The Haunted Hotel

An house comes alive and the windows rotate. Inside, a man notes that objects move by themselves. A coffee pot serves coffee itself. A handkerchief twirls in the air. This is a movie with stop motion and image of the coffe pot animated is taken in the "Beauty and the beast" of Disney of 1991 and in 2017, too.

This sort of trick film, in which a traveler goes some place where things mysteriously happen, was not new when J. Stuart Blackton made it in 1907. Melies was making stuff like it in 1896, and the vim and verve of his performances was a lot better than the actor's here.

Nonetheless, there was a change and advance in the decade and it was in the evolution of a film grammar. In the earlier films, the point of the transformations, appearances, disappearances and things moving on their own was that they were happening. They were the point of the movie and any actor on the screen stood in for the goggling audience. It was a magic act.

This film, however, is more than that. It is a story about a traveler who checks into a hotel and the weird and terrifying things that happen to him. The things that happen -- knives that cut sausage without anyone holding them -- are not the point of the movie, they are means of achieving the point. They have moved from simple shots to film vocabulary.

The vocabulary would remain the same, even though the grammar they exist in -- a cobbled-together pidgin of stage, magic lantern and ad hoc film usage -- would be swept away within half a decade. However, the next time you look at a horror movie, take a look. They're still using the same tricks.

Well, I have to say that among so many silent supernatural horror short films I've seen recently, this is another outstanding addition I recommend, and not exactly for its originality (remember that Méliès had already experimented with the genre before, and even the director J. Stuart Blackton here also aimed to impress rather than cause fear), but for its strong way to show incredible special effects and develop a fast-paced, yet thoroughly engaging story.

A traveler arriving to a haunted hotel and staying while finding himself haunted by spirits in his room. He tries to avoid these "visions" and stay calm, probably thinking everything is in his head, possibly due to the long way he may have come. But then he learns that things may not be what they seem, until concluding in a somewhat dark note (I can easily imagine people back then being freaked out by that ending, and I even dare to say that a couple of moments and characters are still creepy nowadays).

The atmosphere and ambient of the house and the room are well delivered. While on the other hand, the make-up for the main character was very good but a little distracting: I didn't get why he had a big pointy nose, unless they wanted him to be as creepy-looking as the ghosts and monsters in the house.

Great production values and visual style, with a fantastic use of stop motion (pay attention to the breakfast scene, and that subsequent scary miniature figure) and trick photography effects (the freaky dancing ghosts scene), and atmospheres makes for another great experience by J. Stuart Blackton that makes me appreciate the silent era of film a little bit more.

It's unclear whether this film was originally intended as horror, comedy, or perhaps a mix of both. Maybe horror comedy? I'm not sure. By modern standards, the story isn't frightening at all, but back when camera tricks were still new to audiences, it might have caused a few chills-or at least genuine surprise.

The film uses strings and stop-motion to make objects move on their own, double exposure to create ghostly figures, camera swinging to depict a paranormal storm inside a house, and miniature models alongside a full-size actor to portray a giant, among other clever tricks.

In fact, it serves as a kind of showcase of early cinematic effects. Simple but effective for their time-even if they no longer dazzle today. What's truly impressive now is the creativity and inventiveness filmmakers showed over a century ago to bring these illusions to life.

J. Stuart Blackton, the pioneering animator, upped his game in 1907's "The Haunted Hotel." With each new project, Blackton continued to invent innovative ways to manipulate objects. In this film he used several George Melies' tricks--double exposures, stop camera substitutions-- and added several of his newer inventions to stop-motion and invisible wire special effects. Later animators would study this movie to see how Blackton achieved such mind-blowing visuals. As someone else on this board said, the teapot scene had been copied by Disney in the 1991 "Beauty And The Beast." The ending of Haunted House is not to be missed.