The Haunted Screen
The Haunted Screen is a narrative podcast about film, history, and the places they intersect. Incorporating extensive research and archival interviews, Professor Travis Mushett explores key movements in global cinema through engaging audio storytelling that appeals to both hardcore cinephiles and casual moviegoers. The first season—"From Caligari to Hitler"—investigates the chaotic, creative world of Weimar Germany. New episodes are tackling new topics!
Episodes
11 episodes
Yeah, Y'all—This is Fascism: The Paxton Mixtape, Pt. I
We knew it would be bad, but holy shit.With the collapse of the American project, it's been hard to focus on film history. So in this two-part series, we're switching things up. Using the five-stage framework that scholar Robert Paxton l...
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1:29:18
Cinema Oblivion: Lost Films, Haunted Histories
As many as 90% of silent movies are lost to the ages, and many from later eras have vanished as well. How do these holes distort the story of film? This week: reel infernos, missing monsters, Jerry Lewis'... Auschwitz clown debacle, and a littl...
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39:30
A New Year, A New Orlok: Nosferatu vs. Nosferatu
Robert Eggers' new version of Nosferatu is an absolute horror show in the best way possible. With Orlok Fever sweeping the nation, we're taking the opportunity to repost a 2022 episode on F.W. Murnau's century-old original.
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1:09:51
Folk Horror, Pt. II: The Haunted Screen Gets Hauntological
Folk horror is a past-haunted subgenre for our past-haunted times. Appearances from A-Ha, Christopher Lee, Jacques Derrida, Ronald Reagan, Mark Fisher, and creepy child laughter. Episode artwork by DALL-E. Yeah, I know.
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52:23
The Happy Halloween We're So Back Folk Horror Extravaganza, Pt. I
Midsommar! Witchfinder General! The Blood on Satan's Claw! The Wicker Man! '73! And a lil '06 as a treat! No Derrida, though. Gonna have to wait for Derrida.
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40:15
1.6 — The End: The Blue Angel and the Twilight of the Weimar Republic
Nazi, dissident, victim… Josef von Sternberg’s cabaret classic The Blue Angel had three stars: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, and Kurt Gerron. As the Weimar Era ended and the Third Reich began, fate brought them—and all of Ge...
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1:14:27
1.5 — Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou, Pt. II: A Marriage—and a Country—on the Brink
As the 1920s became the 1930s, both the Lang-von Harbou marriage and German democracy itself teetered on the edge of collapse. In this moment of personal and political chaos, the couple made movies—and choices—that would define their legacies.<...
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1:10:09
1.4 — G.W. Pabst & the German Left: When Pictures Got Political
In a political environment as combustible as the Weimar Republic, it was only a matter of time before the country’s Kinos became venues for ideological warfare. G.W. Pabst was on the frontlines, firing broadsides against nationalism (<...
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1:15:36
1.3 — Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou, Pt. I: Seduction, Spectacle, and the Birth of Nazism
Through movies like Destiny, Die Nibelungen, and Metropolis, the husband/wife team of director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Thea von Harbou helped establish Berlin as Hollywood’s one true rival. But their emergence as ...
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1:25:34
1.2 — Villains: Nosferatu, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, and the Timeliness of Terror
In 1922, a pair of diabolical creatures arrived on German movie screens. What can the vampire Count Orlok and the supercriminal Dr. Mabuse teach us about the fears and fantasies lurking in the Weimar imagination?For show notes and other...
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58:47
1.1 — Beginnings: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the Rise of Expressionism, and the Long Shadow of World War I
A world war lost. An economy in tatters. A country riven by political violence. Germany’s Weimar Era had a tumultuous birth, and with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, its filmmakers began to channel that mayhem into sinister celluloid fant...
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1:24:35