(1907)
Overall: GOOD
The Spanish Georges Méliès for all intents and purposes, Segundo de Chomón made a massive amount of short films mostly while working for the Pathé Frères production company in the early nineteen-hundreds. Many of these works employed a number of then newly innovative filmmaking techniques, The Red Spectre, (Le spectre rouge), still being famous as an early example of utilizing stencil-colored film prints. A nine-minute magician's showcase hosted by a playful be it macabre guy in a skeleton costume, it is structured identically to Méliès' more known works of the day, meaning that it is essentially a stage play made to look like it is done in one continuous shot. The set pieces are clever and technically impressive, most notably how the skeletal wizard brings three jars right to the front of the screen, fills them with a liquid, and then lets us watch his three captive ladies emerge inside.
(1908)
Overall: GOOD
An elaborate, dark fairytale where a woman gets approached by a hooded skeleton in a graveyard and then descends into hell on a frightfully pimped-out ride to meet Satan, reptilian men, maidens, and other fantastical creatures who also have a ghoulishly decorated car to drive around in, Segundo de Chomón's Legend of a Ghost, (La légende du fantôme), offers up a slew of captivating images to go along with its rather faint storyline. While three yeas later, Italy would make L'Inferno, (the country's first feature-length film), and produce hellish visuals that not only put what is in Legend of a Ghost to shame, (comparatively), what is here still stands up. A hundred plus years later, the somewhat silly costumes and locations which were the best available at the time still produces the fitting, illusory tone. Also, Chomón makes the most out of yet another chance to indulge in some nifty visual tricks.
(1908)
Overall: GOOD
More of a whimsical nature, The House of Ghosts, (La maison ensorcelée), is one of the earliest haunted house films, proving that the premise for the most part was more about being lighthearted than scary in its cinematic infancy. Getting generous mileage out of stop-motion animation as well as busting out various camera and editing tricks to animate clothes, tilt the set, make furniture disappear, and have a positively strange looking demon/ghost man emerge in a painting and then again as a full-fledged giant, Segundo de Chomón plays much of it for chuckles. Even still, having specters made up of a giant bed sheet who can move objects around while flashing some rain and lightning on the house of the title, there are some now firmly cemented tropes making an early introduction into the horror genre here. So if for any other reason, historical curiosity should make this a logical place for a pit stop.
(1908)
Overall: GOOD
While it does not fit uniformly into the horror camp, The Frog, (La Grenouille), is nevertheless surreal and perhaps unintentionally unsettling enough to warrant discussion amongst said works. Once again featuring stencil-colored film stills and presented on a single stage for one long take, a large fountain rotates throughout the duration with a fairy, a giant, a goofy head, some armored soldiers and their gold horses while a guy hops around in a frog suite like some kind of pet to the lady that is presumably in charge. It is little more than another bit of harmless, fantasy-based movie making done in the Mélies style, though who was copying who, (if either indeed was), is a mute point as both were working simultaneously in the same country at the time. It is certainly an interesting watch for its strange visuals, not to mention the fact that the frog man is oddly convincing.
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