look directly at us and tell us that whenever she sees his face, she becomes a love slut. It is insane. Like, should I be committed for watching this movie?

Later, Caligari meets with Mr. Van Houten. He says she was in a sex fit. Caligari tells him that she was healed. Something had to set her off. Caligari tells him that his wife is a deeply disturbed woman. She says she has a disease of the libido. Caligari wants Mrs. Van Houten returned for a two-week stay. He thinks Caligari’s methods are… unorthodox.

This movie is the kind of movie that has the thinnest plot, but it does make some sense. The problem is it’s just buried under a whole lot of style and stuff that doesn’t make a great deal of sense. I’m not an avant-garde type. I can get behind some of it if there’s something so insane that happens that it tickles a funny bone. I can’t say this version of Dr. Caligari does that for me at this point on a larger scale. Sure, there are some things I find funny. The fact that every doctor at the asylum is always smoking is funny. I find the choppy, direct dialog well delivered and, at times, chuckle-worthy. I don’t necessarily mind the black box theater style of set design. In some ways, it reminds me of the movie Shock Treatment. Those are good things.

However, sometimes you have to look at the way people are dressed. Sometimes you look at the fact that one of the doctors has a bar with a row of nuns posed like statues behind him. Sometimes you hear some of the words in the dialog. That’s when you start to ask yourself if this movie is being this way as a lark or a prank on the audience or if it’s being way too artsy for its own good.

The other doctors are concerned about Caligari’s methods. They believe she’s crossed the line from clinical science to downright experimentation. They compare her to the Nazis and how they did human experimentation. They show how Caligari gave a woman stretchy skin so her breasts could stretch out three feet ahead of her. We also learn that this Caligari is the granddaughter of the original Dr. Caligari.

She is a sadist though. She also knows her colleagues are trying to get her excused. She has one patient, the guy at the beginning who looks like Dracula from that shitty Al Adamson movie, who is a murderer and a cannibal. She recommends that he get powerful electroshock therapy. He’s tied into an electric chair and he’s real excited about what she’s going to do to him. He’s so turned on by the idea that she might shock him longer than usual that he asks if she will let him taste his crispy flesh.

This murderer tells the story of a woman he killed and made into a stew. He thinks that if he talks about his crimes, she will give him more shock therapy. It’s the most coherent scene up to this point. It’s actually well acted and the back and forth between the man, John Durbin (he appeared in episodes of various Star Trek series and an episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch), and Caligari is pretty good. I can at least understand that he just wants shocks because it’s pretty much the only thing he can feel anymore.

When we go back to Mrs. Van Houten, it gets weird again. She has another sexual freakout and makes out with what looks like a mattress with a big ol’ tongue, puce-filled sores, and wounds barely stitched together that ooze green junk. I will say that the actress, Laura Albert, is rather fetching and she’s perfectly fine letting her breasts show. But man oh man… her scenes are bizarre as hell and really play up the performance art element to this peculiar film.

Laura Albert is actually an interesting person. Most of her career in TV and Film is as a stunt performer. I believe she actually is a stunt driver. Her IMDb page has a picture of her on the front of a drag racing magazine calling her the sport’s bad girl. In the handful of roles she acted in, this is her third film to appear on B-Movie Enema. She appeared in the wonderful Blood Games and she appeared in the less-than-wonderful Angel III. She also had a very small part in Road House.

For the most part, I suspect Laura Albert appeared in movies that needed a pretty girl who may or may not be willing to get topless.

Then again, maybe she is in this movie because you see that scarecrow in the above picture? Well, she decides she wants to jerk and/or suck him off. When she starts digging through the scarecrow’s pants, Dr. Caligari asks if there is a problem. Mrs. Van Houten shouts, “I WANT HIS BOY THING!” How this movie’s script did not get nominated for an Oscar, I can’t say, but as she digs further into the scarecrow’s pants, she pulls her arm out to find it has been burnt horribly.

Don’t ask me if that is supposed to symbolize anything because I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know if this movie is trying to say anything. I am positive it wants to be looked at as some sort of modern, late 80s-style piece of art, but is it actually trying to say something? I want to say I doubt it.

I think this might be one of those instances where it goes hard on being bonkers. That is its statement. There is no other point to it than being strange or unapologetically of its time.

Mrs. Van Houten’s return to the asylum is also making the rounds with the other staff. The other staff members think that Caligari is purposely bringing back some of the patients previously released or treated by her in order to have more access to them to mess around with them. Mr. Van Houten wants to see his wife, so he goes to Caligari. She drugs the coffee she serves him in order to probe him about his relationship. She then locks him away in the asylum. He finds his wife and Mrs. Van Houten seemingly fists her husband in the butt against his wishes.

The married couple, Dr. Lodger and Nurse Lodger, confront Caligari. They say that 17 of her past patients she experimented on have become irreparably warped. They want Dr. Avol, the head doctor at the asylum, to get rid of Caligari, but he won’t. He seems quite taken by her relation to the original Caligari.

After a nightmare wakes her up in the middle of the night, Nurse Lodger decides to go to the asylum. She’s worried about Mrs. Van Houten and whatever it is that Caligari has planned. Speaking of, Caligari is working with both the cannibal murderer, Pratt, and Mrs. Van Houten, the nymphomaniac. Her plan is to switch their brains.

She doesn’t straight-up swap brains. Instead, the patients have implants in their foreheads. Those implants are connected to the hypothalamus. She extracts brain fluid from one patient and injects it into the other. In doing so, Pratt becomes a sexed-up nympho and Mrs. Van Houten is getting an appetite for human death and flesh. Caligari believes that to treat them, you must introduce an opposite desire/psychological disorder to balance out the mind.

Dr. Avol arrives on the scene and is curious about what it is Dr. Caligari is up to. He’s not against it. He’s curious. However, he would like to know whether or not Caligari got Pratt and Mrs. Van Houten’s permission before she started experimenting on them this way. Caligari’s response? Eh, don’t worry about that. He notices that Mr. Van Houten is tied to a structure and wearing what can maybe be best described as a clown outfit? No makeup, though, so… A jester maybe? Anyway, Mr. Van Houten pleads with Dr. Avol to be set free. He’s not insane. He’s got his own CPA practice!

Dr. Avol is repulsed by the revelation that Caligari captured her patient’s husband. However, Mrs. Van Houten helps capture Dr. Avol. She begins reading The Joy of Cooking to her husband and talks about how to cook testicles. Meanwhile, Caligari lets Pratt go to get his jollies. Caligari has installed an implant into Dr. Avol’s head. She injects some of Mrs. Van Houten’s brain juice into his head.

So… If I’ve got this right, I think Pratt is part cannibal, part slut. Dr. Avol is straight slut. He was already mentally healthy so getting Mrs. Van Houten’s brain juice has just made him horny. I guess. I’m not sure this movie really has any rules to follow, but that’s about as close as it gets, I think.

As we follow Pratt, now sort of possessing some of Mrs. Van Houten in him, we see him go to a room where two women are in bed together. He wants to take part in that action. He says some of the same things about knowing he’s being watched that she was saying earlier in the movie. It’s a long scene of monologuing by John Durbin. The scene has some interesting lines in it.

I feel like this scene could very well be read now as trans-coded. He says things about being trapped in a ghastly body and his femininity is neither fully male nor feminine. It’s in between and transitioning from one to the other and back and forth. It’s maybe the most interesting scene in this movie that probably needs people who have a much deeper understanding of some of the underlying stuff or a better eye for subtext than I do to contextualize this. I’d say the more you watch the movie, the more you’ll pick up on lines that are spoken as if they are throwaway lines but actually have a lot more meaning to them than you’d think.

But I don’t want to watch this movie again.

Speaking of transitioning, Dr. Avol has gone full femme after receiving a dose of Mrs. Van Houten’s brain fluid. Avol is trying to qualify for the Muff Diving Championships on Dr. Caligari. Nurse Lodger arrives and tries to expose Caligari as being through, but with Avol’s changes, the Nurse has no one to report to.

Dr. Caligari reveals she has the brain of her grandfather, the first Dr. Caligari, in a jar. She drills into her own head so that she can inject her grandfather’s brain juice into her own head. Elswhere, Ramona Lodger looks for a way out of the asylum with Avol. Dr. Lodger arrives to help them get out the front door.

Ramona tells her husband that Caligari is behind everything. He wants to go back in and stop her, but Ramona begs him to not fall victim to the crazed doctor. He goes in anyway and as he makes his way to the basement, Caligari is just about to inject herself with the brain fluid of her grandfather. However, in a twist, Mrs. Van Houten grabs her, asks her how she would like the feeling of being her patient for once, and injects some of her original libido into Caligari. She takes Caligari’s grandfather’s fluid and injects it into her brain.

In the end, Mrs. Van Houten becomes doctor and Caligari is her sex-starved patient who is paranoid about being watched.

Man… I have some really complicated feelings about this Dr. Caligari movie. I know there’s a lot of interesting meat in this movie. I am not necessarily against the presentation of this peculiar idea for a movie. There are a lot of interesting things to look at in this movie. The black box theater-style sets are interesting. John Durbin alone is interesting. Both Madeleine Reynal and Laura Albert are incredibly appealing just from their individual interesting looks. There are some great scenes of dialogue – again, I point back to John Durbin discovering his increased libido being one of those great scenes.

It’s just… When all put together, it just didn’t fill me with what I really wanted from this movie. Think of it like this… I’m going to make a soup, okay? I’m going to use chicken broth as the base. I’m going to put in some noodles. But now I think about other things I like that I start pulling from the cabinet. Soon, I’m mixing in peanut butter and honey and maybe some of those Sour Skittles I bought at the gas station earlier in the day. Maybe sprinkling in some season salt (hey, I like that on my french fries) could give it a little bit of a punch. But you see the problem here, right? Individually, those are all good things. For some, combining them is good too. But all together in the same soup? No thanks.

That’s how I feel about this bizarre, avant-garde, experimental film. Individually, some scenes are very good, as are the sets, as are some of the lines, and those two leading ladies in particular are gorgeous. Adding it all up doesn’t quite work. If you want to watch a movie like this that is totally wild and kind of unchained in what the creative minds behind it could want in the movie, I think this is for you. However, if you want something that is a little tighter and a little easier to digest, I would advise against that nasty soup I have on the stove and watch something else.

Next week, Fred Ward returns to the site. We’re going to go on a big ol’ mid-80s style adventure as I take a look at the 1985 box office bomb Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Until then, keep your libido and cannibalistic tendencies in check so you can get back here for that next edition of B-Movie Enema!