Horror Film History: 1890's Horror Shorts

     As you may have noticed, I am a huge horror film addict (especially the paranormal ones).  This year I plan to delve a bit deeper into horror films and review some of the history of horror cinema!  Today I am focusing on the very first horror films ever made, 1890's horror shorts.  Some of these films may be labeled in other genres, however due to the odd nature of these pieces, they are must sees for any horror cinephile!

The Execution of Mary Stuart (1895)

The Execution of Mary Stuart is a short film produced in 1895. The film depicts the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is the first known film to use special effects, specifically the stop trick.

The 18-second-long film was produced by Thomas Edison and directed by Alfred Clark and may have been the first film in history to use trained actors, as well as the first to use editing for the purposes of special effects. The film shows a blindfolded Mary (played by Mrs. Robert L. Thomas) being led to the execution block. The executioner raises his axe and an edit occurs during which the actress is replaced by a mannequin. The mannequin's head is chopped off and the executioner holds it in the air as the film ends.

The Haunted Castle (1896)

This film was presumed lost until 1988, when a copy was found in the New Zealand Film Archive. Le Manoir du diable or The House of the Devil, released in the United States as The Haunted Castle and in Britain as The Devil's Castle, is an 1896 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. The film, a brief pantomimed sketch in the style of a theatrical comic fantasy, tells the story of an encounter with the Devil and various attendant phantoms. It is intended to evoke amusement and wonder from its audiences, rather than fear. However, because of its themes and characters, it can technically be considered the first vampire film. The film is also innovative in length - its running time of over three minutes was ambitious for its era.

More information on this short here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_Castle_(1896_film)


A Terrible Night (1896)

A Terrible Night (French: Une nuit terrible) is an 1896 French silent comedy film by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 26 in its catalogues, where it is listed with the descriptive subtitle scène comique.

A man tries to go to sleep, but is disturbed by a giant bug climbing up the bed and onto the wall. He attacks the bug with a broom and disposes of it in a chamber pot in a compartment of his bedside table.

The Vanishing Lady (1896)

The Vanishing Lady or The Conjuring of a Woman at the House of Robert Houdin (French: Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin) is an 1896 French short silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès.

Méliès himself is the magician in the film; his assistant is Jehanne d'Alcy. The film is based on a magic act developed by the French magician Buatier de Kolta. When the illusion was produced onstage, a trapdoor was used to create the appearances and disappearances; for the film, however, Méliès needed no trapdoor, using instead an editing technique called the substitution splice. The Vanishing Lady marks Méliès's first known use of the effect.

The Bewitched Inn (1897)

The Bewitched Inn (French: L'auberge ensorcelée) is an 1897 French short silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 122–123 in its catalogs.

The Bewitched Inn is the first known Méliès film to feature inanimate objects coming to life to tease their owners, a theme that would return time and again throughout his work. The idea of a guest trying unsuccessfully to get to sleep in a hotel room, already popular for years on the variety stage, had been first used by Méliès in 1896, in his film A Terrible Night.

Méliès's 1903 film The Inn Where No Man Rests used a plot very similar to that of The Bewitched Inn, but expanded it considerably. The motif of a candle-laden traveler also returned in another 1903 Méliès film, The Apparition, or Mr. Jones' Comical Experience With a Ghost. The hotel guest theme reappeared again with further sophistication in Méliès's 1906 film A Roadside Inn.

More information on this short here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bewitched_Inn

The X-Rays (1897)

The X-Rays (also known as The X-Ray Fiend) is an 1897 British short silent horror/comedy film, directed by George Albert Smith, featuring a courting couple exposed to X-rays. The trick film, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "contains one of the first British examples of special effects created by means of jump cuts" Smith employs the jump-cut twice; first to transform his courting couple via "X rays," dramatized by means of the actors donning black bodysuits decorated with skeletons, and then to return them to normal. The couple in question were played by Smith's wife Laura Bayley and Tom Green (a Brighton comedian).

An Hallucinated Alchemist (1987)

An Hallucinated Alchemist (French: L'hallucination de l'alchimiste), also known as The Alchemist's Hallucination, was an 1897 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliés. The film features a star with five female heads and a giant face that has people coming out of its mouth. The sets were hand painted. The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 95 in its catalogues. The film is currently presumed lost.

colourised

Photographing a Ghost (1898)

Photographing a Ghost is a short film that was directed by George Albert Smith. It is about photographers that try to take a picture of a ghost, but they repeatedly fail.

(unavailable online)

The Accursed Cavern (1898)

There is very little information on this film online. However could this be the film with a different title and different year?

The Astronomer's Dream (1898)

The Astronomer's Dream (French: Le Reve D'un Astronome, original title: La lune à un mètre a.k.a. The Moon at One Meter) (Star Film Catalogue no. 160-162) is an 1898 French short black-and-white silent film, directed by Georges Méliès. The film was hand colored like many of Méliès' other films. When this film was imported into the United States by producer Sigmund Lubin in 1899 he re-titled it A Trip to the Moon. However this had no relation to the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon.

The Cavaliers Dream (1898)

Edwin S. Porter's film, a rider falls asleep at the edge of an empty table. In her dream, an old witch appears who sets the table for a sumptuous feast. Mephistopheles takes part in the meal and the witch turns into a beautiful girl.

Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb (1899)

Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb (French: Cléopâtre, literally Cleopatra) was an 1899 short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. One of the earliest horror films ever made, it is about resurrecting the mummy of Cleopatra. In it, a man chops the mummy of Cleopatra into pieces, and then "produces a woman from a smoking brazier."

While today director Méliès is more known for his iconic film A Trip to the Moon, it was this film which caught the attention of producer Charles Urban, who released the film in America (under the title Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb; its English release was simply titled Cleopatra's Tomb) and subsequently distributed many of Méliès other films.

(lost film - unavailable online)

The Miser's Doom (1899)

The Miser's Doom is an 1899 British short film directed by Walter R. Booth. A miser is haunted by the ghost of one of his deceased victims, causing him to die of shock. The Miser's Doom was the directing debut of Walter R. Booth, a magician who had begun working with filmmaker R. W. Paul.

(unavailable online)

The Devil in a Convent (1899)

The Devil in a Convent (French: Le Diable au couvent), released in the UK as "The Sign of the Cross", or the Devil in a Convent, is an 1899 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. According to some film critics, The Devil in a Convent parodies monastic life, suggesting a satirical view of the Catholic Church. Méliès almost certainly agreed with the anti-ecclesiastic emotions prevalent during the Dreyfus affair in 1898 and 1899; Méliès supported Alfred Dreyfus's case, while the Church opposed it.

Méliès made another religious satire, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, in the same year, as well as his strongly pro-Dreyfus film series The Dreyfus Affair. The film may have been inspired in part by the phantasmagoria productions of the French magician Étienne-Gaspard Robert, known by the stage name "Robertson". Méliès himself plays the Devil in the film. The Devil in a Convent was likely the first Méliès film to take advantage of dissolves as a transition effect.

Raising Spirits (1899)

A short by Georges Méliès. He uses a supernatural theme to reproduce a kind of magic-show, using the tricks of cinema to produce effects that would be difficult or impossible on a live stage.

Sources:
https://centuryfilmproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/astronomers-dream.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execution_of_Mary_Stuart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_Castle_(1896_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Terrible_Night
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanishing_Lady
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bewitched_Inn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Rays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Hallucinated_Alchemist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographing_a_Ghost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronomer%27s_Dream
https://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cavalier%2527s_Dream&prev=search
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbing_Cleopatra%27s_Tomb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miser%27s_Doom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_a_Convent
https://centuryfilmproject.org/2017/10/04/raising-spirits-1899/