La maison ensorcelée

I noticed the other reviewer talked about how Segundo de Chomón imitated Georges Méliès. When he used many of Georges Méliès' trick camera tricks (such as starting and stopping the film to make things 'appear' or 'disappear'), I often liked his films as he STILL managed to make them his own. Sadly, sometimes Chomón simply stole Méliès work (a great example is his "Excursion to the Moon" which was an outright copy)--and I have a hard time enjoying these ersatz films. As far as this film goes, I would definitely put it in the former category--as it uses some of the other artist's techniques but is essentially Chomón's film from start to finish.

The film consists of three folks coming to an old haunted house. For the rest of the film, the house torments them and many of the tricks it plays are funny, though the movie ends with a scary demonic face that probably sent a few shivers down the spines of audiences at the time. Today, it all just looks silly--but in an enjoyable way. Clever and funny--and worth your time.

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...

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.

La maison ensorcelée is a remake of J. Stuart Blackton's The Haunted Hotel, which, at the same time, Chomón would remake more ambitiously the following year under the title The Electric Hotel. These remakes were the norm back in those days; as a consequence, copyright issues would arise but, until then, life was all a bowl of cherries to filmmakers.

Blackton's film was so successful in Europe, Pathé ordered Chomón to make a version of it and, even though some of the scenes (especially the one containing food being served on the table all by itself) are copied frame by frame, it isn't fair to give all the credit to Blackton since Segundo de Chomón had released his La maison hantée a year before The Haunted Hotel appeared. Who should we thank then? Méliès again. A bunch of tourists being harassed by spirits at some inn was certainly a recurrent subject matter in his movies, take The Black Devil as an example.

Regarding this movie, the two first scenes (introducing the atmosphere) are quite impressive: it's raining, the trees move as the wind blows and rays were added to the print causing a really shocking effect. It does look like a hell of a night (which couldn't be easy to portray so well in silent films). Three travelers take shelter in a house by the woods in which every kind of funny thing is going to happen: a ghost appears, clothes begin to fly all of the sudden, a painting comes to life, the house starts shaking up and so on.

The copy I had the chance to view came from the Nederlands Filmmuseum and I must say it was pretty neat and very well conserved too. The effects are very successful, scary even to this day; performances are good too, but once again it lacks originality. Chomón was an expert in imitating things and even though he did not invent anything, he helped to develop some important techniques. His use of the stop-motion in this movie is amazing. This is a great film I could watch all over again and again.

Solomon Roth

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.