After a couple of false starts (where I couldn’t manage to fit all that I wished to say on this fertile, but short, film) I am proud to present Schreckbabble’s commentary for Hintertreppe–or Backstairs– the fabulously gloomy forerunner to the series of kammerspielfilms which would move the vehicle of the Chamber Play from the world of the Berlin stage onto the silver screen of postwar Germany. . . a movement almost singlehandedly wrought by the figure of Carl Mayer, the primary subject of this commentary.
This track uses as its source the 49-plus minute DVD made available by the fabulous little mail order video concern, Grapevine. Say what you’d like about the transfer and print quality of their product, but were it not for Grapevine I would not have been able to see films like this and VARIETÉ back during the VHS era. We owe a great debt to passionate, fanatical little companies like Grapevine and Video Yesteryear who have strained for years to get as many of these lost and hidden gems into the hands of cinephiles like us. To these obscure little longtime purveyors of some of the world’s finest cinematic delicacies, I send up a formal rocket of salute:
Here’s to you!
Dropbox link–
ENJOY*
HerrSchreck's House of Commentary 
Coming Soon.. ROBOT MONSTER, (1953)
Posted: November 13, 2012 in Sound FilmsTags: b films, cinema, commentary, drive in, George Nader, horror, Phil tucker, robot monster, Schreck, schreckbabble, sci fi
LISTEN… there’s been far too much serious shit flying through the air lately. Hurricanes fucking everything up, tornadoes churning up Queens, homeless people, unemployed people here in the US and in Berlin, painful elections, serious commentaries by a very serious Schreck on very serious screenwriters and directors, snowy noreasters. . . and tonight there is a coastal flood warning here in nyc.
Fuck this noise. I never got around to the annual Horrorfest, which last at last go-round poured love on Universal’s BLACK FRIDAY. This owing to the miserable clutches of Hurricane Sandy which took a gigantic sized Crap on the spirit of the day.
Well we here at Schreckbabble don’t hafta stand still for that sound. I love, as is known by some, my schlocko vintage horror just about as much as I love Carl Mayer; no film snob, me. I simply cannot get enough of these kinds of movies. . . they were my route into cinema when I was a small boy, and they’ll probably be playing on my hospital tv when I’m gumming rubber tubes and croaking in my death bed.
So, in an all out blast of Spirit Lightening, Schreckbabble is proud to revel in the blissful Tuckerian masterwork of sweet putridity ROBOT MONSTER, that fabulous minestrone of the lopsided, that zuppe de pesce of the Pointedly Mismatched, the Mona Lisa of magnificent mistakes.
Ah, Robot Monster. It is in the plan. I must. And I can.
And I will.*