Early British "Trick" Films -
1901 The Elixir of Life (Williamson's Films)
1901 The Marvelous Hair Restorer (Williamson's Films)
1901 An Over-Incubated Baby (Paul's Animatograph's & Films)
1910 Freezing Mixture (Kineto Film Subjects)
1910 Electric Vitalizer (Kineto Film Subjects)
These film catalog synopses are easy to read. It's sorting through the microfilm rolls of catalog entries that included filmed yachting races, Rhodesia travelogues, bee hives, ant hills, cricket bat construction and so on that's the tough part!!
Here are some excepts from each catalog description:
The Elixir of Life
"A marvelous exhibition of facial expression. A decrepit old man sits at a table visibly bemoaning his infirmities; takes a bottle out of his pocket labeled "Elixir of Life"....The Marvelous Hair Restorer
..."a further application gives him such a crop that he finds it impossible to get a comb through it. In his excitement he knocks the bottle over, and immediately a crop of hair grows up on the table."An Over-Incubated Baby
"The picture opens in a professor's laboratory, filled with chemical implements, prominent among which is a large machine bearing a notice to this effect: - "PROF. BAKEM'S BABY INCUBATOR. - Two Year's Growth in Two Minutes."
Freezing Mixture
"Sanders and his masterful wife at home, receive notice that their nephew, who has made a fortune with a Freezing Mixture and its antidote, is about to pay them a visit. Nephew John arrives, and is witness to the subjection of Uncle Sanders to the strong will of his aunt. Sanders is allowed no recreation, no pleasure; and a happy suggestion of a period of freedom is warmly adopted by the meek uncle. Nephew John undertakes to freeze, with no harmful result, his aunt for two hours, so that his uncle may enjoy person freedom for that period."Electric Vitalizer
"The Professor completes a wonderful Invention which not only restores life to dead animals and fishes, but briefly instils vitality into waxen, wooden and marble effigies, each of which in jerky movements burlesques the character it is supposed to represent."The entries for the first three films are accompanied by some shots from the film. The last two (which are longer in duration) include scene-by-scene breakdowns. Possibly all of these films are lost so that may be about all that we have on them.
I look at these 5 films and others like them as kinda, in a way, the beginning of schlock; come up with a gimmick, run with it and hope to wow the audience into paying to see it.
written: 8/28/2002
