Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House

"The Flying House" is a creative and interesting feature from Winsor McCay's 'Rarebit Fiend' series. It has a little less outright comedy than some of his other features, but it is an intriguing movie in a couple of other respects. Most particularly, the dream sequence here is much more of a story than are the dream sequences in the other surviving features from the series. More than that, it's an interesting dream that follows a very believable 'dream logic' of its own.

The dream in this one has a man responding to the threats of a mortgage company with a most unusual plan that could only work in a dream. But rather than simply use the idea of "The Flying House" for a few laughs, McCay takes it through a series of episodic events that recreate pretty well the strange chains of events that happen in our dreams. It really adds some interest, even beyond the opportunity to see McCay's usual creative details and skillful animation.