THE MONSTER (1903)
Article 2068 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-12-2006
Posting Date: 4-11-2007
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies

An Egyptian watches a magician make a skeleton dance, grow and shrink. When the magician invites him to dance with the skeleton, he refuses, so the magician transforms the skeleton into a beautiful woman. But now, the woman will have nothing to do with the Egyptian.

This is another early Melies short, and a fairly entertaining one. It’s one of his shorter trick films (only two minutes long), so it’s somewhat at the opposite spectrum of his all-stops-pulled-out extravaganzas (like A TRIP TO THE MOON or THE MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN), and if you’ve seen enough of his work, there are no real special effects surprises, but it’s quite entertaining in its modest way.