Directed by: Robert Wiene
I ran out of my backlog of meticulously curated content so I ain’t got no essays or collages or nothing but I did write some microfictions this morning about Saint Paul so please enjoy those in the interim.
The Life and Lore of Saint Paul:
Paul was a Jewish tent-maker named Saul. He dropped the S and adopted a P after getting zazzled by a UFO beam on the road to Damascus. He was blinded for three days and three nights. His skin burned by microwave radiation. He converted to Christianity. He didn’t think circumcision was strictly necessary. That was one of his contributions. His remains were earthed outside the walls of Rome on an estate owned by a gal named Lucina and later Emperor Constantine built a church atop it. His sarcophagus was found after Y2K and they dated his bones with radiocarbon to tell if it was he and the Nazi pope at the time said that it was so.
***
In Lystra, he sees a man who was crippled at birth and he’s like, “Get up, bro!” and the man is cured.
And everyone begins whispering that Paul is a god but he’s like, “Glory be unto the one great creator who is source and from which we are all ghostly emanations out of, like so many wiggly appendages. You too can be like me.”
And they all cry, “how? How?”
And he says, “Limit your red meat intake to once a week. Renounce your sins. Try to think good thoughts but totally feel your feelings. Try to breathe through your nose more, maybe even taping your mouth at night.”
***
One time he was giving a lecture in Troas that was so fucking boring bros, that a dude fell asleep and fell out a window and he cracked his skull open and his neck snapped at an alarming angle and some of his inner bits were dashed to pulp and the life did froth and bubble out of him.
And Paul was like, “Oh, shit!”
He ran outside and he had to push some peasants out of the way and he got to the sleeper’s rapidly cooling corpse and he hugged it to his breast muttering, “you’re alright, you’re good, you’re ok.”
And the guy sneezed thrice and it was so.
***
Another time Paul was on his way to court and his ship was delayed for fourteen days due to thunderstorms at sea. At last it was wrecked upon the shore of Malta. When his men and women and doggies and domesticated parakeets made their way inland, all sea-soaked and storm-bedraggled, they met the locals. They built a big fire to warm themselves. And from the flames leapt a python, and the great snake did sink its fangs in Paul’s forearm and Paul was like, “Gah!” and he shook the critter back into the smoldering embers.
The locals all thought this was bad business. They began a-whispering amongst themselves.
But Paul metabolised the python poison and went on to heal all the islanders of diarrhea disease.
They said, “to whom now should we follow?”
And Paul said, “God, duh.”
***
Paul went to Arabia.
Paul went to Mt. Sinai.
Paul went to Tarsus.
He went to the superstore.
Everywhere he went he preached the word of God. He was a bit insufferable. Always he’d be singing, “the lord said to Noah to build him an arky arky.” and it would catch in peoples heads and later they’d be stuck on I-9 with road work ahead and they’d get to singing it to themselves and they’s be like, “aw, fuck Paul!”
***
Paul went to Minos, or was it Tartarus? Immediately he set up shop. He began delivering PowerPoint © presentations at the local Friar’s Clubs and preaching that the prophet was here on earth. But no matter the dynamism of his speeches nor the handsomeness of his slides he found his words gained no traction and this is why:
The town had, amongst its populous. an evil wizard named Eryamus who wore a robe of starlight and a peaked cap of solar bodies. Eryamus had a similar dictum of “no other Gods before me.” The people feared him. He kept them safe from floods and famine and in exchange decried that they bring him “all the big-tittied women” of the land, that he may lay with, and all the choicest cuts of meat in their larder too. The expensive organic chocolates.
Upon hearing this Paul cracked his knuckles and said, “Let’s go to work.”
The two wizards met atop a lonely mountain and did duel a magickal battle.
In the village below, the townsfolk looking up, saw brilliant coloured lights flashing through the strange night. They heard many a thunderous crashing boom. They closed their shutters and prayed to this one or that one and whichever one they prayed to gained more power.
Back up top, the magicians were hurling lightning bolts and glowing purple orbs at one another. They were dripping flop sweat and belting out, “Expecto Cadavro!” First, Eryamus turned Paul into a Chinese Dragon, then Paul turned Eryamus to a giant Banana Slug. Next, Eryamus turned Paul into a chittering monster-head with curving tusks and a wolf face on the head’s backside and trailing guts and viscera with pink lungs that flapped and propelled the beast-head Paul through the sky. And the Paul leyak turned the Eryamus slug into a sickly ghost child with emaciated visible ribs and raccoon shiners around his eyes, his ghost nub tapering down to a flowing vapor. Clearly the new manifestations did not limit their power.
Eryamus turned Paul into the letters in every alphabet that ever was or will be and each letter he swallowed so as to engulf their sound and sever Paul’s origin. But Paul syruped back from a crack in the rock wall and turned Eryamus into the long sustained low of a cow in calfbirth. He stopped up the ears of all who may listen with temporary linens that they might miss this Eryamus low and thus vanish the sorcerer from all lands. But Eryamus bounded back as the scream of a grackle that none may miss for its call lives not only in the ears but in the soul.
And on and on, like thus, did the battle wage.
In the morning they called a time-out and heated up some store-bought frozen pizza and did repast together in recognition of the others powers. The pepperoni was imitation seitan but the cheese was real and plentiful.
As they ate, Eryamus ventured this gambit.
“Mighty Paul,” he crooned. “leave this land never to return, for at no point will your words induce succor here, and at no point will the hearts of the animals be turned to you. If you leave at once, I shall build a statue to you and proclaim in the songs that we were homies and that your abs were really defined. If you stay, you will not return from the being I will transform you into next. I’m thinking an old sow’s tongue, lying in the dust of a fouled accropolis, collecting ants and disintegration for its short remainder.”
And Paul said, “How’s this for a counter-offer? You’re no good guy!”
And just like that, all of Eryamus’ magic left him. The sight flew from his eyes. His world was darkness become.
Paul guided poor blind Eryamus down from the mountain. He was like, “careful” every time they came to a boulder or a snarling tree root.
At the bottom, the townsfolk quickly saw the score.
“Yes, Sir!” They cried. “Hallelujah!”
“Quick!” they beseeched their underlings. “Begin building the Jesus hall!”
Some of the other saints began to pity blind Eryamus and they held a special Saint’s counsel to see if they should shed Christ tears into his wrecked and pupilless white eyeball pits.
But Paul said, “No. Let him think about what he’s done.”
Age mellowed Eryamus. He grew to be a friend to the weary. He became one of those who delight in the annual return of birdsong.
***
My wife and I took a walk through a chilly autumn morning. Vermont’s greens were turning maroon and ochre.
“I’m fully in Perimenopause now.” She said. “The cycles are getting really erratic.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
Anyway, I was in my head still concocting Paul stories.
Within me the wizard battle waged still.
Which wolf would win?
The one you feed.
My wife filled the lull with a funny voice. “Jacksonhole, Wyoming.” She said.
“Come on down to Jacksonhole, Wyoming. See Jackson’s hole.”
This was how our sounds met the air.
This was how our bodies danced in space.
On this crisp October morning
in the year of our lord
2026
Halloween Score:
Autumn Vibes: 4/5
Scares & Chills: 3/5
Cultural & Cinematic Importance: 5/5
Monster Action: 1/5
Second Opinions:
“What if film could project what was inside of us: our emotions, fantasies and fears? This was the breakthrough of Caligari, carrying the larger movement of German Expressionism into the cinematic realm, while unleashing a new strain of filmmaking with an intensely subjective power not seen before: the horror movie”. - Kevin B. Lee, Fandor
“One of the pinnacles of Expressionist art and essential viewing in any version. THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI looks and feels like a nightmare: the imagery is striking and seems symbolic even when it isn't; the plot follows a bizarre-yet-consistent logic”. - Ben Sachs, Cine-file
“The craziest, wildest, shivery movie that has come wriggling across the silver sheet of a cinema house. [It's] like a collaboration of Rube Goldberg, Ben Hecht, Charlie Chaplin and Edgar Allan Poe -- a melting pot of the styles and technique of all four.” - Carl Sandburg, Chicago Daily News
Can Kid’s Watch It?
It’s pretty spooky.
Hint for Tomorrow’s Movie: This one's got original songs by a prominent pop-star.