The Haunted Curiosity Shop (1901)

Absolutely Brilliant!

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

In this roughly two-minute long 1901 short movie by British film pioneer Walter R. Booth, there's lots of magic going on. Not really the spooky kind, more like the fascinating one.We see a head flying across the room and the moment it stops, there is a torso approaching from the left. Props to the curiosity shop owner that he didn't run away screaming in fear, but kept watching. His reward is a beautiful young woman when the head and the torso get together. But the moment he wants to hug her, she disappears into an old lady and he's gently-put not amused at all. Transformations back into the young girl and into a couple other forms take place, such as three children dressed as dwarfs. It's a decent little film with nice set decoration and I'd recommend it, only to silent film enthusiasts though.

Haunted Curiosity Shop, The (1901) ** (out of 4)Director Walter R. Booth and producer Robert W. Paul made several films together but the majority of them are forgotten today. Those that are remembered are mostly rip-offs of Georges Melies work and that's the case for this 1901 film. A man walks into a shop where various objects start to come alive and he must fight off the ghosts and other creatures. There are some minor horror elements here but for the most part the two-minute running time is dedicated to the trick film. I found the movie to be rather disappointing because the effects are actually poorly done. Many times when the "trick" goes to take place the scene is so blurry that you can't help but remain rather emotionless to the effect. Another problem is that the actor playing the man simply isn't charismatic enough to make you laugh at anything going on. The one good scene is when we get to see a woman divided in half. The effect here is done very well and this brief sequence makes the film worth sitting through.

Robert Paul is a largely forgotten name today, but he was a major pioneer of British cinema, and was quick to grasp the commercial potential of cinema in ways that better known pioneers such as William Friese-Greene were not. He was more of a mechanic than a filmmaker making, with Birt Acres, his own camera on which to shoot films in 1895, and also Britain's first projector, the Animatograph, with which to screen them in 1896. Early in the 20th century he had a custom-made studio built in Muswell Hill.The Haunted Curiosity Shop is a special-effects film made for Robert Paul by Walter Booth. There's no real story to speak of, and the film really just serves as a showcase for Booth's technical wizardry. Its use of stop-motion, substitution and matte photography is quite sophisticated and fast-moving for its day.

This short film is a succession of appearing, disappearing, split second metamorphoses and character fades. There is no obvious story line. The Curiosity Shop contains mainly Egyptian artifacts. It seems to be well executed for its time.