CALINO A MANGE DU CHEVAL (1908)
aka Result of Eating Horse Flesh
Article 5200 by Dave SIndelar
Date: 7-8-2016
Directed by Romeo Bosetti
Featuring Paul Bertho
Country: France
What it is: You are what you eat in action

Calino, unhappy with his meal at home, goes to a butcher who deals in horse flesh and buys a cut. He brings it home, and eats too much of it. And then…

You know, there’s one good thing about so many of the silent era movies being lost; it spares me from having to watch the many variations on this theme that were made at the time. For the record, the result of eating horse flesh is the same as drinking a bottle of horse embrocation; you act like a horse. Is it obvious? Yes. Is it funny? Not really; most of the movie has the title character running around with a cart and creating predictable mayhem. It does come up with a creative ending gag, but that’s about it. As it is, it’s just another in a long line of shorts in which humans are made to act like animals for comic effect. Actually, I think I’ve only seen two of these (both involving men acting like horses); I know there’s quite a few of them finding ways to get men to act like monkeys.