La maison morcelée

It's good to see that the tradition of people in horror films making bad choices goes back to at least 1906. Here the characters decide to stay in a haunted house overnight, eating dinner, and even trying to sleep as though they are in a regular inn. What is very odd is that the main characters are made up to look like clowns in a circus with false noses and makeup rather than just normal people.

Melies had been making films with these kinds of "tricks" in them for some time, but this was an early attempt to use these tricks to tell a story versus just demonstrating the odd effects.

What is particularly well seen in this film is that humans, although immersed in a non-human universe, continue to behave quite normally as humans, as if nothing had happened, that is to say say notwithstanding the horror.

A great lesson that horror cinema will take hold of is that there are only two ways for cinema heroes to fight against terror: either to become terrible themselves or to take refuge in everyday gestures. But horror cinema can only lay claim to humor by adopting this second path; the human must be surprised in his derisory daily existence for the terror to reach the laughable.

The existence of films with very similar titles and with alternative titles on very similar subjects causes immense confusion, especially with the films by or attributed to Segundo de Chomón.

Ever since Méliès Manoir du diable back in 1896, haunted house films had enjoyed a particular popularity and naturally the films made in the genre all tend to have rather similar titles - the haunted house, the bewitched inn and so on.

The film that has been reviewed here by "Zbigniew" is in fact La Maison ensorcelée - the bewitched house - by Segundo de Chomón, made not in 1908 but in 1907. There are many more reviews of the film under the correct title. That film was a remake commissioned by Pathé of J, Stuart Blackton's extremely successful The Haunted Hotel of 1906, which is the first film to really contain a substantial sequence of figure-animation (the famous dinner that serves itself). De Chomón's version is however a distinct important on Blackton's. There is more of a story to it, the characters are more interesting, it is better photographed and the all-important figure-animation sequence is more extended and far slicker. The film also has quite a spooky surreal finale which is entirely De Chomón.

To confuse matters more, De Chomón had also himself made a much less interesting trick-film called La Maison hantée - the haunted house - just the year before (1906). I do not know whether this film survives or not; I suspect it is lost. There are however quite a number of reviews of that title. Once again the are, one and all, reviews of La Maison ensorcelée of 1907.

As for La Maison morcelée, I rather suspect this does not exist and has never existed but is just the result of someone slightly deaf doing the transcription. One can imagine the scene. Did you say "morcelée"? No, I said "ensorcelée". Oh, good, morcelée it is then....

To dot the i's and cross the t's, there is and has probably never been such a film as La Maison morcelée. La Maison hantée (1906) very probably does not survive. There is therefore just one film in question - La Maison ensorcelée (1907).

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.

'The House Of Ghosts (1906)' (listed as 1906 here, 1907 on 'Letterboxd' and 1908 on 'YouTube', where I watched it) is also known as 'The Haunted House' or 'The Enchanted House' and is apparently often misattributed as being the lost film 'The Haunted Hotel (1906)' (also known as 'The Haunted House'). Confused yet? I suppose confusion is to be expected here; the precise history of a film from over a hundred years ago is bound to be a little hard to come by, especially when that film has so many titles. Anyway, this affair is considered by many to be one of the very first examples of a haunted house in cinema, though the concept had obviously been readily explored in literature by this time. It tells the tale of a trio of travellers (two of whom have very strange heads) who come across an abandoned house and decide to rest there, unaware of the ghosts within. Its most impressive sequence is undoubtedly one in which a poltergeist prepares breakfast - consisting of sliced sausage, bread and either tea or coffee - in splendid stop-motion style. It's a wonderful little scene that's integrated into the live-action elements surprisingly well, with fluid animation that feels believable despite its unreality. The rest of the picture makes use of more standard, yet still impressive, special effects; ghosts appear in windows, sheeted spirits dance around, objects vanish without a trace and the room itself tilts and spins with glee. It's an energetic and action-packed short, for sure. It isn't even close to scary and its atmosphere is more manic than anything else, but it feels as though it's actively trying to be amusing so its lack of horror doesn't really matter. It's much more of a predecessor to something like 'Evil Dead II (1987)' than anything more serious. In the end, this is an entertaining affair that is undeniably a little dated but is still impressive considering its post-centennial status. It's enjoyable for what it is. 7/10.

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.