Read the Review, Watch the Movie: 'Seven Footprints to Satan'

The subject of the following review was released to movie theaters exactly 90 years ago today! (The Year of the Hot Toddy is truly a year of happy coincidences. When I initially chose this movie from among the many Thelma Todd-featuring films I'll be writing about during 2019, to watch at this point, I didn't realize I would have the opportunity to post the review to coincide with such an anniversary!)


Seven Footprints to Satan (aka "Satan's Stairwell") (1929)
Starring: Creighton Hale, Thelma Todd, Laska Winter,  Sheldon Lewis, Sojin Kamiyama, William V. Mong, Angelo Rossitto, Nora Cecil, Dewitt Jennings, Loretta Young, and Charles Gemora
Director: Benjamin Christensen
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

While he is deep in the throes of a midlife crisis (Hale) and his girlfriend (Todd) are find themselves victims of a kidnapping during an elaborate heist at an exclusive  art auction... and then things go from bad to nightmarish.

"Seven Footsteps to Satan" is one of those films that's hard to review without spoiling it. I think it really works best if you come to it cold, not knowing really what to expect... because the impact of the film revealing what it's really about and begins to spiral into fantastic and creepy weirdness is all the greater. (You THINK you're watching a crime drama, but then....)

With that in mind, all I can say about the film is that in addition to an impressive, fast-moving and twist-laden storyline, the film sports creative camera work and editing (I especially like the way wipes are used), spectacularly elaborate sets, elegant costumes (mostly evening gowns and tuxes but the other outfits that show up are really neat), excellent monster make-up jobs, and some really fine acting from the principals in the cast.

I thought the performance by star Creighton Hale, who, once again, is a bespecled and unlikely hero, was excellent. Unlike the comedic character he played in "The Cat and the Canary", here he's quite competent and extremely brave at every turn. Actress Thelma Todd, also impresses, showing that she was as good a dramatic actress as she was a comedienne.

By the way, The film has a very large supporting cast (so large, in fact, that it sometimes feels like costar Todd is just another face in the  crowd), but among them we have Loretta Young standing out with a memorable performance in one of the film's most intense and frightening scenes, and an honest-to-god Asian actor playing a sinister Oriental Mystice, Sojin Kamiyama. (Maybe someone forgot to tell the Danish director that he should use white guys in make-up for the Asian characters.)

"Seven Footprints to Satan" was one of three silent thrillers/horror films directed by Benjamin Christensen for American studios, and until just a few years ago, it was believed to be lost. Now, however, several versions are available to watch online. None are of stellar quality, but given how many of these great old movies are gone forever (or hard to access because they've not yet been digitized and released online or on DVD), lovers of this sort of material are lucky we're getting this much.

If you like silent movies, especially ones of the more "trippy" variety, you need to watch "Seven Footprints to Satan". I highly recommend the version I've embedded below: It's the complete film, it's it was digitized from filmstock that was in relatively good shape, and it features an all-new, modern musical score that adds greatly to the experience.



By the way, if there's a film that could do with a remake, it's this one. It's got all KINDS of elements that would appeal to modern audiences, especially lovers of horror films. (Hell, I think this film may even be an ancient ancestor of the Torture Porn subgenre!)

The heroes and villains of "Seven Footprints to Satan"

'The Cat and the Canary' is a cool silent flick

The Cat and the Canary (1927)
Starring: Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Martha Mattox, Tully Marshall, Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch, Forrest Stanley, Arthur Edmund Carewe, George Siegmann, and Lucien Littlefield
Director: Paul Leni
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Twenty years to the hour after the death of millionaire Cyrus West, his relatives gather for the reading of his will; West loathed all of them, and he was determined to make them wait to pick at his dead reamins. His strange will leaves everything to his niece (La Plante) but only if she is certified sane by a doctor before dawn. If she is not declared mentally fit, a back-up heir--supposedly unknown to any living soul as the name is on a paper in a sealed envelope--will receive West's estate. As the relatives spend the night, soon the mansion becomes filled with strange and terrifying events... which may or may nt be in the mind of the young heiress--or perhaps even caused by her! Is she insane, or is someone attempting to drive her insane, so that they might gain the West fortune?

The grand-daddy of all Dark Old House mystery films and a collection of what would become standard fare in 1930s horror flicks and B-thrillers--gnarled grasping hands, masked killers, vanishing bodies, secret doors and passages, stylish damsels in distress, inept leading men, and just about anything else you can think of--this film is great fun and a must-see for anyone with a serious interest in the horror genre as an art form, or just a love for the gothic horror genre.

Your level of enjoyment of the early part of the picture will be dictated by your tolerance for the acting style of silent movies, but once the will has been read things start revving into high gear and the tension and action keeps building until the "big reveal" of the villain at the end. What's more, the bits that were supposed to be suspenseful in 1927 remain so today, and the same goes for the bits that were supposed to be funny.

There are a couple of disconnects story-wise--such as the point where one character talks another out of going for the police by saying that she'll do it and then never goes anywhere--but those are more than made up for by scenes such as the one with the main character fleeing in terror down a curtain-lined hallway, the stylish arrival of the police on the scene, and the action-filled climax that is equal-parts funny and frightening and which cuts back and forth between a milk-cart speeding through the night and a furious battle between the comic relief character who's emerged as the film's hero and the caped, murdering madman.

If you enjoyed just about any horror film from Monogram Pictures or "The Old Dark House", you should check out this flick, even if you have yourself convinced you "hate silent movies."