Film Series Opens With a Fright

The Newport Harbor Art Museum will launch its Halloween-inspired film series tonight with “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” considered the first horror movie ever made.

The 1919 picture, directed by Robert Wiene, also was a milestone in the German Expressionist movement. With its often fantastic set design by artists Hermann Warm, Walter Rohrig and Walter Reimann, “Dr. Caligari” has prompted much analysis by film critics who have tried to decipher the movie’s symbolism.

The plot centers on Caligari, who passes himself off as a hypnotist at carnival sideshows. His main attraction is Cesare, a sleepwalker with unusual powers; in addition to telling fortunes, he murders on command. The good doctor and his sidekick get into all sorts of trouble as the movie slips into one dark corridor after another.

The “Caligari and Co.” series continues Nov. 5 with “Mad Love,” Peter Lorre’s first American movie. Lorre plays a crazed surgeon who gives an injured pianist the hands of an executed murderer. This, as anyone might expect, causes much havoc around the concert hall and elsewhere.

The program ends Nov. 12 with “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The 1932 adaptation of Poe’s famous story features an especially moody Bela Lugosi as the insane scientist who creates deadly mischief with his pet ape.

All the films will be discussed by Arthur Taussig, a movie historian and Orange Coast College instructor.

* The Newport Harbor Art Museum’s “Caligari and Co.” series begins tonight at 6:30 p.m. with “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” The museum is at 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. $3 and $5. (714) 759-1122.