The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906)

Talking to a fellow IMDber about the Bourne movies,I decided to take a look at their reviews.Being in the mood recently to watch another short from Georges Méliès,I was delighted to spot a review for a Méliès I've not heard of before,which led to me getting set for a devilish treat.The plot:Meeting professor Alcofrisbas and 7 fellow scientists, William Crackford is told of a plan to travel round the world.Helping them to get all set,Crackford signs Alcofrisbas's permission contract for the trip,without reading it.Thinking that he is about to go on a round the world adventure,Crackford soon discovers that he has just made a deal with the devil. View on the film:Keeping his Sci-Fi and Horror roots at the centre,writer/director Georges Méliès (who also plays the devil!) gives the title a unique slant into Comedy,via giving each attempt the guys make to run away from the devil a slap-stick quality. Beating the devil with his in- camera tricks, Méliès updates the Faust tale with starling surreal from the Seven Deadly Sins burning away on screen and a masterfully designed Phantom Carriage revealing the devils final trick.

This Georges Méliès film is another imaginative fantasy. It's effects-driven, not story-based. The visuals are everything. What plot there is merely serves as a structure to base the visual wizardry around. It features a couple of travellers who are persecuted by the devil. They are taken on a carriage ride through the cosmos led by a skeletal horse.It's quite common material for a film from the 1900's. For some reason stories featuring Satan were common-place. Anyway, this one is very nice to look at. The ride through outer space is hypnotic and dream-like with an array of intergalactic attractions passing the stagecoach by. The colour tinting of course helps a lot. It's very effectively used here and is quite explosive in the scene with the volcano with an eruption of deep red. It's a trip worth taking.

Merry Frolics Of Satan, The (1906)*** (out of 4)aka Les Quatre cents farces du diableEntertaining 14-minute film from the French master has two gentlemen being haunted by Satan as they travel from one hotel to the next. Before long Satan throws them into a special carriage and takes them on a trip to Hell. The actual story here really doesn't mean too much because the real highlight here are all the special effects and various tricks that pop up. This here, thanks in large part to the title, remains one of Melies most popular films and it's understandable as there's a lot of fun to be had here. As with many of his longer movies, this one here features some narration and it's also hand colored, which is a big plus. The colors look great and they are used with quite a bit of imagination. Some of the best stuff in the film deals with Satan, painted red of course, popping out of various places and scaring the men. Another major plus is when we actually get to Hell and various other demons take form.

This fantasy/horror feature has plenty of good visual effects, as you would expect from a Georges Méliès movie. It features quite a variety of backgrounds, camera tricks, and other devices from the French movie pioneer's seemingly endless bag of tricks. There isn't really much to the story itself, so it seems clear that the plot was mainly a vehicle to set up the special effects.The story has the devil choosing to torment a couple of travelers, in a variety of imaginative ways and places. There is quite a bit of action, although most of it simply displays Méliès's camera skill, rather than advancing the story. This may well have been one of the features for which he wrote a narrative designed to be read when the feature was screened, since it isn't always immediately clear what the purpose is for some of the scenes. But in any case, the story logic is not supposed to occupy as much of the viewer's attention as are the interesting visuals.The themes are similar to those in many earlier Méliès features, and he seemed to enjoy coming up with diabolical sights and bizarre antics. Since there isn't a lot of brand new material here, it probably doesn't rank among his best features, but it's another good demonstration of his creativity and skill.