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“Psychodrama is a subtle art.”

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, released in 1920, is a true masterpiece of the silent era. It’s a classic example of German Expressionism that grapples with the horrors of World War I and the brutality of authority. It’s still referenced in contemporary media, and is widely considered to be one of the pillars of modern horror, as well as a staggering artistic achievement, to this day.

The unofficial sequel, 1989’s Dr. Caligari, is not.

Here’s a few things that Dr. Caligari has going for it that its predecessor doesn’t, though:

-A scantily-clad woman writhing against a giant wall of living flesh, sucking on the massive tongue that protrudes from its mouth as a wound on the side of the wall oozes blood and pus, or alternatively, candy

-A living scarecrow with a crotch full of hay that combusts when the same woman starts to dig through it looking for his “boy-thing,” burning her own hand with the heat of her frenzied lust

-A mad doctor swapping her patients’ personalities and genders with the help of what she calls “glandular extract”

-A DIY, perverse, drag-show-community-theater approach to body horror and the very real terror of medical and psychiatric institutions

-Absolutely unhinged direction from Stephen Sayadian, aka Rinse Dream, the director of the surrealist hardcore porn flicks Nightdreams (1981) and Café Flesh (1982)

1989’s Dr. Caligari exists in a world outside of our own, in a highly-staged theatrical environment fully divorced from reality. The titular doctor is the granddaughter of the Caligari of the 1920 film, and somewhere along the family line things seem to have become even weirder.This new Dr. Caligari is a shoulder-padded psychotherapist with a plastic-y black wig so sharp it could cut like a scalpel. Outside of her asylum is a wasteland of void space, bubbling green ooze, and nightmarish expressionist anti-realism run wild. Inside, Dr. Caligari runs her asylum — which looks like it was designed by a low-budget Memphis Group member from the Hellraiser dimension — like her own personal petri dish.

Other characters include Caligari’s main subjects: Gus Pratt, a serial killer and cannibal addicted to electro-shock therapy (a self-described “shiver boy” who Dr. Caligari has diagnosed with “pathological daddy lust”), and more importantly, Mrs. Van Houten (described by Dr. Caligari as her “thrill machine”), a suburban wife with an erotic pathology interred by her shrinking, ineffectual husband Lester. Mrs. Van Houten is so sexually frustrated that she’s resorted to threatening Lester with a straight razor; Lester, meanwhile, spits out his coffee when he hears the word “orgasm” and just wants to get back to how things were before, when he claims he and the missus had “... a normal sex life, in accordance with church values!”

There’s also our heroes, Ramona and Adrian, a nice heterosexual couple who work at the asylum, chain smoke in bed, and eat boiled sheep’s trotters with wife Romana’s dad. They’re concerned with the way Dr. Caligari is running the asylum, but dear old dad, the Asylum’s director, refuses to let them go after the doctor. He insists that she’s a genius, and reminds them that “She’s responsible for 92% of our grant funding!”

It turns out that Ramona and Adrian are right about Caligari, though, despite their heterosexual impairment. Dr. Caligari’s reign over the asylum is one of body-modification, electricity play, gender experimentation, and cannibalism. She wields a massive syringe full of “glandular extract” between her manicured fingers with which she tests her “Theory of Hormonal Interfacing,” all in the service of her ultimate pursuit of psychotherapy infamy. The final act of the film follows Ramona as she rushes to put a stop to Caligari (husband Adrian is more interested in taking a Valium and going back to sleep), and finds out exactly what the doctor’s been up to in the basement of the asylum…

Dr. Caligari plays like the 1980s Day-Glo art horror version of the “Aren’t you tired of being nice? Don’t you just want to fuck shit up?” meme. It’s outrageous, silly, gorgeous, and frequently disgusting. It’s impossible to describe specific stand-out visuals, or the most jaw-dropping scenes, because every moment is iconic. Almost every scene is a fresh Hell of oozing putrescence, fluid swapping, body horror, over-the-top aberrant sexuality (some erotic, some definitely not), and absolutely stunning line readings of the goofiest 1980s psychobabble imaginable.

This is not a movie with queer or trans subtext; it’s a movie where all sexuality and gender is fluid and fucked, things to revel in — “Pleasure shorts your circuits,” a televised version of Mrs. Van Houten says to her watching self early on, “I could leave you an erotic husk” — or to be endured — “Sex?” She says later, “A sideshow on the trip to the abyss.” “It must be wonderful to be reborn as the same creature but different in every way,” Dr. Caligari says to one patient after performing her fluid-swapping procedure. “Maybe you were born for this moment. To be transformed.”

To quote another famous horror icon, Garth Marenghi: “I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards.”

We’ve reached the part of the essay where I was going to head off any complaints of how problematic Dr. Caligari is, or how enjoying it makes someone a bad person because of this. I’m extremely brain-poisoned by social media in that way that makes people feel like they have to preemptively address their readers’ criticisms; I’m also extremely-self critical in that classic way that makes me feel like I need to apologize for enjoying something that doesn’t pass some imaginary quality test. But frankly, I found myself not wanting to write that paragraph, and I don’t think anyone would want to read it.

I will concede that parts of this movie are extremely tasteless, giant tongue notwithstanding. Some of the scenes are difficult to get through — upon multiple rewatches the fast-paced, wacky one-liners can drag until they become grating, and the regressive depictions of the folks locked in the sanitarium being played for laughs didn’t even hold up in 1989, let alone 2023. And yes, the villain is a deranged woman performing forced gender swap experiments on her professional rivals and people dependent on her care, which isn’t exactly “PC,” even if it is hot.

So yes, Dr. Caligari does contain elements that people could rightly find objectionable. But it’s also a film that encourages you to shed the trappings of respectability and revel in the pure joy of high-octane trash, something that feels increasingly rare in our modern time of both intense trans- and homophobia, and, alternatively, demands for queer purity in the media we consume. There’s an undeniable pleasure in watching Dr. Caligari turn the system against the people who are normally in power, and then watching the doctor’s own downfall as the patients she’s trapped and abused eventually do the same to her.

And I think many of us can find something to identify with in the people Caligari has trapped in her asylum. Who among us hasn’t been a Mrs. Van Houten at some point, going absolutely batshit crazy in an unfulfilling relationship? Who hasn’t felt so obsessed with a new crush that you wanted to devour them one way or another? Who hasn’t ever monologued, “I see my face and I think, ‘who is that stranger? Whose eyes are these? Are these hands connected to me?’ … Oh, I know what I must look like to you. Do you know what it means to be a prisoner in your own skin?” while trapped in a room with two gorgeous, taciturne lesbians? (It’s a whole mood.) And who wouldn’t want a deranged high femme to strap you down on a cold metal table and perform weird gender experiments on you? (Just me? Nevermind, then.)

There is great joy to be found in watching a movie that simply does not give a fuck, that rubs your nose in goofy depravity and taboo simply because it can. Watching Dr. Caligari feels like finally devouring that perfect forbidden treat — parts of it may be bad for you, but in the end, the thrill is worth it. As Dr. Caligari herself says to Mrs. Van Houten, “Funny thing about desire. If it's not crude, it's not pure."

Let’s give ourselves space to enjoy a little gorgeous, fucked-up crudeness this pride, shall we?