The X-Ray Fiend

'The X-Ray Fiend' is a very short film produced and directed by the Victorian showman George Albert Smith. This is a 'trick' film: one of many such films made before 1910, inspired by the movies of Georges Melies, in which the very thin plot of the film is merely a vehicle for trick photography. 'The X-Ray Fiend' is more interesting than most other films of this genre, because it deals with a recent scientific discovery. Wilhelm Roengten had discovered x-rays in November 1895 (about sixteen months before this movie was made): 'The X-Ray Fiend' deals satirically with Roentgen's discovery at a time when it was still new and miraculous.

In this short film, a young couple are embracing: this by itself was a fairly strong image for the sedate filmgoers of 1897. They are so rapt in each other's attentions that they fail to notice a bizarre-looking professor who arrives, toting a weird apparatus which he aims at them. This turns out to be an x-ray projector. When the professor switches it on, the outer bodies of the man and woman turn invisible, and now we see their skeletons. The two skeletons are still embracing, blissfully unaware of their transformation.

It would have been more interesting if the x-ray projector had worked more gradually, so that we first see the couple's clothing fading away to reveal their naked bodies underneath ... followed by the fading of their flesh to reveal their musculature, and only then skeletonising them. No such luck.

This is a crude film, with trickery that is very obvious from our modern standpoint, but it has some historical value, and it's so bizarre that it still retains some humour. I'll rate this movie 4 points out of 10.

Some films open doors to narrative. Others to drama. Others still, to laughter. But The X-Ray Fiend, released in 1897, does something even more singular: it opens the door to the invisible, inviting late 19th-century viewers to see-with the eyes of fantasy-what reality had previously kept hidden. In just 44 seconds, George Albert Smith achieves a remarkable feat: fusing science, humor, and visual effect into an early and visionary visual allegory, making it one of the very first trick films in cinema history-and among the first to use image overlay to create narrative illusion.

The film presents a well-dressed couple sitting side by side when, suddenly, a "technician" appears with an X-ray machine and points it at them. Instantly, their bodies transform into skeletons-first the woman, then the man. They continue their gestures-the skeletal woman with her umbrella, the man still flirting-as if their bones had unveiled a new layer of identity and desire. Then, just as quickly, everything returns to normal. Short, direct, and ingenious.

At its core, The X-Ray Fiend is a burlesque scientific fantasy. In 1895, X-rays had just been discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen. In less than two years, they were already being used as aesthetic and dramatic inspiration in film-a pace of artistic appropriation that still astonishes. Smith, with his sensitivity to the magical and the illusory, understood that cinema was more than a window to the world-it was a tool to reveal what the naked eye could not.

Technically, the film is notable. Smith employs an ingenious and pioneering editing effect: he first films the actors in action wearing their original costumes, then shoots them again-repeating the same gestures-wearing painted skeleton costumes. In editing, he stitches these shots together to create the illusion of transformation-one of the earliest visual tricks in cinema. The result is rudimentary, yes, but absolutely revolutionary in its ambition. Smith anticipates, decades ahead of time, an entire lineage of visual effects based on photographic composition-from Méliès to modern CGI, there is a direct echo in this first manipulation of the cinematic image.

But what captivates most about The X-Ray Fiend is not just the technique-it's the idea behind it: cinema's ability to unveil. The film plays with the voyeuristic gaze, the desire to see beyond the clothes, beyond appearances-into the interior. It's a small gesture of scientific mischief, but also an aesthetic provocation: what if we could, through a lens, see the essence of everything?

And there's humor-a strange, almost macabre humor-that foreshadows cinema's long fascination with skeletons as both symbols of death and sources of laughter. After all, a dancing body reduced to animated bones becomes both comic and unsettling. This duality would be explored for decades in cartoons, comedies, and horror films alike.

George Albert Smith, a key figure in Britain's "Brighton School" of early cinema, reveals here his precocious genius. In The X-Ray Fiend, he doesn't just entertain-he expands the very boundaries of what cinema can be. More than a technical curiosity, this film is a miniature revolution of the imagination: the first time cinema projects, quite literally, the invisible.

With The X-Ray Fiend, cinema stops being just a medium for recording the visible and becomes a magic mirror for scientific imagination, hidden desire, and technical fantasy. Forty-four seconds that foretold decades of tricks, illusions, and visual wonders. From this moment on, nothing on screen would be merely what it seemed.

And that-like the X-ray itself-is precisely what cinema teaches us to see.

Original review in portuguese on substack.

This very early film by British auteur George Albert Smith is essentially a single 44 second 'joke': a courting couple are exposed to X-rays, but love prevails as their skeletons continue to cavort until the gentleman goes a titch to far, prompting his lady-friend, now restored to natural opaqueness, to get up and leave (after delivering a mild slap of indignation). The film is a whimsical bit of cinema history, playing on the public fascination with X-rays, which had only been discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen two years prior and showcasing Smith's 'state of the art' special effects (nicely executed jump cuts). The film is a product of its Victorian times as the 'leg bones' of the skeletonised women are demurely painted on her dress rather than on her *gasp* legs. Try to watch with the eyes of a 19th century viewer and imagine their astonishment as the lovebirds suddenly become skeletons.

There really isn't enough to say for a review, si ce its only 45 seconds long, but its definitely worth watching. The skeleton costumes were pretty amusing.

Imaginative little short from the Brighton School in which a canoodling couple are transformed into living skeletons by an x-ray machine. Nicely done.