The Devil's Castle

Haunted Castle, The (1897)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

aka Le Château hante

A King (played by Melies) shows up at his new castle where he tries to sit in a chair but this chair is haunted and soon begins turning into various things including a woman and a skeleton. This is another very fun short from the famous director and once again the special effects steal the show. Throughout the entire film this one object keeps changing forms and the effects doing this are very good and the edits are hardly noticeable. It's also worth noting that the King's outfit is hand colored red throughout the film and other brief colors (all red) do appear. This one features several nice laughs throughout.

Not much of a plot here but visually pretty engaging. This is the second haunted castle movie. A man seems to be in a castle and there is a second figure. As the an approaches the other figure, it is transformed. One time it is a skeleton. The next it is a ghost. On and on for just a bit over a minute. Of course, the guy making the discoveries is beside himself. It never goes anywhere.

The sort of stuff happening in "Le Château Hanté" (literally "The Haunted House" but somehow titled in English "The Devil's Castle") is very, very, very familiar if you are acquainted with the films of the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Méliès was a stage magician who began using many concepts from magic in films starting in 1896...just a year before he made this picture. One of his favorite tricks was to stop filming mid-scene and then change things in the picture and then have the cameraman continue cranking the camera...in order to make it seem as if something disappears, appears or changes before your eyes). In this case, a poor guy (the director himself) is in a house and furniture starts appearing and disappearing before his eyes. In addition, people and a knight also appear...freaking the poor guy out in the process. It's clever for the time BUT if you have seen a fair share of his films, you'll also realize he'd done the same thing and similar things many, many other times.