Editorials
Horror Retrospective: 1934 (Editorial)
THE YEAR: 1934
The previous editorials (years 1931-1933) all contained movies that have come to be considered “Pre-Code.” The “Code” in “Pre-Code” is none other than the maligned Motion Picture Production Code, or, as it’s popularly known, the Hays Code. The Hays Code lasted from 1934 until the late-1960s, when it became the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) which we know and love today. What was the point of the Hays Code? As with so many other forms of censorship, it was meant to save you, gentle viewer, from that irresponsible individual known as yourself. You cannot possibly make a mature decision about what explicit content you deem acceptable, so the censors conveniently do it for you – how nice! That’s not to say the films on this (and future) lists aren’t worthy of your time. In a way, writers and directors had to get more creative and resort to something that is sadly lacking in many modern horror films: the power of suggestion. The five films described below are all excellent examples of what we’ll call “Hays Code Horror,” and I think that you’ll find that they’re every bit as engrossing as their “Pre-Code” predecessors.
THE BLACK CAT
(D) Edgar G. Ulmer
(W) Peter Ruric
(S) Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and David Manners
After several years of starring in their own genre films, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi finally shared the screen in this (loose) adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe tale. Lugosi plays Dr. Vitus Werdegast, a psychiatrist who, while spending time in a prison camp in World War I, mysteriously lost his wife. On his way to meet Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff), his friend and reclusive architect, Werdegast encounters newlyweds Peter (Manners) and Joan Alison (Jacqueline Wells), who are on their honeymoon. After their bus crashes in the Hungarian countryside and Joan is injured, the three travelers make their way to Poelzig’s home. It is there that Werdegast discovers what has happened to his wife and uncovers Poelzig’s dark plans for the injured Joan. Despite their well-known dislike for one another off screen, Karloff is at his sinister best, Lugosi – in a rare sympathetic role – is quite good, and the screen comes alive when the two icons share it.
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BLACK MOON
(D) Roy William Neill
(W) Wells Root
(S) Jack Holt, Fay Wray, and Dorothy Burgess
Black Moon is an early film about the seductive power of voodoo. The story revolves around a woman named Juanita (Burgess), who had discovered her parents’ corpses as a child. Apparently, Juanita’s folks were the victims of voodoo performed by the inhabitants of a tropical island where Juanita and her family were staying. Now an adult, Juanita (along with her daughter, Cora Sue) has an irresistible urge to return to the island of her childhood trauma. Once she returns, the island’s denizens treat Juanita as a voodoo goddess of sorts, and she is afforded every luxury. Juanita becomes so drunk with power, that she is willing to sacrifice her own daughter in the name of voodoo. Will her husband (Holt) and his secretary (Wray) be able to save Cora Sue (Nancy Lane), or will Juanita claim her prize? Part mystery, part horror, this little-known gem is atmospheric and well-acted – check it out!
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EL FANTASMA DEL CONVENTO (THE PHANTOM OF THE MONASTERY)
(D) Fernando de Fuentes
(W) Juan Bustillo Oro, Jorge Pezet, and Fernando de Fuentes
(S) Enrique del Campo, Marta Roel, and Carlos Villatoro
As so many other horror films are, El fantasma del convento is essentially a morality tale. Adulterous couple Cristina (Roel) and Alfonso (del Campo) become lost one night while attempting to find a good make out spot. Enter a bizarre guide of sorts – is it ever wise to follow a stranger in a horror film? – who leads the pair to a foreboding monastery. Cristina and Alfonso are treated to a dinner with the Father Superior (Paco Martinez), who relates a story involving a monk overcome by his lust for a woman. After he seduced his friend’s wife, the rest of the monk’s life – and even his afterlife – were cursed. You can probably guess where the story goes from here, but don’t let a little predictability deter you from seeing this beautifully shot and eerie film. For those of you who are fans of Matthew Lewis’ 1796 horror novel, The Monk, you will certainly see the book’s influence in the film.
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THE NINTH GUEST
(D) Roy William Neill
(W) Garnett Weston
(S) Donald Cook, Genevieve Tobin, and Hardie Albright
Based on the 1930 novel The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, The Ninth Guest is another fine early example of the haunted house subgenre. An anonymous host invites a group of eight disparate strangers to a luxurious apartment for the night. Once the guests are in the apartment and have experienced some fine food and drink, the host – via radio broadcast – reveals the real reason he invited them to the apartment: they have to outwit Death (the titular character) if they want to survive the night. Inventive death scenes and solid acting highlight this rarely seen oddity. I would like to think that the Saw and Final Destination franchises owe a debt of gratitude to this one.
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DOUBLE DOOR
(D) Charles Vidor
(W) Jack Cunningham and Gladys Lehman
(S) Evelyn Venable, Mary Morris, and Anne Revere
Based on the play by Elizabeth McFadden, Double Door is a chilling commentary on family dysfunction. The wealthy but psychotic Victoria Van Brett (Morris) terrorizes the members of her family who still live under her roof. Her favorite method of torture is to lure unwitting family members into the secret chamber, where they slowly go mad from isolation. When Victoria turns her ire to her half-brother’s wife, the only family member capable – or willing – to stand up to Victoria is her sister, Caroline (Revere). The performances in the film are decent overall (particularly Morris), but there is some staginess to the play adaptation. The real reason to see this film is for the setting – a creepy old mansion in New York City that leaves you guessing what’s around every corner.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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