I thought this short was very well done. It is one of the few silent films that still fascinates and intrigues today, as it is chock-full of special effects. Some of this Edwin S. Porter borrowed from Georges Melies, who made many dream films similar to this one. But I actually think Porter did a much better job here than Melies would've done and his effects are a step ahead.In this 5 minute short, a rarebit fiend (for those who don't know what that is, it's rabbit, so this guy is obsessed with cooked rabbit) gorges himself and not long after he's finished he starts hallucinating (he also had too much alcohol as well). The world spins around him (this is a simply amazing effect and looks excellent even today), and he cannot make his way home. A man helps him home where he gets in bed and starts to have terrible dreams. His bed flies through mid air above the city and he gets caught on a weather-vane. The effects all look amazing. The most well-known sequence of the movie would have to be the demons picking away at the guy's head.The whole thing is just weird and is very good for 1906. I mean, it sold 192 copies! Cool and something that is still watchable today.

Famous fantasy short with a moral: a man spends a night stuffing himself with food and drink in a restaurant; stumbling his way home, he sees the buildings 'dancing' around him and, on arriving, things only get worse. The bed starts to shake violently as if possessed and even throws itself, with the man still tucked in, through the window (the film's single funniest bit)! Flying around town a' la Scrooge, he's sure to have learnt his lesson by the next morning.As far as I know, the only other Porter film I've watched is THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903), celebrated for being the first Western; this one, then, contains a number of crude camera tricks in the contemporary style of Frenchman Georges Melies. Incidentally (and Michael Elliott is sure to raise an eyebrow or two at this!), in spite of their undeniable historical value, I can't bring myself to appreciate such primitive stuff other than as mere curiosities

I saw two versions of this live-action version of Winsor McCay's comic strip Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend. The Google Video version had music suitable for the era and film. The YouTube version (which Google now links to as well) used Carl Stalling's music for Warner Bros. cartoon shorts along with Treg Brown's sound effects that seemed WAY unsuitable. Director Edwin S. Porter gives wonderful visual touches throughout from the whirling lamppost sequence to depict drunkenness to the bed jumping up and down while the drunk tries to sleep to his dreams of three devils picking at his head to him hanging on a swinging weather vane. Two bad the print of both versions were downright poor with washed out frames nearly constantly. Recommended mainly for film enthusiasts.

Placed under the "American Surrealism" genre, apparently, this film is still a fun and very quirky look into the effects of binge drinking.It's rather absurd and silly by today's standards but the silliness lends itself to a sort of contemporary audacity not really seen in very much cinema anymore. Multiple exposures are the special effects trick of this film as the fiend goes through many harrowing experiences, my favorites including his flying over the city and the little demons pounding on his head.It never ceases to amaze me how fast cinema developed from boring and cumbersome shots of factories and people moving to narratives and special effects. Whether this film is any "good" by the standards of then or now doesn't interest me anymore. It's fun and has an air of historicalness to it that makes it worth the time.--PolarisDiB