The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

IMDb writes, "Dr. Caligari was a possibly legendary hypnotist of the eighteenth century whose identity has been assumed by modern psychiatrists whose work with madness has brought them close to the brink (or possibly, as they themselves claim, to true sanity).

It is understood that the original Caligari was a traveling performer in the provinces of pre-unification Italy, who brought with him a tall "Somnambulist" named Cesare who would enter a trance and predict the future. Evidently deaths in connection with these predictions led to the burning of Caligari as a witch.

In interwar Germany the director of a Sanitarium who was familiar with the Caligari story imitated his act, making use of the chaos of the early Weimar Republic to cover his use of his Cesare to commit murders, and occasionally bringing those who got too close to the truth to his asylum as patients, where psycho-active drugs disconnected them from reality and made their stories appear mad to all who heard them."

This is scary because the man in the trance commits murder on a set designed by Dali. It is based on a true story, so it is creepy. All in all, I say: SEE IT