Review of Dr. Caligari (1989) by Aksel H — 30 Oct 2012

Absolute artistic madness! This brain damaged, perverse fever dream is set in the Caligari Insane Asylum, a nightmare labyrinth of impossible angles and colors, within which the fabled doctor's kinky granddaughter rules with an iron hand, a phallic-looking syringe, and a hot-pink PVC dress.

Caligari's associates include, a leering therapist and a clone like nurse team who are loonier than their own patients, and in this place, that's saying a lot. Most of the experiments taking place have to do with the doc's desire to transplant her grandfather's synaptic fluid into her own brain to acquire his genius.

She also has a peculiar fascination for prize patients Mrs. Van Houten, a repressed housewife with horrifying sexual fantasies involving doors with giant tongues and oozing sores, razor wielding madmen, and televisions that preform cunnilingus, and Mr.

Pratt, a cannibalistic pedophile who loves his electroshock therapy a little too much. The sets are amazing, the dialogue is like some kind of insane schlock poetry, the camera movements are beautiful and the actors are all over the top in the most wonderful way possible.

Every word, every movement, every angle was perfectly delivered in this surrealist, campy, over the top, psycho sexual masterpiece.