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What makes it different from others?

Best movie ever!

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There really isn't much you can say about a silent, three minute short from 1896, is there? Must cinema buffs already know that Georges Melies was a cinema pioneer who single-handled devised many of the tropes that are now familiar to us as modern cinema-goers, and THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is another example of his skill as a film-maker.The story sees the Devil at work in his spooky old castle, summoning up various creatures in a bid to commit evil. Unfortunately he falls foul of an upright Christian, who uses the power of the cross to dispel his opponent.The three minute running time is chock-full of the special effects work that Melies loved to put on screen, particularly the use of jump cuts to make figures appear and disappear at will. With a plethora of imps, spirits, bats, and ghouls, Melies single-handedly invented the horror genre, one which is still going strong all these years later.

It's simply INCREDIBLE what magic Georges Melies - a real-life trained magician - was able to bring to the screen in those very early days of cinema; and "Le Manoir Du Diable" was his first great masterpiece of special effects that must have absolutely baffled the audience at the time. And it's also the VERY first attempt at a new genre: the HORROR genre! The way ghosts and devils and people disappear and reappear, the sudden flame bursts, menaces lurking literally everywhere - it's REAL magic. And there's even an underlying sense of humor, which is so characteristic for Melies' fantasy, sci-fi, and horror shorts; VERY few people have contributed as much to the development of cinema as an ART form as Georges Melies - and this unique masterpiece, born in the 19th (!!) century, is one of the best examples for his genius!

It didn't happen too often that the possibly most notable early silent movie director, Georges Méliès, overshoots the mark, but this is one example where he did. Nobody's perfect, I guess. This film is packed with the the diabolically supernatural as well as with Méliès' usual magic tricks, show etc. Lots of it is related to a kettle here. Unfortunately he goes for quantity over quality from start to finish and packs so much action in this short film that it's just one spectacular thing happening after the other and the story pays the price for it. I wish he had focused a bit more on precision instead of turning this basically into a showcase of 3 minutes that also lacks quality in terms of the physical aspect of the film itself. It's really almost impossible to see and understand what exactly is going on. Sometimes less can be more and this is one perfect example. Not recommended. Méliès has done better many times.

I'm not interested in retroactively assigning early films to the horror genre, as others seem to desire by claiming this film, "Le manoir du diable", as some sort of first horror film or to misunderstand the bat transformation to devil character here to be a vampire. Rather, this is another trick film, which Méliès made many of. Mephistopheles is in quite a few of these, of which this is probably the first. Mephistopheles is the director-magician's surrogate, allowing a slight narrative construction around the attraction of substitution-splices (a.k.a. stop substitutions), as the devil terrorizes a lord/cavalier with various appearances, disappearances and substitutions. By the way, I'm quite sure that Méliès plays the Faust-type lord/cavalier character and not Mephistopheles, despite several sources stating otherwise. Thus, Méliès plays the victim to the magic perpetrated by himself as the film's director and editor.For a film of 1896, this is a rather elaborate fiction subject and production. Most films at this time were actualities of ordinary events, popularized by the Lumiére Company. The only studio had been the "Black Maria" shack, which provided a black background for every production, in addition to the few props the Edison Company occasionally employed. Soon, Méliès would create the first decent movie studio, but for this film, he at least created a makeshift, painted cardboard set in the open air (see the shadows). Nobody else, as of then, had went to such trouble for a movie. Méliès used the same or very similar backdrop and costumes, as well as a related narrative, for "Le Château hanté" (1897). These films were also offered to be hand-colored, which would add to their appeal.(Note: At this time, most viewers have probably seen this film via the extract available on the Internet, which is taken from the documentary "The Magic of Méliès" (Le magie Méliès) (1997). A more complete version is available on French DVD, which includes the bat transformation at the beginning. According to catalogues, the film originally ended with the devil being bashed into smoke, but this part seems to be lost. It now ends with Méliès holding a cross to corner Mephistopheles.) EDIT: Flicker Alley has now also put this film on DVD in Region 1.