StunnaKrypto
Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.
BoardChiri
Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay
AshUnow
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Tyreece Hulme
One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
MisterWhiplash
In this two minute movie, we get a guy who takes a skeleton and creates a monster. For what purpose? Who cares? It's a monster! Time to do the MASH! This is How to Make a Monster 101: add water. If no water available, throw on a white dress. Preferable if you have an Egyptian backdrop. Warning: the monster may do wild Muppety-dances and grow a giant neck and go tall and short at random moments because it's George Melies and he was the first delightful madman of the cinema. You'll have to get through the first minute of this two minute spectacle to get to the good stuff, but once you do it's a whole lot of frames of dancing mania and with an ending that is a genuine thrill and surprise (though all part of Melies' dated but wonderful magic tricks in general).
Red-Barracuda
This little atmospheric short is about a couple of people in Egypt who are visited by a ghostly skeletal creature who rises out of a coffin that they have been transporting. Georges Méliès shows here once again that he was not only adept at visual trickery but was able to present it in an interesting way. The Egyptian setting is a nice touch and adds some exotic ambiance. The skeletal creature is manipulated in ways that are visually interesting. It dances around and is covered in sheets making it appear like a ghostly apparition. It rises high into the air and disappears into the ground. It even latterly turns into a woman. Of course, it's all very gimmicky but early films did not really tell stories at this point in history and Méliès did imbue his trick films with a definite charm. Le Monstre does sort of come off as a magician's show in many ways, but like a lot of his films it has been given a personality and the exotic flavour doesn't do it any harm at all.
MartinHafer
While this movie is very creative and clever in its use of trick cinematography when compared to other contemporary films, it is a lesser film from Méliès because compared to his other films of the time (particularly Le Voyage Dans le Lune), it is not particularly outstanding.An Egyptian misses his dead sweetheart and gets a strange holy man to revive her from the dead. Using only her skeleton, he produces some strange effects and ultimately the live girl. But, the joy is very, very short-lived and the final scene is pretty clever as she is "magically" returned to her skeletal state. Very interesting and breezy, this film is well worth your time--particularly if you are a fan of the earliest films.If you want to see this film online, go to Google and type in "Méliès" and then click the video button for a long list of his films that are viewable without special software.
Ben Parker
With an egyptian backdrop and egyptian costumes, two people enter shot, one carries a coffin. A skeleton rises out of it while the man's back is turned. The man sits the skeleton down and dresses it with some white sheets. The skeleton begins dancing around riotously! The man performs various tricks for the other figure with the skeleton, making it turn into a woman, then making the woman turn back into a skeleton. Melies was a magician and a cinema innovator. He built his own cameras and studio, and is much more a descendent of movies than the Lumieres, who were more technicians than artists. Playfulness, inventiveness and creativity abounds in Melies. Lots of fun from the most creative man in the first years of cinema, Georges Melies.