An aspect of this film that amused me was that four out of the five stories involve romantic triangles of one sort or another. A man picks up a woman who cries on his shoulder, and pretty soon he's kissing her in her bedroom, though he is pushed out because she has a headache (oops, the plague). Two men decide that the girl who has left them at a club to dance with somebody else must belong to one of them, so they throw dice for her; she is surprised to find one of them lying on her couch when she comes home and not pleased that he's a corpse; when she meets the other a few years later, they seem ready to take up where they left off. A drunkard takes a stranger home to his wife and within 30 seconds the stranger is kissing the wife (Conrad Veidt gets to do all the kissing in this movie). A wise French marquis encourages his wife to snuggle up to an amorous stranger, then shows her that he himself is a much better snuggle. All this (plus another story) in a version that only lasted about 95 minutes.
Because the segments are so short, each seduction takes at most a few minutes. There is no time for anyone to be sentimental or even fall in love--it's lust at first sight in every case. True, usually someone in the story dies before fornication or adultery can be committed. But there is something about the galloping pace that brings the horror--the deaths, the hauntings--right up against the sexy parts in a balder way that is usual in the early horror movies I've seen.
The film is fun because each actor gets to play a wide range of characters. Reinhold Schunzel particularly gets to play a crazy sadistic brute, a sly drunken brute, a jealous but gentlemanly brute, a masterful cop, and a charming but cowardly 18th-century marquis. Anita Berber has a scene in which she (or a double? there was more costume around her head than around her legs) performs a fairly lengthy piece of modern dance--this character is a proto-flapper, but she also does quiet little 19th-c American wife and "the Strumpet" with great energy and sweetness. Veidt--well, as I said, he is the guys who get to the kissing as fast as possible in 4 of the stories, and a sadistic monster in the fifth. Who could ask for more?
Because the segments are so short, each seduction takes at most a few minutes. There is no time for anyone to be sentimental or even fall in love--it's lust at first sight in every case. True, usually someone in the story dies before fornication or adultery can be committed. But there is something about the galloping pace that brings the horror--the deaths, the hauntings--right up against the sexy parts in a balder way that is usual in the early horror movies I've seen.
The film is fun because each actor gets to play a wide range of characters. Reinhold Schunzel particularly gets to play a crazy sadistic brute, a sly drunken brute, a jealous but gentlemanly brute, a masterful cop, and a charming but cowardly 18th-century marquis. Anita Berber has a scene in which she (or a double? there was more costume around her head than around her legs) performs a fairly lengthy piece of modern dance--this character is a proto-flapper, but she also does quiet little 19th-c American wife and "the Strumpet" with great energy and sweetness. Veidt--well, as I said, he is the guys who get to the kissing as fast as possible in 4 of the stories, and a sadistic monster in the fifth. Who could ask for more?