The Haunted Castle History

Horror has been one of the most powerful and popular genres throughout film history and horror movies have been around since the earliest years of cinema.

Most commonly cited as the first horror movie is The Haunted Castle (Le Manoir du diable in French), a short by influential French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Due to his innovations in special effects and filming techniques, he was easily one of the most important early filmmakers. Méliès was more well known for making some of the first science fiction shorts, including A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage.

The Haunted Castle was released in 1896, only eight years after the first film was made. The three-minute short starts off with a bat transforming into a human in front of the

The minute-long short is about an inn run by ghosts, making it one of, if not the earliest ghost-themed films, as well as the first British horror movie.

The inspiration from Méliès is obvious as it makes liberal use of the substitution splice trick. The two filmmakers eventually worked together on the 1902 film The Coronation of Edward VII.

Also in 1897, there was another Méliès work that could fall under the umbrella of horror. The Bewitched Inn is about a man (played by Méliès himself) discovering a hotel room that has magical properties. Furniture disappears, a candle explodes when it is lit, and objects move of their own accord.

According to Wikipedia, this "is the first known Méliès film to feature inanimate objects coming to life to tease their owners, a theme that would return time and again throughout his work." Of course, Méliès ' trademark splice trick shows up a few times to sell the idea of a magical room. This is all played more for laughs as opposed to trying to scare the audience.

The Bewitched Inn clocks in at under two minutes and was made by Méliès ' Star Film Company.

In 1898, George Albert Smith pops up again as the director behind Photographing a Ghost. As the title suggests, it is about an attempt to take a picture of a ghost, which doesn 't end up going so

Unfortunately, I can 't find this anywhere online, and it appears to be lost. However, we do have a surviving description from the Edison Company. According to the summary, the short begins with two men carrying a case with the word "Ghost" written on it. A photographer opens it up and a "tall, white Thing" comes out. Eventually, the man tries to sit on the trunk to keep the ghost out, but when he turns around, he sees the ghost right