Hi there and welcome to October!  This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is our annual horrorthon!  For the past several years (seriously, we’ve been doing this for a while), we have celebrated every October by reviewing and showing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music.  That’s a tradition that I’m looking forward to helping to continue this year.

This year, we’re getting things started with a movie that has been called “the first American horror film.”  In 1914, D.W. Griffith released The Avenging Conscience, a melodrama that was based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Annabel Lee.  In this film, The Nephew (Henry B. Walthall) falls in love with the Sweetheart (Blanche Sweet).  However, the Uncle (Spottiswoode Aiken) is opposed to the relationship, mostly because the Sweetheart is a “common” woman.  Despite having been raised by the Uncle, the Nephew snaps and murders him.  The Nephew then finds himself tortured not just by his own guilt and fear but also by vivid hallucinations.  This is a film that invites us to come for the murder and stay for the reminder that “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

Like a lot of the films of the silent era, it will require a bit of patience on the part of modern viewers.  It takes a while to get going but the surreal imagery and Henry B. Walthall’s increasingly unhinged performance make it worth sticking with.  If nothing else, the film’s historical significance makes it one worthy to be seen by all serious horror fans.

Enjoy!