This haunting classic of the silent screen is familiar to every graduate of Film 101. Like Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Godard's Breathless, and Welles's Citizen Kane, Caligari helped define a cinematic school... and forever changed the way the world made movies. It's also great fun, even for modern audiences.

The film begins with two men trading horror stories. One promises the other a terrifying true tale--the harrowing story of his fiancée's narrow escape from death. Here's the story: an amoral asylum director wants to see if he can order somnambulist patient Cesare to commit murder. To this end, the nefarious doctor masquerades as a traveling showman and picks victims from the gawking carnival crowds. He sends his sleepwalker out to execute bloody deeds by night--crimes of which Cesare is barely aware. Soon, Cesare abducts the narrator's girl and is caught ... which is only the beginning of the surprises.

Caligari's world became the textbook example of 1920s German Expressionist cinema--a cockeyed dreamscape, where black-clad actors feverishly chase each other across moody, barely-realistic sets. Think of films such as Dark City or the Nightmare Before Christmas or Saturday Night Live's "Sprockets" sketches. Here's where it all began. --Grant Balfour