La maison ensorcelée

The film is known in English as The House of Ghosts or The Haunted Hotel.

It's not a bad 6 minute watch. Great stop motion for the time era - that took a lot of work to pull off the ghosts serving breakfast. There isn't much of a story line to this short - that is my disappointment with the film. It seems the film is mainly to show off the superb stop motion they learned during the time era.

7/10.

Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz (17 October 1871 in Teruel - 2 May 1929) was a pioneering Spanish film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions.

I was surprised by this one. I've been searching for old movies for quite a while and often I found interesting movies based on how many years they have. But this one (we are talking 106 years ago!) is actually entertaining. A refreshing use of camera tricks for its time and a good 6 minutes watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo2EKNRIQlE&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Segundo de Chomon directed this version of Georges Melies' most imitated movie, THE BEWITCHED INN. Versions were made by every film producer in the decade after Melies' 1897 version, including several remakes by Melies.

The story is relatively simple: some travelers stop at a house or inn for the evening. Clothes vanish, chairs disappear when they try to sit down, food cooks itself and eventually the Devil -- who is responsible for this -- kicks them all out. It's a combination of stage and film illusion that is still engaging more than a century later.

De Chomon's handling here is both more realistic than Melies' -- the first scene shows our travelers tramping about a real landscape -- and much more stagebound -- the sets are not as realistic looking as Melies, the characters are stock Irish characters. The increasing disquietude and terror is punctuated by jokes, as when a bit of sausage, which has been cut off in an elaborate stop-motion sequence, attempts to escape from the plate.

By making the terrifying sections less realistic and breaking them occasionally for comedy, de Chomon was trying to disengage the audience from the events, to make the work sustainable for greater length than unrelieved terror. It was a valiant attempt to see if techniques from other arts would work in the new medium. Although it was not immediately successful, it would bear fruit in a couple of decades. The scary comedy is still a popular genre. Just ask Kennan Ivory Wayans.

At its heart, this is a variation on one of Melies' most imitated -- especially by himself -- shorts: some travelers enter an abandoned house, and then, inside, everything goes all pear-shaped, as chairs vanish, the house rocks back and forth and the travelers are, eventually, scared out of their wits.

As such, it is not much. However, its director, Segundo de Chomon, elaborates the theme enormously. First, this one is shown in a dozen separate scenes, as first we see the travelers approaching the house and the spirit haunting the place is shown. In the middle are two major stop-motion pieces as food is carved by invisible hands.. The camera also moves, showing the house rocking back and forth.

But although this is much more elaborate than the usual Melies pieces, it does not depart from the basic situation. It uses the tricks, largely, for their own sake. It would be in the next couple of couples that these camera tricks would cease to be the point of the film and become part of the grammar of cinema.

In this 1906 horror film, three unsuspecting characters enter the titular abode, intending to spend the night. Unbeknownst to them, they're not alone, and are in for a very long evening.

Director Segundo de Chomon's THE HOUSE OF GHOSTS is more than just a quaint, cinematic artifact. It's a short cavalcade of inventive, even ingenious, camera work and special effects.

For its era, this is astonishing stuff! Especially the tabletop stop-motion sequence, featuring a delightful display of supernatural shenanigans. The various specters and fireballs are also impressive. The house-tilting finale is quite a feat for this time period.

Highly recommended for fans of spooky fare, as well as those who love vintage films...