Fritz Langs first sound film, 1931s M, is known now as a benchmark for film noir, the procedural genre, and German Expressionism. While these styles influenced and were influenced by Langs film, M is a horror film, through and through. Indeed, M takes much of its iconography from the oldest of horror traditions: fairy tales. As Peter Lorres serial killer stalks the children of Berlin, he is represented by shadows and an eerie whistling, in every way the Big Bad Wolf brought to bug-eyed life and loosed upon the innocent. M morphs into a procedural for the middle acts, focusing on both cops and criminals as they up-end the city in a search for this killer. This is all good stuff, but its in the final trial(s) that Lang returns the film to horror and the film attains the level of all-time classic. More than anything else, M is an examination of the monsters that we see every day, the average looking person that carries woe and misery everywhere they go. Lang ends the film on an almost unbearably bleak note, reminding the audience that while evil may be halted, and even punished, the damage it inflicts can never be undone. Considering that Lang and his leading man were both of Jewish ancestry and came of age during the rise of Nazism, this knowledge was all too real. MOST HORROR MOMENT: The opening sequence, as a little girl is lured to her (off screen) demise while her mother searches the city in increasing hysteria.
Brendan Foley is a pop-culture omnivore which is a nice way of saying he has no taste. He has a passion for genre movies, TV shows, books and any and all media built around short people with hairy feet and magic rings. He has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and Writing, which is a very nice way of saying that he's broke. You can follow/talk to/yell at him on Twitter at @TheTrueBrendanF.
