Louise Brooks in G W Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929)

This page is for my friend, D F Lewis and - remembering some great times with other friends - the pre-WW2 horror fiction board Gruesome Cargoes and its creator Demonik.

I saw G W Pabst's silent classic, Pandora's Box (alternative title: Lulu) on TV when I was a kid, and immediately fell in love with its star Louise Brooks, once considered the most beautiful woman in the cinema.

'Lulu' would have been a typical flapper role for Brooks, but Pabst's direction added darkness and depth. Men who fall in love with her are doomed; she is like the mythical Pandora, whose box, once opened, lets out all the troubles of the world.

In the last part of the film she has fallen into prostitution and the scene changes to England, where a killer is walking the streets of Whitechapel. The man she meets one Christmas night has no money, but she invites him to her room anyway...

Director: G W Pabst
Screenplay: Ladislaus Vajda,
from two plays by Franz Wedekind
Starring Louise Brooks (Lulu),
Fritz Kortner (Dr Schon),
Franz Lederer (Alwa Schon),
Alice Roberts (Countess Geschwitz),
Gustav Diessl (Jack the Ripper)
Germany,1929, 131 minutes

If you like 70s horror fiction, visit Vault of Evil - Horror Anthology Hell and its sister site Gruesome Cargoes: Not At Night.

For writers and new fiction, visit The Workshop of Filthy Creation. home

Rog Pile

Redruth, Cornwall. (2009)

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