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tangopalace
Reviews
Le manoir du diable (1896)
Is this really the first vampire movie?
According to The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies, Edited by Phil Hardy, that's what this film is supposed to be. The version of this on YouTube is listed as 1 minute 28 seconds in length, but the entire beginning portion is a newer introduction showing miniature sets that resemble the actual sets in the 1896 film. Related films of Georges Melies include LE DIABLE AU COUVENT (1899) and A LA CONQUETE DU POLE (1912), in which a gigantic "abominable snowman" type monster crushes a human explorer. LE MANOIR DU DIABLE is very much a stage pantomime, with the characters running about, and absolutely no subtitles. You have to watch their mimed actions to determine the plot line, which is very basic to begin with. By the way, no one in America that I've met seems to know how to pronounce Georges Melies' name correctly. The closest I can do for you, phonetically, is: ZHOR-zha MaLEE.
Frankenstein (1910)
This film has a very mystic finale
According to all known sources, this was the first attempt to film Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. J. Searle Dawley both wrote and directed this 16 minute film. At the time, it was billed as a "liberal adaptation of Mrs. Shelley's tale" that tried to "eliminate all the actually repulsive situations and concentrate upon the mystic and psychological problems found in this weird tale". Like the novel, the monster is created without any form of electricity. The film has a sustained dark mood until its finale. Once James Whale made his Universal version of FRANKENSTEIN, most subsequent versions featured this same feeling...a sad, gloomy tale of a man challenging the forces of the universe in order to prove that he was on their level...only to find that there was no way for this to happen. Even in this version, though the monster is grotesque, he is simply a pawn and not actually an evil entity. The YouTube version only runs 12:41. The beginning of this film, and certain other scenes, has serious nitrate decomposition but is still watchable. One unique element is that a title card suggests that "the evil in Frankenstein's mind created a monster". I won't give away how they did it, but the creation of "the monster" is very clever, especially for its time! Charles Ogle's monster in no way, shape, or form resembles Boris Karloff in the same role. The film contains some clever editing and switches between tinting to achieve some rather poetic shock effects. Edison's role in this production was credited as "Producer".