Bloody Beginnings

As a child, I spent entirely too much time inside on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.  I was always watching television edits of films that, honestly, had no business being aired by the local network affiliates during the weekend matinee time slot. I was six years old, sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair in front of the ten-inch television in our kitchen. I remember watching in utter horror as the body of a bloodied teenaged girl, wrapped in plastic, was dragged down the school hall by an unseen presence in Wes Craven’s 1984 slasher classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street. I have memories throughout my childhood of closing my eyes and seeing that crimson red streak that Tina leaves on the floor of the hallway. I was terrified, and I was hooked.

The First Horror Film

In 1896 the medium of film was in its absolute infancy. Films from this era are significantly different from what we recognize as movies today. For example all of the scenes in these early movies are static shots, lacking any sort of camera movement. This is mostly a physical limitation related to the size of these early camera systems. A second and perhaps more obvious difference is that these early films are silent, as the advent of synchronized audio is still decades away. Although movies were sometimes presented to audiences alongside a musical accompaniment, there are no attempts at dialogue. These earliest films don’t even make use of the dialog cue cards that would appear in later silent films. And, finally, the runtimes of early films are measured in seconds or, at most, minutes. Combined with the static camera work and the lack of dialog, these films tend to be devoid of complex narrative.

At first, the very idea of watching moving pictures was enough of an appeal that audiences came out in droves to see recordings of everyday events. Some of the earliest films, those produced by the Lumiere brothers in 1895 and 1896, depict common events like a train arriving at a station, and workers exiting the Lumiere factory as they go on break. Once this initial awe of was sufficiently satiated, the door was opened for the film medium to progress in new directions. This is where creative minds, like that of Georges Méliès’ began to come into play.

As I said earlier, my search for the term “earliest horror film” brought up several sources which name Méliès as the father of horror in film. All of these claims seem to be based on Méliès being the director of the 1896 film Le Manoir du Diable, which roughly translates to The Manor, or, more commonly, The House of the Devil. It is this film, directed by Méliès, which is commonly credited as being the very first horror film. 

In the film, which has a run time just over 3 minutes, a large bat is seen flying around a room. In an instant, the bat transforms into a caped man, a transformation not unlike something you would expect to see in a vampire movie. Based on the title of the film, one presumes that this caped man is an incarnation of a devil or demon. For our first bit of trivia, the devil is played by George Méliès himself.

As the film continues, the devil paces the room before conjuring up a large cauldron from out of thin air. He then proceeds to conjure an impish helper that works the cauldron, ultimately producing a woman from the cauldron who then retreats into one of the backrooms. The devil disappears as two well-dressed men enter the castle room. The imp reappears and antagonizes the two men using a pitchfork, causing one to run off in fear. The other man investigates and is surprised by a suddenly appearing skeleton, a sequence which probably qualifies as the first jumpscare in movie history. 

The bat reappears and again transforms into the devil, who summons the imp to continue terrorizing the man. Finally, the man tries to run out of the castle, but is intercepted by a group of white-robed ghosts, causing the man to faint from fear. The man comes to and is confronted by the woman that was conjured earlier in the film. He tries to greet the woman, but she transforms into the group of ghosts. The man’s friend returns and a quick, Scooby Doo style chase occurs before the friend again runs off. The man seems to realize that the ghosts can’t harm him, and he is puzzled by their ability to disappear at will. As the film draws to a close, the man is again confronted by the devil. Thinking quickly, the man removes a cross from the wall and uses it to repel the mischievous demon before we fade to black.

As mentioned, there isn’t a strong narrative at work in The House of the Devil. However, a basic story can be pieced together from the actions presented on screen. We may never know why the men enter into the castle, or what exactly the devil wished to accomplish, but these narrative hooks were not the point of Méliès’ early works. Instead, he utilized his knowhow as an illusionist to create moving pictures depicting the sorts of actions that would otherwise be impossible to show an audience at the turn of the 20th century.