By a strange coincidence, film was born around the same time as the Grand Guignol in 1897; as Bram Stoker was publishing Dracula, Oscar Metenier was inventing Grand Guignol: live representations of death, unremittingly realistic gory melodramas, cries and howls from victims and spectators. David Gregory’s documentary traces the history of these Parisian theatres of horror, which first revolutionised death in live performance art before it became one of early cinema’s favourite playgrounds. The French approach to horror and the fantastical – in which Grand Guignol was a key player – had a unique influence that deserves to be documented today. Sitting somewhere between live theatre and “cinema of shadows”, the connecting threads were there like a spider’s web, ready to be developed in 1920s cinema, especially in Britain by some eager enthusiasts. The archives of a vanished, mysterious Paris are brought to light again by this documentary, in which the suspended voice of angel or demon that so entranced British gothic film is vividly revived. I refer, of course, to Barbara Steele, narrator and master of ceremonies of this exploration of transgressive entertainment.

Bruno Deloye