Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Le Manoir du Diable

Le Manoir du Diable, an 1896 short film directed by Georges Melies, is considered to be the first horror film and the first Vampire film.

via Internet Archive:



Moria says,
The Devil’s Manor was one of his earliest films and in this case it is simply he playing with stop-action camera effects. These allow the Devil to appear and manifest all manner of items – ghosts, witches, acrobats and angelic visions from out of a cauldron – and to transform back and forth into a bat. The film is a single note joke but it is made with a sense of humour
1000 Misspent Hours says,
an impressive piece of work for all its primitiveness, and it’s easy to forget that you’re really just watching the same trick being played over and over again on different objects and characters. There’s also a whisper of storytelling in the film, however faint and infrequently uttered
There is a review at Weird Wild Realm that says, "The set costumes are quite amazing, with some pyrotechnics thrown in." WiseGeek mentions that Melies himself plays the devil.

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