An Extraordinary Cab Accident

A man and a woman are chatting, when a horse-drawn cab strikes the man, runs him over and kills him. People gather and try to help him, but he is dead. Then he stands up and he and the woman run off.

This was directed by Walter Booth for Robert Paul. Booth, like Georges Melies, was a former stage magician, and he was interested in camera tricks and what could be done with them -- in many ways, he developed alongside Melies, who stole one or two of Booth's movies and redid them as his own. Booth would eventually move more securely into animation before having his film career peter out in 1918.

Like Melies' work, the point of the film is the surprise of the camera trickery. It's well executed, although the modern viewer can easily figure out how it was done.

The camera effects and offbeat humor work well enough in "Extraordinary Cab Accident". Both the story and technique are simple, but they are done reasonably well. These early versions of stop-action camera techniques don't seem like anything spectacular now, but there have been some recent movies that lavished a lot of resources on computer-generated imagery that proved to be no more convincing than this is this simple filming of the cab's adventure. It seems likely that the original audiences for this feature were probably entertained and impressed.

While it's not hard to tell how old this one is, and while there are probably a few other films from this era with better stories and effects, this one holds up all right and is still worth seeing, at least if you like to see these very early movies. R.W. Paul was pretty creative, and made some good features that still hold up pretty well. This is one of a number of his features that highlight other recent technologies, such as automobiles, and give us a small glimpse of what everyone thought of them at the time.

"An Extraordinary Cab Accident" is a film that many today will probably find quaint and very, very dated at best. However, when you see it, you need to cut the film some slack. After all, its special effects WERE awfully good for their time--even if they seem very crude today.

A man walks in front of a horse-drawn cab and is trampled. The cabbie doesn't even bother to stop and the nearby cop gives chase. Then, miraculously, the seemingly dead pedestrian jumps up and laughs at everyone as if it's all a joke.

As I mentioned above, the effects were not great compared to today. It's pretty obvious they simply stopped the camera and then tossed a dummy under the cab--and did the opposite later. But, the film is clever for its day and I do appreciate it's dark sense of humor!

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

Robert Paul continues to develop the media within Britain here with this action film that uses stop-motion animation of a sort. To modern viewers this film will not be anything new or impressive but imagine it 100 years ago and remember that this is a time only a few years after scenes of trains moving on the screen caused panic! Technology always looks dated and so it is with this film, but that does not take away from its importance or its impact at the time. Heck, look at Jurassic Park – looks dated even 10 years later as the media moves past it but that doesn't mean it isn't a good film or important at the time.

So it is here as the film has horrific convincing action and a "death" that must have had the audience on the edge of its seat only to provide the relief in a comic aside right at the end. It is a clever combination and is a good example of special effects coming into the media.