FORMAT: BLU-RAY
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
(As posted on April 14th, 2013)
Stephen Saydian (AKA: Rinse Dream) tried to bring his trademark weirdness to the mainstream with this pretty terrible in-name-only remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Imagine trying to watch one of Saydian’s hardcore movies without the hardcore footage and that should give you an idea of what to expect; which sadly isn’t much.
Laura Albert stars as Mrs. Van Houten. She gets sent to an insane asylum ran by Dr. Caligari (Madeleine Reynal, from Space Mutiny) to “rediscover her passion”. Caligari determines she has a “disease of the libido” and uses a series of unorthodox treatments to turn her into a sex maniac.
Since Albert plays a character named “Mrs. Van Houten” it’s safe to assume that Saydian was more interested in making a “legitimate” remake of Nightdreams rather than doing a new version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The flick is filled with all the trademark scenes of women spouting pseudo-hipster gibberish directly to the camera (Sample dialogue: “I want his boy-thing! I’ll twist it like a rubber band until it snaps!”), bizarre imagery (in one scene Albert fellates a giant tongue), and random weirdness (a chick sports a pair of freaky droopy boobs) you’d expect from Saydian. But without the hardcore sex scenes tying everything together, Dr. Caligari is pretty much a chore to sit through.
A lot of the movie tried my patience. I found much of it to be a bunch of weirdness for weirdness’ sake (like the scarecrow scene). That doesn’t mean the flick didn’t have its moments. For one, I dug the fact that Caligari’s office looked like Lucy’s five cent shrink stand from Peanuts. There was also a visually impressive scene where Albert spread her legs and masturbated in front of a TV playing a flicking tongue. Too bad most of the scenes are downright irritating (like the electrocution scenes) and the sets look something out of a high school play.
I thought this film was OK.
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