ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

allthemwitches Despite its title. This movie is not about anything being haunted. There is a dream sequence which has about the only thing closely related to its title.. As far as being a horror movie. Well, all I can say is the film has a atmospheric and psychological approach which by it's time era would be considered horror. OF course, films during this time were labeled "SPOOK TALES". So, unless your looking for the usual horror conventions, you might be a little disappointed. THE movie itself is above average. Interesting enough plot, good acting, and a neat little twist at the end.

JohnHowardReid Besides his well-known pieces, film noir master, F.W. Murnau, is also represented on DVD by a minor but nonetheless interesting work, "The Haunted Castle" (1921), made just a year before the director's seminal "Nosferatu". Now available on a truly excellent release, this DVD is not only complete with all the iris ins and iris outs (deleted from the truly execrable print on a rival label), but presented in all the splendor of its original tints.True, the movie itself is rather stagily directed with little use even of pans, let alone tracking shots. Nonetheless, the story is reasonably intriguing. What makes "The Haunted Castle" worth seeing, however, is neither the social fabric of its upper-class setting, the mystery mechanics of the plot, the two briefly surreal dream sequences or even the successfully more naturalistic performances (judged by the general standards prevailing in German cinema in 1921) delivered by most of the players, but the overwhelmingly charismatic presence of Olga Chekhova. That name will mean nothing to 99% of my readers, but from 1930 to around 1950, she was easily in private life the most important movie star in the world. As I say, "The Haunted Castle" is must viewing simply to get a glimpse of the quality that made Olga Chekhova sought after by the most famous (and infamous) men of her time. Mind you, this is only the third of her 139 films as an actress (she also directed one and produced five).As a postscript, in order to prove my theory that many of the information sites on the net are staffed by fools, allow me to point out that the name, Victor Bluetner (listed as an actor in the movie's credits) is an obvious pseudonym. You won't find too many Bluetners in a phone directory. I'd say that the name was derived from "blut" (the German word for blood), plus the common suffix "ner" (as in Wagner). I laughed when I consulted a well-known Spanish site and read in all seriousness, "date of birth: unknown; place of birth: not specified"!

Michael_Elliott Haunted Castle, The (1921) ** 1/2 (out of 4) An "old dark house" film from director F.W. Murnau about a group of people staying in an (what else?) old dark house. One night the house's owner turns up missing and later in the night his son, who was accused of killing his own brother, shows up. I read somewhere that this is the earliest surviving work from director Murnau but this here doesn't show any of his wonderful visual style that would kick into high gear the following year with Nosferatu. The film, running just under an hour, takes way too time introducing us to the characters and the actual mystery doesn't start until the very end of the movie. There really isn't any visual style either. There's one character that looks like the Karloff character in Whale's The Old Dark House, which makes you think Whale saw this film (especially since the character here leads to a good twist in the story). Another interesting aspect is a scene that uses the hands of Nosferatu to a similar effect that would be seen in the next year's Nosferatu. I had to view an overly dark, 16mm print without a music score.

cairnsdavid Afraid I found this a little stagey. I know it's very EARLY Murnau, and I wouldn't expect the flash and wallop of DER LASZT MANN, but without either expressionist stylisation or nifty camerawork, my attention wandered a bit......but I was brought back to full wakefullness by the appearance of what looks like Max Schreck's Graf Orlock from NOSFERATU - or at least his hand. A sinister taloned hand reaching through a window in a bizarre dream sequence, accompanied by a billowing curtain of the kind soon to cross the atlantic with Paul Leni for THE CAT AND THE CANARY and to appear, a few years later in James Whale's THE OLD DARK HOUSE. And I should add that the scary dream is followed by an equally freaky comedy dream set in the castle kitchen, where a scullery boy dreams of revenge for previous slights...Murnau's comedy relief is always kind of peculiar.Worth seeing for the dreams!