Hooptober XII 25/45
{9 countries: Denmark + Sweden}

| In short: The quintessential tutorial for monk entrapment and ye olde axe-handle milking technique!

| This movie teaches us: That in medieval times, I would’ve had a standing date with the village pyre. “Hysteria” feels like a rebrand of “witch,” just with better lighting and worse paperwork. Mental asylum if poor, “clinic” if rich. As an autistic, fully vaccinated paracetamol baby of the now — let’s just say there’s no reason to stop using fire-retardant cream as moisturizer quite yet.

| This movie also teaches us: Don’t throw away your kleptomaniac leftovers! A thief-finger soak gives your booze a delightfully maleficious kick.

| This movie also teaches us: How to conduct a topless trial via consecrated sausage rope.

| This movie also teaches us: 1922 already had claymation demon boobies!

| Verdict: Unholy smokes, Christensen was pushing envelopes — and buttons — left, right, and somewhere infernal.
The copious demons, monsters, hybrids, and supernatural hags make this a Monday Monster Mash shoe-in.
Beyond its educational value, this Swedish-Danish silent oddity doubled as Benjamin Christensen’s excuse to play the Devil in his own globally distributed black-mass sizzle reel — a proto-horror spectacle of early special effects. For which I have nothing but respect.
Though I could have done without the last handful of chapters that seem to correlate witchcraft to mental illness. Those nonetheless render Häxan relevant as a time capsule of the 1920s, but nixed a four star rating.

Documentary, moral panic, PSA, or witchfinder general tutorial? — all of the above.
A century later, Häxan remains more bewitching than most multi-episode “prestige” streaming slop docs stacked on a pyre.

| Listed: As a favorite.