https://vo.rs/tags/benjamin-christensen/Latest from the Benjamin Christensen desk at vo.rs.Hugo -- gohugo.ioenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Thu, 11 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/screen/haxan-the-1922-documentary-horror-hybrid/<p>There is a moment near the start of <em>Häxan</em> when the film seems to be a rather dry lantern-slide lecture. A pointer moves across medieval woodcuts. Intertitles cite sources. A scholarly voice, in effect, walks you through pre-modern cosmology and the machinery of the witch trial. And then, without warning, the lecture dissolves and the screen fills with something else entirely: a coven flying across a night sky, demons with lolling tongues, a Sabbath of the damned lining up to kiss the Devil&rsquo;s backside, and the director himself, Benjamin Christensen, cavorting through it all as a leering, capering Satan. A hundred and two years old, and it still lurches from the seminar room into the nightmare with a force that most modern horror cannot manage.</p>Thu, 11 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000