I know it was only a few days ago that I featured another Paul Wegener film, albeit a much more obscure one, but this little lost dainty is worth the mention because it ranks as one of the very first horror comedies intentionally made. Some consider it the very first; but I would argue that Méliès had once again beat everyone to it. In fact, Méliès' The House of the Devil [rough translation] which was released in 1896 and is credited as the first intentional horror film, is at it's core also a comedy; or at least a farce. And so too is Wegener's 1917 The Golem and the Dancing Girl (Der Golem und die Tänzerin). Part of his "Golem trilogy," it along with his first 1915 Golem film, are listed among the lamentably lost films from the silent era. This Golem film is more lost than is Wegener's first (if that is the proper way of stating that); Dancing Girl is so lost that only a few stills exist and just the barest outline of the plot is known. What is known is that Wegener once again braves the Golem makeup, as he would again in 1920, only he is playing the actor who portrayed the monster in the first film...an actor playing an actor who is spoofing a third role. The actor dresses up as the monster for a party to impress a female actress in attendance...only things don't go as planned. Apparently, hilarity ensued. It is such a shame that one of the first fullest horror spoofs is no longer a part of a our cinema choices today; so many films from The Bride of Frankenstein to the Evil Dead movies are in the long line of spoofs and comedies to enrich the world of (horror) cinema decades later; they all have their genesis in films like this one. Of course, Wegener's 1920 Golem prequel does survive, and it considered one of the great German silent horror films along with the likes of Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
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