A star-crossed poet, wooing a lovely young ballerina, waits in a tavern for her after she has just danced before an adoringly cultured and wealthy audience. As he waits, he regales the tavern guests with stories of his previous ill-fated relationships. Oh, and did I mention that not a single word is spoken -- every line in the film is sung.

Yeah, I've really got you hooked now, don't I, my fellow monsterphiles?

The Tales of Hoffman is not exactly the type of thing you'd normally go for, but if you skip this one assuming that it's some kind of stuffy museum piece, or the kind of film that only appeals to men that wear scarves indoors, you're doing yourself an incredible disservice. There's more than enough to fill up the fiend in you over the course of this film's running time, and while it might not encourage you to explore the differences between Sam Raimi and Samuel Ramey, it will definitely open your eyes to some of the ghoulish, fantastic possibilities of opera.

Indeed, a ten-year old Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn named George Romero saw this movie and began to think about the possibility of making films of his own. And across the river in Little Italy a sickly young kid named Martin Scorsese saw this film on television and immediately knew what he wanted to do with his life. If this doesn't stoke your interest at least a little, then, well, maybe you should consider joining the Uwe Boll fan club.

Because if you're even slightly interested in the possibilities of cinema, you will fall in love with this movie as soon as you see it. Much like Citizen Kane or Star Wars, this is a film that pulls out all the stops on how to tell a story on screen by fully employing the bag of tricks that a movie camera affords you.

Essentially a film in four episodes (the wraparound sequence about the young poet, and three fantasy-laden love stories: the tales of Olympia, Giuletta, and Antonia). Based on a 19th century French Opera that was itself based on the short stories of the poet E.T.A. Hoffman (who, along with Lord Dunsany, was one of the founding fathers of fantasy literature -- look 'em up if you don't know about these guys), the film manages to be both cinematic and musical at the same time. The film's director, Michael Powell, had earlier displayed a mastery of marrying music and image with his previous film, The Red Shoes, but in this film that mastery just explodes.

The first tale, Olympia, is the most lighthearted. Hoffman wanders into a toy store and tries on a pair of glasses that makes him believe the toys are actually living people, and when he lays eyes on the wind-up doll Olympia (played by Moira Shearer, a frequent collaborator of Michael Powell who you might remember from Powell's infamous 1959 horror film Peeping Tom) he is seriously smitten. Despite the protestations of his buddy Nicklaus (actually played by a woman, Pamela Brown) that this infatuation can't be headed anywhere good, Hoffman swoons ahead full speed and, as the saying goes, wackiness ensues.

The second tale moves the film into darker territory, where it pretty much stays for the remainder of its running time. Giuletta seems to exist in a world that is both reminiscent of Venice, Italy, and hell itself. In league with the sinister Coppelius (Robert Helpmann, whose demented screen persona graces each of the episodes as the embodiment of evil) she steals Hoffman's soul when they kiss, and Hoffman only realizes this too late, when he looks in the mirror and realizes his reflection has disappeared (a sequence similiar to this played out in Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm this summer, and judging from the visual engorgement this film offers with its richly fantastic set designs, I'd wager a bet that Gilliam was also deeply influenced by this movie). This is the episode that will probably appeal most to the horror fan in you, as we are treated to such sights as Giuletta traipsing across a pile of twisted corpses and the Nosferatu-like appearance of Helpmann's character in this episode.

The third episode, Antonia, is the most tragic of the stories, as Hoffman falls in love with a woman who will die if she tries to sing, but she's haunted by the spirit of her opera diva mother and driven by her conductor father to do so. This one starts out a little slow, but once the weirdness kicks in, it definitely pulls out quite a few stops of its own.

A film as visually gorgeous as this one deserves a great transfer, and the Criterion Collection delivers, with every hue of the rich, unreal technicolor of the 1950's captured perfectly, heightening the fantasy of the film and showcasing the film's mono soundtrack as best it can. (The monoaural sound design probably contributes to the fact that it's hard to understand a lot of the lyrics being sung, but English subtitles are provided as an option if you want them. You don't really need them though, because Powell's visual storytelling skills are so sharp you can follow the stories even if you don't understand the words.)

And Criterion once again provides a wealth of extras. There's a short film by Powell, made in the mid-fifties, in which he adapts the Goethe tale The Sorceror's Apprentice, which fans of Disney's Fantasia no doubt remember. The narration track on the film is a little off-putting, but the film as a whole is an an interesting experiment.

There is also a gallery of the set designer Hein Heckroth's drawings, and this is definitely worth a look -- these are some of the wildest sets ever designed for film up until this time, with obvious influences from artists as varied as Joan Miro and Gustave Dore. There are also still photos from the production, which are not as interesting as the set designs, but I still appreciated their inclusion on the discs.

But the best extras involve the grown-up versions of those two New York kids I mentioned earlier -- Romero and Scorsese. Scorsese shares space on the commentary track with musical historian Bruce Eder and his recollections and observations are, as you would expect, very entertaining and enlightening. I actually liked his commentary track for this film better than the tracks he's contributed to his own films, perhaps because here he can just be a fan, and not be self-conscious or critical of his own work. Among the nuggets revealed during his talk is an observation on how Powell's methods on this film were similiar to techniques he used when he made Goodfellas and a point when he reveals a sequence in the Antonia tale that resembles Mario Bava's Kill Baby Kill!

And George A. Romero is interviewed at length about his personal feelings about the film, how it influenced his own work, and what kind of tricks Powell and Heckroth used to heighten the storytelling in the movie. He comes off as both humble and knowledgeable, and even folks that aren't necessarily wowed by Romero's movies (I know blasphemous folks like you are out there) will be impressed at how sharp he comes off in this segment.

If you love movies of any kind, there is something special you'll come away with after watching The Tales of Hoffman.