El Golem

"The Golem" lays the cinematic groundwork for the 1931 motion picture version of "Frankenstein" . In character design, wardrobe, and interaction with its creator and the world around it, the two monsters do resemble one another. In this case, "The Golem", is a monster created from clay and magic rather than from spare body parts and science, and the monster's creator is a Rabbi. I think I was more shocked to see a Rabbi portrayed as someone who openly dabbled in the black arts and astrology than anything else the film offered. The Rabbi is even shown conjuring up a "god" - Asteroth - and forcing him to produce the life-giving word to bring "The Golem" to life. Any casual reader of the Old Testament will see that the Jews were repeatedly warned against having anything to do with the occult - it was considered blasphemy and worthy of the death penalty under Jewish law. If this is how Germans perceived the practice of the Jewish religion in 1920, fifteen years before the Holocaust began, it might explain a great deal, but nothing about this aspect of the film is mentioned in the extra features of the Kino set in which I saw it, "German Horror Classics".

One more interesting parallel to the 1931 film "Frankenstein" is in how the Golem, originally created to protect the Jews but now on a rampage, is destroyed. It is a twist on a similar innocent act in "Frankenstein", one so horrific in its effect that the scene was exorcised from prints of Frankenstein throughout the production code era. I suggest you watch both films and see what I'm talking about.