The Haunted Hotel (1907) Poster

(1907)

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7/10
Damnation
boblipton22 October 2012
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 they 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.
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7/10
Interesting short
gbill-7487718 November 2019
Some pretty cool stop motion effects in the animated tea party, transparent ghosts dancing maniacally, and other visual tricks from director J. Stuart Blackton. That giant demon at the end is a nice touch too.
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7/10
An house in stop motion
luigicavaliere17 February 2019
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.
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Great Trick Film
Michael_Elliott7 October 2012
The Haunted Hotel (1907)

**** (out of 4)

This film from Vitagraph is obviously one of the dozens (if not hundreds) of Georges Melies rip-offs but this one here is actually a mini-masterpiece. There appear to be many films with this title that were released around this time so this leads to some confusion about what people are actually seeing. The film (subtitled The Strange Adventures of a Traveler) here starts with a close up shot of a table with items like a loaf of bread, coffee and a few other things. Out of nowhere these items come to life. Melies was a master at the trick film but I must admit that this thing here is a masterpiece and it really is a complete joy to watch. Clocking in at just over a minute, the film manages to be quite thrilling through every second of that. I think the greatest moment in the film is the sequence where a knife comes up and starts cutting the break into pieces. It's just amazing to see this scene play out because it's very hard and nearly impossible to see how the effect was done. Director J. Stuart Blackton does a remarkable job at keeping everything flowing and there's no question that you really do get a haunted feeling while watching everything that happens.
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7/10
Sinister: "The Strange Adventures of a Traveler"
romanorum130 October 2012
At the beginning of this Vitagraph Company short film (five and one-half minutes) we see, not a hotel, but a cottage that is a small country inn. Perhaps in the early 20th century such inns were called hotels. In any case, the inn immediately mutates into a scary face. In the next scene we are inside the inn, where a traveler enters with his baggage. The traveler is very creepy looking with his craggy-looking face and Pinocchio nose. Before long, items such as baggage and cloth napkins are moving by themselves. Dinner prepares itself. A knife cuts a sausage in two, and also slices a loaf of bread. A beverage (ale?) pours itself into a mug, and then a pot of coffee pours into a cup. A tiny clown departs the pot.

At bedtime the weary traveler's problems really begin. For one thing, the furniture moves, then the house tilts. Ghosts dance around the bed. At the end, a wall disappears and an awful demon of mammoth size appears in back of the bed and snatches into his huge hand the traveler along with his blanket. The film is more terrifying than comical (especially for the young), but still enjoyable. Taking pleasure in this film certainly does not detract from the works of Georges Melies, who made "The Bewitched Inn" in 1897.
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6/10
the charming magic of early cinema
framptonhollis21 October 2018
In the tradition of the trick films of Georges Melies, 'The Haunted Hotel' is an awesome display of clever special effects and entertaining playfulness. It is very comic and cartoonish, and, while the style of humour is pretty dated, it has a certain charm that I couldn't help but adore. It mixes so many different techniques and creates one of the most purely fun movies to be made during this time period. Its employment of animation is particularly enjoyable, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the stop motion sequence somewhere around the middle of the film. The stop motion is of genuine high quality to this very day, and adds even more to this film's wonderful world of visual trickery and movie and magic.
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8/10
Spooky ending!
F Gwynplaine MacIntyre17 May 2008
Warning: Spoilers
I saw the Library of Congress print of 'The Haunted Hotel'. Here's an American movie that's clearly inspired by the French 'trick' films of Georges Melies. But whereas Melies relied on slapstick comedy and pretty girls from the Folies Bergere, this movie is more sombre. After some early camera tricks, it seems meant actually to frighten us!

IMDb's synopsis is accurate. The furniture and the traveller's clothes seem to be bewitched: the tricks are accomplished with jump cuts and some early stop-motion animation. The hapless traveller is played by Paul Panzer, who would later portray the villain in 'The Perils of Pauline'. Panzer was somewhat sharp-nosed in real life; here, as the traveller in 'The Haunted Hotel', he wears a putty nose so long and sharp that its effect is alienating; it looks more like a heron's bill than a human nose. Perhaps the alienation was intentional; maybe the makers of this film didn't want us to empathise with the victim of these hauntings. I was intrigued that Panzer is shown in close shot, whilst Melies's very similar movies were nearly always filmed in long shot.

SPOILERS COMING. Although this movie might seem quite innocent, I don't recommend it for very young children. At the very end of the movie, as the traveller attempts to go to sleep, the frame is suddenly invaded by a rather hideous and malicious-looking demon in extreme close-up: the effect is frightening rather than funny. Also, the demon's presence seems to imply that there's no escape from the haunted hotel. The natural ugliness of actor William Ranous, as the demon, only adds to the shock of that final coup de cinema. I'll rate this clever movie 8 out of 10 ... but don't let very young children watch that ending!
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8/10
Still trying to figure out how Blackton did it
springfieldrental22 December 2020
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.
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8/10
Avoiding Spirits
exe_malaga9317 June 2016
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.
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