The Haunted Screen

The second and final installment of a series on why the country is indeed fascist, how we got that way, and what comes next. Listen to Part I first. (Or not. Whatever you want. Do I look like a fascist??) See you at the Great Hague Tailgate of 2029.Appearances from a truckload of future history-book villains, a 17-minute Minneapolis montage, and an extended shark metaphor. Time to pick up the harpoons, y'all.

After the assassination of the right-wing organizer and influencer Charlie Kirk, MAGA has fallen all over itself to turn him into a movement martyr. But this isn't the first time fascists have sought to canonize a flawed man and use his memory for their own dark purposes. Meet Horst Wessel, a slain Nazi brownshirt who Joseph Goebbels elevated to national sainthood and cynically crafted into a Party marketing campaign.

We knew it would be bad, but holy shit.With the collapse of the American project, it's been hard to focus on film history. So in this two-part series, we're switching things up. Using the five-stage framework that scholar Robert Paxton lays out in his Anatomy of Fascism, we try to make sense of how a slack-jawed game show host groped his way to autocracy. Part One covers fascism's first three stages, from the creation of a fascist movement through its seizure of power. The next episode will look at the fourth and fifth stages—where we're at and where we might be going if we don't get our shit together.Appearances from Indiana Jones, Green Day, and a clown car of assholes. 

As many as 90% of silent movies are lost to the ages, and many from later eras have vanished as well. How do these holes distort the story of film? This week: reel infernos, missing monsters, Jerry Lewis'... Auschwitz clown debacle, and a little hauntology as a treat.

Robert Eggers' new version of Nosferatu is an absolute horror show in the best way possible. With Orlok Fever sweeping the nation, we're taking the opportunity to repost a 2022 episode on F.W. Murnau's century-old original. Travis also offers his take on the Eggers adaptation. He promises not to read it as a political allegory, then promptly does so anyway.

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?For show notes and other supporting information, click here.

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.For show notes and other supporting information, click here.

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.For show notes and other supporting information, click here.

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.For show notes and other supporting information, click here.

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?For show notes and other supporting information, click here.

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.For show notes and other supporting information, click here.