The Mysterious Retort

The Star Prince has fallen to Earth and because of his cruelty towards a beggar, he is turned into a grotesque pauper. He goes on a quest to find his mother, meeting a wicked witch and princess on his way. He falls in love with the princess, but an evil dwarf tries to force the princess to marry him. The Star Prince rescues the princess and is thus turned back into his original form and marries the beautiful princess.

A man is increasingly unnerved by a mysterious portrait. Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol, the film is thought to have run about 45 minutes long, but only an 8 minute fragment is known to have survived.

A lonesome man at the threshold of death finds himself trapped in a place called the Endless.

The ultimate manual when it comes to the proper handling of the living dead. Recommended behavioural patterns in case of imminent Zombie epidemics are explained in comprehensible steps and vividly executed.

Mad God is a fully practical stop-motion film set in a Miltonesque world of monsters, mad scientists, and war pigs.

A wild boy is found in the woods by a solitary hunter and brought back to civilization. Alienated by a strange new environment, the boy tries to adapt by using the same strategies that kept him safe in the forest.

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

The mysterious Count Orlok summons Thomas Hutter to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen. After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok's servant, Knock, prepares for his master to arrive at his new home.

This is a poetic film set in the times of Lenin's NEP. A ballet dancer steals a brooch and gives it as a present to another dancer. This is a crime of passion. A mysterious black ball is after the heroine. She runs away from it and manages to give the brooch in an exquisite pirouette movement, as shiny as diamond facets. What gives a stone its dazzling luster are its polished facets. But the real gem is love, and it's much harder to get than any diamond in the world.

You'll never look at a statue of the Virgin Mary the same way again. Based on the assertion that divine apparitions aren’t what they always appear to be, Vesuvius is an interesting take on the psychopath with Catholicism smacked against the background. Gio Alvarez provides a convincing portrayal of a madman, and people can even argue if this short inclines toward the supernatural or the psychological. Whereas Grave Torture uses darkness impeccably, Vesuvius plays with light so well.

This mostly lost film is often confused with director Paul Wegener third and readily available interpretation of the legend; Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920). In this version of the golem legend, the golem, a clay statue brought to life by Rabbi Loew in 16th century Prague to save the Jews from the ongoing brutal persecution by the city's rulers, is found in the rubble of an old synagogue in the 20th century. Brought to life by an antique dealer, the golem is used as a menial servant. Eventually falling in love with the dealer's wife, it goes on a murderous rampage when its love for her goes unanswered.

God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist.

With input from actor and writer Jan Hlobil, director and cinematographer Rene Smaal presents a film in the true surrealist tradition, in the sense that only 'found' elements were used, and that it defies interpretation based on ordinary cause-and-effect time sequence.

Pirelli Film's first promotional short, starring John Malcovich and Naomi Campbell.

A man dreams he is the 'demon barber' who cuts sailors' throats for jewels and uses the corpses for pies.

A distraught squatter tries to cope with his werewolf nature through drugs and music.

An ordinary man wakes up in a world upside down! Illegible newspaper, people backing up, cars backing up: nothing is the same anymore, but everything seems to be going well.

A man is being haunted by a masked stranger. The only language used in the movie comes from three (inter) title cards and a few sentences of sermon-like talk in Danish. Some of the talk is modified citations from the bible and similar sources.

Short tourist film set on a tropical island where a sailor falls in love with a native girl.

A deliciously scary story about a boy who outsmarts an old witch-woman before she can have him and his brothers for dinner.