Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages

Year of Release:  1922
Director:  Benjamin Christensen
Written By: Benjamin Christensen
Starring:  Benjamin Christensen, Clara Pontoppidan, Oscar Stribolt, Astrid Holm, Maren Pedersen
Running Time: 104 minutes (74 minute 1968 re-release)

This silent Swedish/Danish co-production is a bizarre and sometimes brilliant fusion of documentary, drama, fantasy and animation detailing superstitions and beliefs in witches and witchcraft from the medieval times through to the 1920s.  It discusses the persecution of the witch-hunts and how superstition and misunderstanding of disease and mental illness caused the fear and hysteria that led to belief in the supernatural and the witch-hunts.

The film features many dramatised scenes which depict witchcraft and various Satanic rites as well as the tortures of the Inquisition.  These are grotesque, nightmarish and still striking even today, and have proved hugely influential on later horror films.  The most expensive Scandinavian film made up to that time, it was hugely controversial upon release, for it's then quite graphic nudity and torture scenes, and was banned and censored in many countries.    

However there is much more to Haxan then weird and horrific vignettes.  The film makes an important point about the way the elderly, the mentally ill  and others are treated throughout history, and Christensen is highly critical of how they were treated in his own society.

The film was revived in 1968 in a shortened form as a fully-fledged cult film with a jazz score and narration by author William S. Burroughs.

This is a bona fide classic and a definite must see for anyone interested in witchcraft or in horror films.