Watch Häxan For Free

You won't be disappointed!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The 1968 version shortens the time, replaces the music with that of a jazz quartet and adds a wonderful narration by William S Burroughs. Burroughs is somehow the perfect fit for this.As for the film, there's plenty of striking and outlandish sights to he seen, although you're not going to get pulled in by what little story there is. It's very creepy and slightly psychedelic (of course the film was made before psychedelic drugs were invented.) so it's a great film to watch on Halloween, and I can imagine it would also be excellent if you were tripping. I've never tripped, so I can only speculate.The film, even the 1968 version, eventuality begins to drag until it's slowed down to a sluggish pace. You'll find yourself dismayed at the prospect of yet another staging of witches doing basically what they did every other "reinactment" in the filmOverall, it's a decent film, and the sets were quite complicate for the time period, but one could feel forgiven if they begin to feel bored after a half hour.

The rare horror documentary, Haxan is a stone-cold nightmare of haunting visuals, told with a chilling matter-of-factness. Each genre is used to effectively convey the terror within both the victims and the persecutors of witch hunts through the ages. The reenactments, though potentially silly at times, are demented and unrelenting visions of paranoia and true devil worship. A milestone in the horror genre that even stands today as a terrifying movie experiment.

I've been meaning to watch this movie for awhile, but I finally got around to it and was very pleased with it. I watched it with my friend and we were both impressed with the special effects, the makeup, and the creative sets for being filmed in the 1920's. It would be a great film to watch around Halloween. If you watch the original version (which is what I would recommend) the film is told in 7 parts. The first part is explaining the universe with old school pictures of the solar system, then it becomes a documentary about witches and the hysteria in the Middle Ages about accusing innocent people with being in cahoots with the Devil. The music throughout the film is a little off because it's upbeat jazz music while the movie is creepy and grotesque. If you're interested in old school silent horror films about witchcraft, I highly recommend HAXAN!!!

"Haxan," Benjamin Christensen's docudrama about the history of witchcraft in Europe, remains relevant more than 90 years after it was made because the subject is still alive in the public imagination and the artistry evident in some of the scenes transcends eras. The first part is taken up by a ponderous slide show, mostly of woodcuts, alternating with explanatory titles; in some cases an off-screen hand holds a pencil point to a detail of the image for emphasis. In silent cinema, of course, there can be no narration, so the title insertions take up a lot of running time. Once the introductory show-and-tell is over, we are treated to vividly photographed and sensitively acted dramatizations, mostly set in medieval times, of actual or suspected witches in action: shriveled old women who concoct potions from such unsavory ingredients as dead men's fingers or various animal parts; or innocent women who are in the wrong place at the wrong time and are falsely accused, then, under torture, falsely accuse others. The devil (played by Christensen himself) is depicted as a leering pointy-eared bald man with spindly clawed hands who is fond of perpetrating such outrages as sticking out his tongue, holding nocturnal orgiastic dance parties in forests, desecrating holy sites or bewitching unsuspecting nuns. The close-ups of vulnerable, aged women under interrogation are unsettling. The later films of Dreyer, particularly "The Passion of Jeanne D'Arc" and "Day of Wrath," come to mind. Sometimes the director breaks the flow by showing an actress on set toying with a thumbscrew prop, or by inserting titles describing what various cast members thought privately about witches and demons. Toward the end Christensen makes a didactic comparison of behaviors or characteristics which in former times would have been considered witchery but in modern times are given different labels: "materialism" (fondness for jewelry, for instance) or "mental illness," which at the time of this film was treated with hydrotherapy (showers) but in olden days could be considered evidence of demonic possession and result in burning at the stake.