Old Movies To Avoid (Racist, Super Depressing, Or Just Bad)

A guy befriends an elderly witch who he just met, as soon as the movie starts, with no context, except that the guy is adventurous and doesn't hang out with people his own age. Right off the bat, he gives the witch his life story, with no prompting. By the next day, he trusts this stranger enough to sign a contract with him. The whole movie is so contrived.

SEE INSTEAD: The 1926 remake. It variously goes by the titles The Student of Prague and The Man Who Cheated Life.

No one's going to tell you this because of this movie's historical significance, but I'm here to warn you that this movie is very forgettable.

The sets and costumes are incredible and I believe they're historically accurate (as far as I can tell). The special effects and stunts were game-changers and still look stunning. If you pause the movie at any point, it will look like a painting. But looks aren't everything.

There are too many characters and they have weak subplots that don't relate much to the subplots of the other characters. It's a bunch of random, bad stories and characters with no personality whatsoever (They're just kind of The Soldier, The Little Girl, etc.).

But my biggest problem with the movie is that it's told through a very Christian lens; rather than a historical lens. Rather than using historical information about ancient Carthage, the movie uses the Bible's made-up information about Carthage that was specifically used to vilify Carthage and to vilify all Pagans. As a Pagan, I find that pretty insulting.

Also, there's plenty of Blackface and brown face, and there's an attempted rape scene.

The KKK are the heroes. Also, lots of Blackface. This movie was incredibly racist, even by 1910s standards.

"What does the director have to say for himself?" you may wonder. D.W. Griffith said that Blackface allows moviegoers to distance themselves from the real world, because they know that those aren't real Black people. Lol, ok. Sure, dude.

Pure nonsense.

This movie is anti-feminist. In the story set in modern day (1916), feminists are the "intolerant" villains. The intertitles say that most women join the feminist movement because they're too unattractive to find a husband. WOW.

Here's how that anti-feminist propaganda goes. The Boy (he isn't named) likes how The Dear One (she isn't named) looks and so he grabs her and rudely declares that she is his gal now. He kisses her against her will. Her father kicks him out of the hallway, shoves his daughter, and yells at her to beg God for forgiveness. So, he blames HER. She, too, blames herself. Inexplicably, she decides to date The Boy. What??

Unsurprisingly, eventually The Boy tries to rape her. She locks herself in her apartment to get away from him. He asks if they can have sex if they get married. She gets excited and says yes. Apparently, we're supposed to root for this couple.

They get married and have a baby. But then The Boy gets framed for a crime he didn't commit and gets sent to prison.

A feminist group hears that The Dear One is raising a baby in poor living conditions and investigates. They find out that The Dear One can't afford a doctor for the baby and has alcohol in the apartment. They report her to child services, which is comprised of feminists, and they seize The Dear One's baby. Obviously, none of this is remotely close to what the feminist movement was like in the 1910s.

The Dear One hires a gangster to get her baby back by less than legal means, but he tries to rape her. The gangster's wife has been tailing him and shoots him dead for cheating on her.

The Boy serves his jail time so he can go home. This trashy script totally forgot about the baby so I guess The Dear One is never getting that baby back.

Also, this movie has a lot of brown face.

This is only valuable for historical purposes. One of the inventors of method acting, Eleonora Duse, plays the lead. Although she was approached for movies, this was the only one she made. She didn't seem to enjoy the movie-making process. Her method acting really shows, because she's always fiddling with something or doing something with her hands.

But the movie itself is very depressing and doesn't really have a plot.

This is... problematic.

A woman marries a bad boy and the Angel of Death warns her that their unborn son will be a bad boy too, so she should kill herself so that he's aborted. Um, wow. She doesn't, and her son indeed is just like his father. Death visits her multiple times, encouraging her to kill herself to end her suffering. Eventually she gets so fed up that she murders her son and then herself.

So I guess the movie is saying that a woman should pay for the sins of her husband and her children?

Ladies, don't leave your husband. If you do, then your parents will be so ashamed of you that they will disown you.

Nothing really happens in the movie and it's pretty depressing. A mad scientist is told that he's going to die on a specific date because of his greed. The stress over drives the guy to kill himself.

There's a really dumb scene where he tries to end world hunger by converting nitrogen into some other element. The only purpose of that scene is to show that he's trying to finish his life's work before he passes on. But he gives up immediately and that subplot is dropped.

Also, there's yellow face.

This plot is so dumb and problematic.

A woman named Alba makes a Faustian bargain that she will be a young woman forever as long as she never falls in love. A demon just gives her this gift. She doesn't have to sacrifice anything for it (ex. he doesn't ask for her soul) and the demon doesn't stand to gain from this transaction. He just delights in watching her inevitably fall in love and lose her youth. So, it's more or less a prank, which is dumb.

As for the love story, a man named Sergio falls in love with Alba immediately and threatens to kill himself if she won't go on a first date with him. This is portrayed as Sergio truly being in love with Alba. I guess she was planning on turning him down, because Sergio's brother, Tristano, begs her to go on the date so that Sergio won't kill himself. Threatening to kill yourself if someone won't be with you is an abusive tactic. It's blackmail. Alba's response is completely baffling. She starts making out with Tristano, and he likes it. She never shows up to the date, so Sergio kills himself. And get this - Sergio killing himself causes Alba to realize that she was in love with him. UGH. WHAT.

A wealthy woman (Marja) doesn't want to marry her fiancé (Richard), so she accuses a poor man (Johannes) of raping her. Although in this case the allegation is a lie, there is a whole lot of disturbing survivor-blaming that follows. Her brother mainly believes her because he's having a nervous breakdown and not thinking clearly. Her mother's first thought is that Marja might be lying. One of the reasons Johannes is found guilty is because he's an academic who has been giving Left-Wing speeches.

Since Marja was lying, the message the movie sends is that rape allegations shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt. Ugh.

Ultimately, Marja commits suicide and, as she lay dying, she apologizes to Johannes and says she's always loved him. Gag.

This is one of the first exploitation films (movies that somewhat comedically exaggerate the 'dangers' of social deviance), and it does have some of the hallmarks of later ones. However, this was made only one year after WWI, so it has more doom and gloom. The gloom makes the movie a lot longer than it should be. Most of the actors do use yellowface, but it was the 1910s, so I don't hold it against them.

Almost no effort is made to tie these stories together and even less effort is put into hiding the fact that the movie is just trying to convince you to be a communist. I came here for Satan; not Bolsheviks.

A man can't live with the guilt of being a thief. That's literally the entire plot. Skip it.

This is really depressing.

Two women throw themselves at an abusive alcoholic who has tuberculosis and likes to spread it to people who annoy him. He ends up giving his wife and kids tuberculosis on purpose. Okaaaay.

The name sounds cool, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. There isn't much plot, there's no suspense, and the acting is terrible.

An English architect is commissioned to build a tomb for an Indian prince but he isn't allowed to leave until the project is completed. That sounds much cooler than it is. It's really boring.

The gist of the movie is that Indians are evil.

Also, most of the characters are in yellow face.

This is the second half of The Mysteries of India, which makes the movie an excruciating 3 hrs & 40 min.

This part is more racist and ablest. The Indian characters are mostly royalty, the royals' servants, or the leper colony in the catacombs. I feel like the lepers are supposed to represent a stereotype of Indians being filthy, animalistic, and greedy. I feel like the royals are supposed to represent a stereotype of Indians being abusive, violent, sadistic, untrustworthy, and egocentric.

Lorenz steals money from his aunt. He doesn't need the money. He just wants it so he can spend it on mistresses. When his aunt threatens to have him arrested for theft if he doesn't pay her back in three days, he asks his gangster friend, Wigottschinski, to steal the money from her while she's asleep. Wigottschinski kills her and then gets the money. For some reason, we're supposed to feel sorry for Lorenz.

This is basically a ballet. It's all symbolism and no plot.

The characters are in a fantasy world where they're all bisexual and dripping with lust. Salome, who's a grown woman with the personality of a petulant child, gets rejected by St. John the Baptist. What is a saint doing there? They captured and imprisoned him for some reason. I guess this is supposed to be Hell? Anyway, she has him decapitated and kisses his decapitated head. That's it. That's the whole movie.

I know you're not supposed to like Dr. Mabuse because he's a bad guy, but there's literally no reason to like him and it's baffling that two women are willing to do literally anything for him. He's unattractive, literally always angry, and doesn't even pretend to be nice. He physically abuses Cara and doesn't bail her out of jail when she takes the fall for him. He kidnaps Dusy and murders her husband (via mind control). This dumb movie is somehow 4 1/2 hrs long!

Brown face*, Blackface, the n-word, AND it calls Africans "primitive." Holy cow. This movie is incredibly racist, even by 1920s standards.
* White people play Middle Eastern characters.

The main Black guy (white guy in Blackface), Black Sam (wow), is a bootlegger who uses stolen WWI valor. Sheesh.

Additionally, the intertitles say that Africa is a land of abundant natural resources. Natural resources apparently have value; not the African people.

Bizarrely, I didn't even know that the maid was in Blackface until the end, because her skin isn't painted and she isn't wearing stereotypical Black jewelry or anything like that. She's supposed to be a light-skinned Black woman or perhaps a white-passing Black woman. I guess we're supposed to infer that from the fact that Black Sam flirts with her and she likes it. If she were white, I guess her reaction to his flirting would be screaming and running away. Wow, dude.

SEE INSTEAD: For a movie about people being stuck in a building with a killer because there's a hurricane outside, see the masterpiece Key Largo (1948). It stars the legendary Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Lionel Barrymore.

To me, these feel like random stories that aren't strung together very well.

This is a tricky one because the movie IS faithful to the short story. However, it makes the aggravating artistic choice trying to make Ichabod unlikeable. It wants you to root for Brom, since Brom is victorious in the end.

Ichabod is a likeable character because he's bookish and clumsy, and he's in the inherently comedic situation of being the awkward new teacher in town. But you wouldn't know it from this movie. He's mostly just arrogant. The actor they cast, Will Rogers, doesn't try to make Ichabod charismatic either.

So is Brom likeable in this movie? No, he's still that jock that picks on the nerds.

SEE INSTEAD: Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949) is faithful to the short story while also being lots of fun. Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999) isn't faithful to the story but it's a great movie.