Folk horror is a past-haunted subgenre for our past-haunted times. Appearances from A-Ha, Christopher Lee, Jacques Derrida, Ronald Reagan, Mark Fisher, and creepy child laughter.

Episode artwork by DALL-E. Yeah, I know.

Midsommar!
Witchfinder General!
The Blood on Satan's Claw!
The Wicker Man! '73! And a lil '06 as a treat!

No Derrida, though. Gonna have to wait for Derrida.

Nazi, dissident, victim…

Josef von Sternberg’s cabaret classic The Blue Angel had three stars: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, and Kurt Gerron. As the Weimar Era ended and the Third Reich began, fate brought them—and all of Germany—to a crossroads. What would they choose, and what choices would be taken from them?

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As the 1920s became the 1930s, both the Lang-von Harbou marriage and German democracy itself teetered on the edge of collapse. In this moment of personal and political chaos, the couple made movies—and choices—that would define their legacies.

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In a political environment as combustible as the Weimar Republic, it was only a matter of time before the country’s Kinos became venues for ideological warfare. G.W. Pabst was on the frontlines, firing broadsides against nationalism (Kameradschaft), capitalism (The Threepenny Opera), and the patriarchy (Pandora’s Box). But even in the face of a rising fascism, the German left threatened to tear itself apart.

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Through movies like Destiny, Die Nibelungen, and Metropolis, the husband/wife team of director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Thea von Harbou helped establish Berlin as Hollywood’s one true rival. But their emergence as international celebrities paralleled the rise of a certain failed artist storming through the beer halls of Munich.

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In 1922, a pair of diabolical creatures arrived on German movie screens. What can the vampire Count Orlok and the supercriminal Dr. Mabuse teach us about the fears and fantasies lurking in the Weimar imagination?

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A world war lost. An economy in tatters. A country riven by political violence. Germany’s Weimar Era had a tumultuous birth, and with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, its filmmakers began to channel that mayhem into sinister celluloid fantasies.

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