Category: 1915
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Until the Missing Link shows up, The Dinosaur and the Missing Link is strangely realistic. Director O’Brien’s stop motion creations–he always uses long shot–seem like actors, like any other silent with a terrible print. It’s eerie. Even the gorilla-like Missing Link occasionally looks like a guy in costume. O’Brien’s eyes are fantastic, along with characters’…
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Calling Love’s Surprises a tepid comedy would be an understatement. Writer-director-star Linder fails to understand the very basics of drama, which puts the whole short in the dumps right off. It opens with a dinner party. The three men at the party all run off to grab hidden flowers for a girl. Unsurprisingly, they’re all…
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In The Ring That Kills, Feuillade goes with a gradual build-up and a rather tense finish. There’s no recap of the previous Vampires entry, which gets confusing towards the end, when a supporting character returns. Feuillade uses that character, played by Marcel Lévesque, as comic relief. He’s just revealed the Vampires evil plan for protagonist…
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According to Pool Sharks, the only thing better than getting the girl is getting a free bottle of liquor. W.C. Fields is at a picnic and courting a young woman–apparently the only single woman there (the actor is sadly uncredited)–and he runs afoul her other suitor, played by Bud Ross. Fields and Ross engage in…
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I probably should have paid more attention to The Severed Head‘s title. Even when the discussion of a decapitated murder victim came up, the title didn’t register any significance. Guess what? Director Feuillade gets in a severed head. I didn’t even think the murder case mattered, since most of the short concerns reporter Édouard Mathé…
The Stop Button 