There really isn't much you can say about a silent, three minute short from 1896, is there? Must cinema buffs already know that Georges Melies was a cinema pioneer who single-handled devised many of the tropes that are now familiar to us as modern cinema-goers, and THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is another example of his skill as a film-maker.The story sees the Devil at work in his spooky old castle, summoning up various creatures in a bid to commit evil. Unfortunately he falls foul of an upright Christian, who uses the power of the cross to dispel his opponent.The three minute running time is chock-full of the special effects work that Melies loved to put on screen, particularly the use of jump cuts to make figures appear and disappear at will. With a plethora of imps, spirits, bats, and ghouls, Melies single-handedly invented the horror genre, one which is still going strong all these years later.

Melies Is Probably One Of The Best Technicians Of Film Ever. In Comparison With Films Of The Time This Is Probably The Best Film Of The 1890's.I Have Seen Melies' More Famous Counterpart "A Trip To The Moon", That Is More Entertaining But This Film Has Less References To Racial Slurs (The Moon Men Are Often Criticised For Being Representations Of Africans) And In This You Don't Question Anyone's Movtives (Seriously Who Takes A Nap The Minute They Get To The Moon?) I Heard This Is Considered The First Vampire Film. Simply, No. The Only Representation Of That Mythology Is Melies' Character Entering As A Bat Then Turning Human, By The Way Named Mephistopheles Who Is A Demon For Those Who Read Up On The Subject.I Can't Really Find A Downside Besides Its Not Really As Entertaining As It Would've Been 116 Years Ago. Besides That I Thought This Movie Was Well Done Technically.Overall I Liked It But Not As Much As "A Trip To The Moon"

This Georges Melies film is one of the very first films to dip into the horror genre. As was usual for a Melies production it's full of visual trickery and invention, while obviously being stagey and crude due to it's incredibly old age. It certainly must be one of the first films to make reference to vampires with its bat that turns into Satan. The simple narrative involves this character manifesting himself in an old castle and then conjuring up a cauldron, a young woman and old man. A heroic knight appears shortly afterwards and thwarts the villain. Like all of Melies films, this one isn't about story-lines. Cinema back in the earliest years of the medium never was. It actually took a while before it became obvious that the medium would even be any good for telling stories. And it took many years for both audience and film-makers to work out how to do it. So these early films like the Melies ones were mainly a means of showcasing visual trickery, a way of letting people see the impossible. Hence their extremely short running times too. But I always sort of marvel at the ingenuity of those guys from over 100 years ago. Right from the offset they had loads of crazy ideas of how to present images in creative and interesting ways. It's well worth any fan of cinema taking a few short minutes of their time out to watch these ancient films, not only because they are the very first primitive twitches of cinema but also because they are fascinating historical documents in themselves.

I'm not interested in retroactively assigning early films to the horror genre, as others seem to desire by claiming this film, "Le manoir du diable", as some sort of first horror film or to misunderstand the bat transformation to devil character here to be a vampire. Rather, this is another trick film, which Méliès made many of. Mephistopheles is in quite a few of these, of which this is probably the first. Mephistopheles is the director-magician's surrogate, allowing a slight narrative construction around the attraction of substitution-splices (a.k.a. stop substitutions), as the devil terrorizes a lord/cavalier with various appearances, disappearances and substitutions. By the way, I'm quite sure that Méliès plays the Faust-type lord/cavalier character and not Mephistopheles, despite several sources stating otherwise. Thus, Méliès plays the victim to the magic perpetrated by himself as the film's director and editor.For a film of 1896, this is a rather elaborate fiction subject and production. Most films at this time were actualities of ordinary events, popularized by the Lumiére Company. The only studio had been the "Black Maria" shack, which provided a black background for every production, in addition to the few props the Edison Company occasionally employed. Soon, Méliès would create the first decent movie studio, but for this film, he at least created a makeshift, painted cardboard set in the open air (see the shadows). Nobody else, as of then, had went to such trouble for a movie. Méliès used the same or very similar backdrop and costumes, as well as a related narrative, for "Le Château hanté" (1897). These films were also offered to be hand-colored, which would add to their appeal.(Note: At this time, most viewers have probably seen this film via the extract available on the Internet, which is taken from the documentary "The Magic of Méliès" (Le magie Méliès) (1997). A more complete version is available on French DVD, which includes the bat transformation at the beginning. According to catalogues, the film originally ended with the devil being bashed into smoke, but this part seems to be lost. It now ends with Méliès holding a cross to corner Mephistopheles.) EDIT: Flicker Alley has now also put this film on DVD in Region 1.