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Overview
Another silent film for our public domain Side Dish. This one is a bit creature and a bit demon and mythological. Telling the story of how the golem came to be in the Jewish religion. And this creature does some horrific things – like sweep the floor and get the groceries.
An interesting aspect is that this is the 3rd in a trilogy, but its almost a complete remake of the 1st. Unfortunately, the first one is lost. It’s a shame to lose some of the horror heritage, but it makes the public domain movies we do have all the more special.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0011237/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golem:_How_He_Came_into_the_World
Trailer
Watch It
https://archive.org/details/TheGolem_893
https://publicdomainmovie.net/movie/the-golem
YouTube
Transcription
[00:00:00]
Stephen: Okay. All right. Let’s roll on. Goum Golum, whichever. I’m not sure. So this is our next side dish. And the interesting thing was I saw this on, the public domain side dish list, and it is actually the third of a trilogy.
The others really haven’t survived, and it’s not the original one I thought it was going to be.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s true. The first was a short, it was like a one reel, and then he made this one, and then he had a follow up one and. Both bookends that’re just disappeared.
Stephen: Yeah, the other ones the Glum Dancing with a Ballerina or something like that.
It sounds a little weird, but the remaining clips of the original, if you watch those, they’re basically some of the same scenes that are in the one we did watch which is or how the Golum came into the world is like the full [00:01:00] title. Yes. But the, some of the scenes looked alike. So he pretty much remade his original movie for this one.
Rhys: He did. He just made this one very long. Yes. It is contemporary of the cabinet of Dr. Kaari. They both came out in the same year. They’re both German. Some people can, I, I shouldn’t say some people everyone considers this a good example of German expressionist filmmaking. I, I can see similarities, but I don’t really lump it into that same class like.
The surrealism of the background, which is such a hallmark for me, just wasn’t there in this film.
Stephen: Agreed. Yeah. I would not have pegged it as German expressionism compared to the other movies we’ve watched. But it’s funny you mentioned that because I did note that seeing a lot of these different public domain ones for our side dish and a few of our main episodes, there are some specific tropes that start.
Coming back around that they used in silent movies to convey things [00:02:00] like the Pretty girl combing her hair at the window. That’s like in Invent every single one. And there’s a few other little things here and there that they do all the time and the way they look, it’s that I’m on stage and the far closest person is so far away, so I gotta.
Rhys: So yeah, that like the two big ones takeaways for me on this were like all dandy princes have to carry a flower with them
Stephen: and all. And you really shoulda had the guy with the coconuts.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. And oh my gosh. How huge was the gate separating the city from the slums? I don’t know how that old guy opened that.
Stephen: I know. I thought the same thing. I was like, did they really build like that in a hundred years ago? Geez. Oh man, that is huge.
Rhys: It was insane.
Stephen: I do love that there was really big hints and almost a sex scene in this movie. It was like, wow that’s pretty intense for this movie.
Rhys: Yeah, it was pretty [00:03:00] risque. Hey, it’s Europe, it’s European. Yeah.
Stephen: Different. Yeah. It was also pretty violent. Especially if you watch the original clips from the original movie. The go’s like throwing people off of towers. I’m like, dang. That’s some of the most vicious movie making we’ve seen from this era.
From this
Rhys: era. Yeah. There was, the girl who dances in the first one. Oh, that’s another
Stephen: trope. You gotta have the dancing people in the movie.
Rhys: And the girl who plays in this prominently in this film, both were not his first pick. He had originally picked her sister, but her sister was terrified of him in the glum costume.
Wow. And couldn’t act with it. So he, they had to swap it out for the for the other sister to, to, and that kind
Stephen: of shows different times too. ’cause we’ve heard stories of some of the horror movies with kids and a lot of times the guys in the are like. Talking to the kids in between stuff like, it’s still me.
This is all acting and the [00:04:00] kids looking back a lot of times say, it was a little scary at first, but they really showed me, all that. So it’s interesting that at the time it was harder for people to separate that.
Rhys: Yeah. And this also sent me down a deep dive shout out to the Twilight Grotto, which is a website that has.
Ancient books in their original language and translated side by side for free. Do you just go through and read them? Because I was trying to do this deep dive into the figure. And it was, it was a fascinating read. There’s not a whole lot to report. Astor Roth is this male demon, who, I don’t even wanna say demon, he is like a prince of hell who shows up in ancient Jewish texts, but they think that it originally came from Ishtar, from Babylon, and.
See throughout those Middle Eastern cultures, the Babylonians and Sumerians, they all had the same female. Love [00:05:00] goddess whose name started with a vowel Afro became Aphrodite when you came, went over to Greece across the way, but for some reason it made a jump to this male figure to the ancient Jews who put him in as this kind of, and of course, there’s the whole, oh, if you summon him, he’ll give you secret knowledge.
And that’s what. The only reason anyone summons demons apparently is just to get secret knowledge and find out what treasure is.
Stephen: They summoned them and them in a body to get revenge. Yes. So that was, interesting and different though. I agree with you the movie was a little long and slow.
Yeah, and I even made a comment that I’m like, oh my God, this is like one of the slowest movies we’ve watched. And there have been a couple that have been trying my patience. And when you get scenes like, alright, so we have this demon trapped in a goal and body that we’re bringing to life, let’s make him our house servant so he can sweep the floor.
I’m like, what? Watch. We can cut that.
Rhys: Have him do tricks in front of the prince of the king, yeah. Like a trained monkey. [00:06:00] So the story’s ancient too. The story goes back a long time, long before movies, and the fact that he picked this to do I thought was really interesting because, it’s a fascinating tale.
It just I would’ve never pictured in the 1920s like this being the center corner piece to the, yeah. It was I don’t wanna say is obviously not the first, but it was such an influential kind of thing because that whole thing with the little girl and the giant monster That’s right. Out of Universal Frankenstein.
Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. Thought the same thing. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: And a little bit the whole bringing to life and revenge is what the crow mythology is. So that’s Norse more mythology. So it’s similar to that. And the only other. Show I could think of with a, this Jewish history in the Gollum was an X-Files episode.
Oh. I think there needs, we need some more golems in our horror mix of things. We’re getting werewolves recently. We were just talking about that the other night. Some werewolf movies over the last couple years [00:07:00] that have been pretty good. There aren’t many werewolf movies. May I could go for some movies, see some, people lashing out to get revenge like the crow was.
Rhys: I would say it’s actually here. It’s just taken on new skin. This is what became of the AI robot genre. This Megan, that’s what it evolved into. It’s Megan. It’s her, it’s all of those movies that are out right now. Where you have the right, usually for some reason an innocent or beautiful looking female figure who is just utterly murderous in a killing machine, right by the end of the film.
Stephen: Which, speaking of a little side note. I enjoyed the first Megan. I was like, oh, this isn’t bad. It comes out at a good time. I did ai. Yeah, I was shocked. I was checked, was shocked. The second one, the new, I was like, eh, but the newest trailer I saw for it, I’m like. Now that looks interesting. Not necessarily from the horror aspect, but it’s a almost a revenge, but it’s an action type [00:08:00] movie with blood guts, gore, and revenge.
So they, they changed the genre a bit. I didn’t get as much of a horror vibe, but it looks really good and has some of that humor in it with the action. So speaking of
Rhys: modern go. And that’s what I enjoyed about the first one was that it didn’t take itself too seriously. It was tongue in cheek, which I enjoyed a lot, but it was really interesting to me because we just recorded one missed call and I had talked about the Eastern fear in.
Late 20th century horror movies of technology and technology was so big in it, and now it’s migrated to the west. Yeah. And we are constantly making movies now about how terrifying technology is. So it was just really interesting to me that they were on the forefront of that wave. And it’s crashed here, except instead of it being some.
Disembodied voice on the phone and a ghost crawling outta your tv. This is just like flat out a robot that’s gonna kill you.
Stephen: Yes. Yeah. It’s, it’s the reaction to the world. That’s where Godzilla came from, yeah. And [00:09:00] we’ve had that all the time. And vampires, that was the reaction back in the day.
We’ve just. Kept it in modern form. ’cause vampires have changed so much through the centuries. Oh for sure. From that to our modern that yeah. And then the Megan thing, there’s one scene in the trailer that cracked me up. It’s the same girl playing Megan, but obviously it’s four years later. So she’s taller.
She’s growing up. And so the Harry Potter
Rhys: syndrome.
Stephen: Yeah. They put the. The consciousness in a Wally robot or something like and not Wally the the, yeah. Wall. No, not Wally, the other one. With Eva. That was Wally. That was Wally. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It puts it in a robot that looks like Eva and she’s like talking to him like, I could use my real body type stuff.
And she goes I have a couple requests. I wanna be taller. I’m like that’s a good way to handle this kid growing up, clever.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. And I did notice a couple of things in here. They say, this is how the Gollum came to the world, but they already had a [00:10:00] statue designed, ready to, come to life.
So I’m like, they were preparing for this instructions on how to do it. Yes, it’s instructions. So it wasn’t the first one, obviously. Somebody had already figured this thing out. Some texts got lost somewhere. Yeah. Collin’s partner is Jewish, and I said, so do they teach you how to make golems?
He’s no, not really. I’m like. Then what the hell do you wanna be Jewish for? Come on. Yeah, for sure. That’s what I’d wanna do. If I
Rhys: can’t make a Gollum, what’s the point?
Stephen: Yeah, that’s one of the most interesting things in any religion I’ve heard. Yeah. Much better than what the Mormons do okay.
Rhys: Alright. Yeah, fill the comments. It’s all for Steve. It’s got nothing to do with me.
Stephen: Attack me. I’ve been there. I can say it. Alright, so
Rhys: before we go, yeah. Happy birthday to Lori, who is a very dedicated, longtime listener to our show. And this probably won’t come out until a month after your birthday or a couple weeks, but still it was, we recorded this on your birthday, Lori, so happy birthday.
Stephen: Happy [00:11:00] birthday. Yay. We like long, loyal listeners and you’ve run into a couple people lately, so yeah I hope we, we go to a couple shows here. I’m trying to get into a couple things and maybe we’ll get some people that, oh, I’ve heard you guys, yeah, that’d be cool. That makes it fun.
Alright, so everybody check out the website, check out our other episodes. We’ve got, what’s next, Steve? Oh jeez. I always forget to look that up. It’s horrible. I’m terrible at that.
Rhys: This is you saying, oh, are they related to so and and I’m like I have no idea. I didn’t make that connection.
I didn’t look this up. Who did the music? I don’t know, Steve, I didn’t look up who the composure was this time. It’s always when I haven’t checked,
Stephen: I had Gollum on there. And then I’ve got Last Man on Earth is next. Alright. I haven’t seen that one, but it’s, it, that one’s been remade a couple times in a co couple different ways, so I ought to be.
Interesting. Awesome. And Colin gave me a suggestion I’m going to add on to here too. [00:12:00] So we’ve still got quite a few good public domain side dishes to go through.
Rhys: Awesome. All right. Looking forward to ’em
Stephen: later man.
Rhys: See ya.
