It is 2 October. There are 29 days until Halloween.

Look, I get it. Silent films are hard to get into for the average moviegoer. Even someone like myself – and I studied film in undergrad and graduate school (I’m a professional, folks) – finds the majority of silents to be stodgy, stagey, and so slowly paced you’d rather watch something exciting like paint drying or Major League Baseball.

The silent era comedies are probably your best bet for finding ingress into the world of movies before Al Jolson uttered his first “Mammy.” The works of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd rely on a fast pace and lots of surreal sight gags to keep their audiences engaged. Buster Keaton having a house front fall around his ears is worth any number of histrionic “artistic” performances in other silent films.

So, I get it. Who the heck wants to waste their time on a silent movie?

Well…what if said silent picture had loads of torture, demons, and folks smooching the butt of Satan? 

Got your attention now, don’t I?

The Danish film Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages has got the above and a whole lot more. Writer/Director Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 movie is essentially a dramatized documentary about the history of witchcraft and the witch hunting hysteria that swept Europe in the Middle Ages.

Everything about Häxan has got it going on. The sets are gorgeous. All the buildings and rooms look like they’ve been in existence for hundreds of years. The use of color tinting lends of different touch to each of the parts of the movie. The special optical effects are amazing. The scenes of the sabbath, as the witches take flight and cavort with beasts and demons is wonderfully achieved. For a 1922 film, the violence in the movie is disturbing to see, especially the way that pious monks tortured alleged witches into confessing their nefarious (and more than likely non-existent) association with Old Hob.

And if all that isn’t enough for you to click here and start watching, then how’s about you track down the cut of the film that came out in 1968 narrated by William S. Burroughs? 

Talk about scary!