The Cabinet of CaligariMovies like The Cabinet of Caligari
- Key Features:
- Silent film, German Expressionism, Psychological thriller, Madness, Manipulation, Asylum, Unreliable narrator, Twist ending, Claustrophobia, Surrealism, Cult classic
- Tone:
- serious, stylized, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Classic film enthusiasts, Horror fans, Art house cinema lovers, Silent film aficionados
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread → Confusion
The Cabinet of Caligari

A delirious young woman feels trapped in a remote mansion at the mercy of a madman.
The Cabinet of Caligari
Mrs. Van Houten has shown signs of losing touch with reality, and her husband discusses possible treatment with Dr. Caligari, who says Mrs. Van Houten has a disease of the libido.

The wife of a psychoanalyst falls prey to a devious quack hypnotist when he discovers she is an habitual shoplifter. Then one of his previous patients now being treated by the real doctor is found murdered, with her still at the scene, and suspicion points only one way.

A plastic surgeon and his nurse join a bizarre circus to escape from the police. Here he befriends deformed women and transforms them for his "Temple of Beauty". However, when they threaten to leave, they meet with mysterious accidents.

In the late 18th century, two newlyweds move into the stately mansion of the Fengriffen family. The young bride is victim of terrifying visions and apparitions, threatening her very sanity. A London psychiatrist comes to her help and uncovers the terrible secret that haunts the estate.

Evil lurks in the gloomy house at Markham Manor where a deranged Sir Edward is the chained prisoner of his brother Julian. When Sir Edward escapes, he embarks on a monstrous killing spree, determined to seek revenge on all those whom he feels have double-crossed him.

A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man might have predicted.

A housemaid falls in love with Dr. Jekyll and his darkly mysterious counterpart, Mr. Hyde.

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.

An Oxford Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.

In 1880, Sir Robert Cargrave, a London physician known for his experimental work in paralysis treatment, is summoned to Gorslava by the mysterious Baron Sardonicus—who is now married to Cargrave's former wife, Maude—to treat his disfigurement. When Cargrave arrives, he finds the masked baron is a cruel sadist who has threatened to harm Maude if he is not successfully cured.

A sculptor opens a wax museum to showcase the likenesses of famous historical figures, but quickly runs into trouble when his business partner demands the exhibits become more extreme in order to increase profits.

Simon Cordier, a French magistrate and amateur sculptor comes into contact with a malevolent entity. The invisible - yet corporeal - being, called a "horla" is capable of limited psychokinesis and complete mind control.

A man who runs an apartment house for women is the demented son of a Nazi surgeon who has the house equipped with secret passageways, hidden rooms and torture and murder devices.

A deformed tormented girl drowns herself after her lover is framed for murder and guillotined. Baron Frankenstein, experimenting with the transfer of souls, places the boy's soul into her body, bringing Christina back to life. Driven by revenge, she carries out a violent retribution on those responsible for both deaths.

Set at the turn of the century, this is the tale of Ellen Rimbauer who just received this mysterious mansion as a wedding gift from her new husband...

A runaway criminal breaks into an eerie chateau, taking its two frightened chambermaids hostage. As night falls, a group of mysterious aristocratic women arrive and the criminal begins to realize the women are hiding a sinister secret.

A mysterious teenager named Ángelo cares for Klaus, a German doctor with a dark past who lives trapped in an iron lung.

After being contacted by their mysterious former colleague, four psychics arrive at a secluded hotel where they are stalked by a group of murderous puppets.

A woman becomes very curious about one of her psychiatrist husband's inmates, a man who was found guilty in the murder and disfigurement of his former wife.

A woman named Emily checks into a hotel and offers the bellboy $2000 to temporarily marry her. We soon find out Emily is the caretaker of a wheelchair-bound mute named Helga, who was the childhood guardian of a pair of siblings: Miriam Webster and her half-brother, Warren, who is about to inherit the estate of their late father. Who is the mysterious Emily and what are her intentions?

Gallery director Stanislas bolsters the development of modern art with his collection of surprising works. His newest acquisition is a sculpture by Gilbert, whose wife Josée is captivated by Stanislas. But unbeknownst to her, Stanislas is amassing photographs of a very perverse, disturbed nature.

In the Olden Tymes, Count Regula is drawn and quartered for killing twelve virgins in his dungeon torture chamber. Thirty-five years later, he comes back to seek revenge on the daughter of his intended thirteenth victim and the son of his prosecutor in order to attain immortal life.

Rescued from the guillotine by his devoted dwarf Fritz, the Baron relocates to Carlsbruck, where he continues his gruesome experiments.

Shortly after moving into a dark, brooding mansion, a psychologist and his co-workers are terrorized by a horrible evil being.

Dr Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity, recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment. Frankenstein utilises Helder's medical knowledge for a project he has been working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project ever.

Lisa is a tourist in an ancient city. When she gets lost, she finds an old mansion in which to shelter. Soon she is sucked into a vortex of deception, debauchery and evil presided over by housekeeper Leandre.

A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.

A young psychiatric nurse goes to work at a lonesome asylum following a murder. There, she experiences varying degrees of torment from the patients.

A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

Kristen, a troubled young woman, is captured by the police after burning down a farmhouse and is locked in the North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. Soon, she begins to suspect that the place has a dark secret at its core and she's determined to find out what it is.

The sadistic tale of a lonely, mentally handicapped boy who befriends his reflection in an antique mirror. This demonic creature orders him to go on a murderous rampage to kill the people he loves most.

A young woman quits her teaching job to become a private tutor and governess for two wealthy young kids, but soon starts to suspect there’s more to their house than meets the eye.

A young woman is invited by her girlfriend, who lives in an English country mansion, to stay there with her. The estate, however, isn't quite what it seems--and neither is the friend who issued the invitation.

Baron von Sepper is an Austrian aristocrat noted for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. His latest spouse, an American beauty named Anne, discovers a vault in his castle that's filled with the frozen bodies of several beautiful women.

A young man and his girlfriend move into the man's old mansion home, where he becomes possessed by a need to control ancient demons.

In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.

A woman who is unfairly institutionalized at a Paris asylum plots to escape with the help of one of its nurses. Based on the novel 'Le bal des folles' by Victoria Mas.

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

A severely injured man and woman awake in an abandoned sanitarium only to discover that a sadistic caretaker holds the keys to their freedom and the horrific answers as to their true identity.

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.

An account of the events before and after a murder committed by a disturbed businessman in a strained marriage, and what led him to perform such a shocking act.

A doctor in early 19th-century Germany becomes infatuated with the sister of a man he unintentionally killed and bargains with the Devil incarnate to conjure their union in exchange for his soul.

An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.

A middle-aged woman, traumatized from the death of her adulterous lover, moves into a room at a New Orleans boarding house where the blind landlord becomes suspicious to her activities of continuing her affair with her dead lover.

The sister of a famous, but as yet uncaught, criminal named "The Hexer" is murdered. Inspector Higgins of Scotland Yard believes that "The Hexer" will surface to take his revenge on his sister's killers, and plans to set a trap to finally capture him. However, soon bodies start piling up, and it looks as if "The Hexer" may get away yet again.

A London opera house is haunted by tragic events on its opening night, but when its star is kidnapped, a producer tracks down the Phantom who is intent on seeking his revenge.

After a series of scientific experiments directed towards freeing the inner man and controlling human personalities, the kindly, generous Dr Henry Jekyll succeeds in freeing his own alter ego, Edward Hyde, a sadistic, evil creature whose pleasure is murder.

Kitty runs a brothel in Nazi Germany where the soldiers come to "relax". Recording devices have been installed in each room by a power hungry army official who plans to use the information to blackmail Hitler and gain power himself. A girl named Margherita discovers the little ploy and with Kitty's help plans to take on the dangerous task of exposing the conspiracy.

A young American woman traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems quite right.

The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through bizarre encounters to escape this nightmare.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.

With his eye on a lovely aristocrat, a gifted illusionist named Eisenheim uses his powers to win her away from her betrothed, a crown prince. But Eisenheim's scheme creates tumult within the monarchy and ignites the suspicion of a dogged inspector.

After escaping from a religious colony in Chile, Maria seeks shelter in a mansion where she’s taken in by two pigs, its only inhabitants. Like in a stop-motion dream, the universe of the house reacts to her feelings. The animals slowly morph into humans and the house into a dark, menacing world.

Italian Gothic horror that tells the tale of a man who stops at a remote castle hoping to get medical help for an injured woman, only to find the inhabitants mirror the darker sides of the woman and himself.

A young woman slowly goes crazy after taking a job as the caretaker for an ancient New York home.

A young woman in Paris goes to a party in the enormous labyrinth of limestone tunnels beneath Paris. When she becomes separated from her friends, she is convinced something is chasing her through the dark tunnels.

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

A deranged scientist creates a ray that can shrink people down to doll size.

A young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.

An ophthalmologist's assistant with an unhealthy interest in human eyeballs goes on a killing spree to collect eyeballs for his overbearing mother's collection. Reality soon takes a bizarre turn, both for the characters and the audience.

On a golden afternoon, wildly curious young Alice tumbles into the burrow and enters the merry, madcap world of Wonderland full of whimsical escapades.

When Dr. Frankenstein is killed by a monster he created, his daughter and his lab assistant continue his experiments.

Five people visit a fairground sideshow run by the sinister Dr. Diabolo. Having shown them a handful of haunted-house-style attractions, he promises them a genuinely scary experience if they will pay extra.

A seemingly innocent man is abducted by a notorious L.A. serial killer, who forces his victims to switch roles with him so that he can enact his own capture, torture and murder.

In 19th century Baltimore, Isabel Porter, a girl stricken with grief from her parents' untimely death, voluntarily checks herself into the Rosewood Institute. Subjected to bizarre and increasingly violent pseudo-scientific experiments in personality modification, brainwashing and mind control, she must escape the clutches of the Rosewood and exact her revenge, or else be forever lost.

After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha finds herself caught up in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her.

Two young women find themselves in a dark room where there is a distinctly strange feeling.

An aging hypnotist creates a device that allows the user to control the mind of another person, but his wife abuses its power by manipulating a younger man to commit evil acts.

A small-time con man on the run from the gangster-husband of his girlfriend hides out in a strange, brooding mansion run by two mysterious women, where he finds himself trapped in deception between the two women.

Concentration camp survivor Victoria Kowelska finds herself involved in mystery, greed, and murder when she assumes the identity of a dead friend in order to gain passage to America.

Carroll Baker stars in this psychedelic shocker about a mysterious witch who casts a spell over attractive, youthful fashion photographer Valentina Rosselli. Thrust into a world of sadism, Valentina must figure out whether the torture being inflicted on her is because of one woman's twisted agenda … or a curse known as Baba Yaga.

The sequel to Tales from the Crypt. Five strangers trapped in a basement vault converse about their recurring nightmares. Their stories include vampires, bodily dismemberment, east Indian mysticism, an insurance scam, and an artist who kills by painting his victims' deaths.

The newly married Elizabeth arrives with her new husband, the scientist Henry, at a magnificent house. He tells her that she can do there anything she pleases, except to enter a certain closed room.

Kingdom of Hungary, 17th century. As she gets older, powerful Countess Erzsébet Báthory (1560-1614), blinded by the passion that she feels for a younger man, succumbs to the mad delusion that blood will keep her young and beautiful forever.

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar.

A man who suspects his wife is cheating on him begins having nightmarish visions of an evil presence that he believes inhabits his house.

An art thief trapped in a New York penthouse after his heist doesn't go as planned. Locked inside with nothing but priceless works of art, he must use all his cunning and invention to survive.

Dr. Tremayne is an enigmatic psychiatrist running an asylum that houses four very special cases. Visited by his colleague Nicholas, Tremayne explains his amazing and controversial theories as to why each of the four patients went mad.

A young woman struggling with addiction comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.

After a bleak childhood, Jane Eyre goes out into the world to become a governess. As she lives happily in her new position at Thornfield Hall, she meet the dark, cold, and abrupt master of the house, Mr. Rochester. Jane and her employer grow close in friendship and she soon finds herself falling in love with him. Happiness seems to have found Jane at last, but could Mr. Rochester's terrible secret be about to destroy it forever?

When a mysterious entity possesses a young girl, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life.

The arrival of an amnesiac patient in a psychiatric hospital somehow frees a mad doctor, who was shot and entombed with his fiendish experiments in an abandoned wing of the asylum 20 years before.

In 1923 Berlin, following the suicide of his brother, an American acrobat struggles to survive while facing unemployment, depression, alcoholism, and the social decay of Germany during the Weimar Republic.

Set in Belle Époque France, the story follows nineteen-year-old "hysteria" patient Augustine, the star of Professor Charcot's experiments in hypnosis, as she transitions from object of study to object of desire.

A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home finds herself entangled in a mystery involving the house's dark past.

A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances is sweeping Tokyo.

A penniless woman meets a strange girl who insists she is her long-lost mother and becomes enmeshed in a web of deception, and perhaps madness.

Director F.W. Murnau makes a Faustian pact with a vampire to get him to star in his 1922 film "Nosferatu."

Oliviero is a drunk, burned-out writer who amuses himself by hosting orgies at his grand country manor and humiliating his wife Irina. When a number of women are murdered in grisly fashion, Oliviero becomes a prime suspect.

Baron Victor Frankenstein has discovered life's secret and unleashed a blood-curdling chain of events resulting from his creation: a cursed creature with a horrid face — and a tendency to kill.

A passionate holiday romance leads to an obsessive relationship when an Australian photojournalist wakes one morning in an abandoned Berlin apartment and is unable to leave.

Indolent aristocrat Tony employs competent Barrett as his manservant and all seems to be going well until Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister as a live-in maid.

A young restorer is commissioned to save a fresco representing the suffering of St. Sebastiano, which was painted on the wall of a local church by a mysterious, long-dead artist.

Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.

Six of the worlds scariest psychopaths escape from a local Asylum and proceed to unleash terror on the unsuspecting crowd of a Halloween Funhouse whose themed mazes are inspired by their various reigns of terror.

Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.

A reclusive and butterfly-obsessed elderly lady suffering from bipolar disorder develops a disturbing relationship with a mysterious but seemingly innocent youngster.

