Thanks for the memories!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

A Deutsche Styria Film. English version made by The American Dubbing Co. for Carlton Films. U.S. release through Distributors Corporation of America: 1958. West German release through Gloria: 23 October 1952 (sic). 92 minutes. German title: ALRAUNE. SYNOPSIS: An iconoclastic professor's mysterious but highly attractive daughter has no less than four young men in a spin. NOTES: Fifth remake of the 1911 Hans Heinz Ewers novel. There were three silent versions of which the most famous is the 1928 release with Brigitte Helm and Paul Wegener. Miss Helm starred again in the 1930 remake, this time oppposite Albert Bassermann and a somewhat second-string cast rather stagily directed by Richard Oswald (doubtless hampered by the demands of the sound engineer). 11952 seemed an opportunistic time for a full-scale remake, using a top-of-the-range budget and an impressive cast led by Erich von Stroheim (making his first film appearance after his Hollywood comeback role in Sunset Boulevard), Hildegard Knef (then at the height of her fame-she starred in no less than seven films in 1952), and Karlheinz Bohm (later to play the title role in Peeping Tom).COMMENT: Although this film is only at present available in its English-dubbed version, one must admit that the dubbing, for once, is exceptionally good. The principal dubbers even make laudable attempts to imitate both Knef's and Von Stroheim's voices and their methods of delivery. It's also pleasing that Fraulein Knef's songs have been left to speak for themselves in their original German and that Werner Heymann's most appropriate background music has been retained. Rabenalt is not usually thought of as a classy director, but, helped by the atmospheric sets and photography, he has done wonders here. Extremely fast-clipped film editing keeps the plot moving at a breakneck pace for almost every second of its 92 minutes.

I have finally managed to catch up with this hard-to-find movie on a budget DVD.Even in 1952, when the movie was first made, it was already an anachronism, full of the misogyny that seemed to characterise German movies from the early Twentieth Century (e.g. The Blue Angel). Typically they featured a beautiful woman who exerts a fatal attraction on all the men around her and then humiliates and destroys them.The femme fatale in this movie is Alraune. She is the result of the artificial insemination of a prostitute by a murderer. This 'unnatural union of tainted blood' is posited as the reason for her selfishness, emotional frigidity and destructiveness. However, at the very end, the movie suddenly flips and holds out the possibility that her soulless predation on men is due to nurture rather than nature. I doubt if this is thematic sophistication on behalf of the film-makers. Probably, it is just indecisiveness.I find this film hard to evaluate, because the print is very poor and there are some baffling artifacts in the DVD transfer that I have never encountered before. More to the point, the movie is only 79 minutes long, as against the 92 minutes quoted on IMDb. I do not know whether this trimming was undertaken when the English language version was prepared, or whether it is a consequence of damage to the print itself. Possibly it is both.This might explain the strange editing. There are some very abrupt plot transitions that suggest significant cuts were made for US distribution but, in addition, the transitions between the remaining scenes are sometimes so sharp that the dubbed dialogue seems to spill over from one scene to the next. This gives the film a disconcerting rhythm. The pacing within scenes is often quite ponderous (I am tempted to say 'Germanic'), but the cutting between them is very sharp. The result is that the movie seems both leaden and breathless at the same time. I would be interested to see the original German language version to see if it has this same paradoxical feel.It is difficult for me to recommend this movie in the form in which I have seen it. It really needs to be viewed in a reasonably good, and reasonably complete, print.Despite all its deficiencies, I found that Alraune did exert a weird sort of fascination, but I recognise that it will probably only appeal to those people who are particularly curious about the oddities that can occasionally be disinterred from the remoter hinterlands of the movie landscape.To the more general movie-goer I would say: "there are better things to do with your time."

This fascinating German fantasy film stars the legendary Erich von Stroheim as Professor Jacob ten Brinken, a brilliant scientist who has played God and created the world's first test tube baby. Now fully grown, Alraune (Hildegard Knef) is a beautiful but affectless creature whose way with the opposite sex threatens to ensnare the Professor's nephew (a very young looking Carlheinz Bohm). Alraune's amorality--presumably the result of being bred from the egg of a prostitute and the sperm of a murderer--has not been tempered by a spell in convent and now threatens to destroy the family legacy. Though clearly set before World War II, the film reflects concerns about the misuses of science by the Nazi regime, though perhaps the conclusions it reaches are not that far afield from those of Dr. Mengele. Alraune is a missing link between German expressionism and the Italian Gothic cinema of the early 1960s, with a dash of Jean Cocteau thrown in for good measure. Interesting sidenote: it sure sounds like von Stroheim dubbed his own English language track.

ALRAUNE (aka UNNATURAL), is based on the popular Hanns Heinz Ewers novel. This version made in 1952, is the fifth and last version filmed. Many sources state that this film is lost in its English language version, but since the version I saw everyone spoke English, I can assure you they are wrong.This film is unusual, if only for its premise. Erich Von Stroheim plays Ten Brinken, a scientist who has created a women by means of artificial insemination. Ten Brinken used the sperm from a hanged murderer and the egg from a prostitute. Ten Brinken raises the girl (whom he has named Alraune, German for "mandrake") as his daughter, but is convinced because she was created artificially, she will inherit all the unsavory characteristics of her "parents". Only evil will befall all those who may fall in love with her. And tragic circumstances do follow all the men she tries to fall in love with. There is an odd element thrown in which suggests Alraune has supernatural powers. She convinces Ten Brinken to by a worthless parcel of land. She then commands some workers to start digging where they discover a spring whose waters contain healing properties. Ten Brinken and a wealthy woman invest in it but the spring runs dry and Ten Brinken ends up almost financially ruined.Despite the films very adult premise, I could not help thinking that this film has the feel of a film belonging in era much older than the 1950's. The few American critics who reviewed the film when it was released in America in 1957 also noted an old fashioned air fatalism throughout the film. Karl Boehm (later of PEEPING TOM) is convincing as the young man who falls in love with Alraune, despite being aware of her ghastly origin and is the only man Alraune finds true love. Critics said he was to naive and boyish for the part, but I think that was what was right for the role.