Une nuit terrible

It was all very amusing and didn't wear out its welcome. I hate spiders, too.

Terrible Night, A (1986)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

aka Une Nuit terrible

Very funny film from Melies has a man in bed trying to go to sleep when a large bug (perhaps a spider) walks over him so the man has to battle it. This is a very funny short, which lasts just a minute but most of that time you'll find yourself laughing. The ways the man tries to kill the bugs changes from one bug to the next and they keep getting funnier. That weird, fantasy like world of the director is certainly on display here and fans of the man will certainly want to check this one out.

A gentleman's sleep is interrupted by a giant bedbug (?), resulting in a comic battle. Unusual for the auteur, there is no 'trick photography', just an early mechanical effect featuring an over-sized insect. There's not much to the film beyond a brief laugh and its historical place in the canon (as an antecedent to 'Them' (1954) etc.). Remade by Méliès as 'Un Bon Lit' in 1900.

A man in turn of the century bed clothes is trying to sleep. Unfortunately, a giant insect crawls up the side of his bed (it's about the size of a cat). He engages the thing and loses any hope of sleeping, even though he neutralizes the beast. There is some decent comedic stuff and it is fairly satisfying and silly.

A man prepares to go to sleep in his room only to find a large bug crawling up the bed sheets

This is another very early film from French director Georges Melies which lasts over one minute so there's not a lot here for people who watch a film for narrative structure . That said because it's an early surviving film from Melies - who I'm reliably informed at least by the Wikipedia plays the man - it's worth seeking out if only because it shows the first stirrings of the imagination of the auteur

You can laugh at the film instead of with it featuring as it does a very obvious trick of getting a giant model beetle ( I'm sure it's a beetle and not a spider ) tying a thin thread to it and get someone to pull the model along while being out of shot . This helps to illustrate the imagination and humour of Melies who would go on to hypnotise audiences a few short years later with his special effect extravaganzas