The Infernal Cauldron
A green-skinned demon places a woman and two courtiers into a flaming cauldron.
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- Cast:
- Georges Méliès
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Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Once again, Satan and the gang are up to something. There is a large cauldron, fire under it, and three women are forced to go into the cauldron. I don't know if they are already in hell, or have been brought there. Anyway, usually the devil gets his due. I'm not sure what happens with the women. It would seem that they are destroyed and come up as ghosts. The devils seem to think they've done a fine job.
Georges Méliès directed this short macabre film about two demons throwing people into a boiling pot of water. Not only does the film contain all the visual trickery that is associated with the director but it also has the added bonus of being hand coloured. This adds a nice extra dimension to the look. The green demons and the red flames are particularly memorable. The best effect in the film is the image of the spirits rising into the air from the bubbling cauldron. They are nice spooky and ghostly apparitions. The film is too short to really work as a horror picture. The horror film needed more time to work on the viewers emotions than these ancient short films allowed. Still it's most definitely one of the earliest macabre films in existence, and is well worth seeing, as it will possibly take you more time to read this review than it would be to actually watch this fascinating old movie.
Melies' typically lively imagination is once again evident here as he treats us to a macabre little scene in which a couple of demons capture unfortunate souls and bundle them into the eponymous cauldron only to then summon their spirits. The film is hand-coloured and is still in remarkably good condition, and Melies' trademark special effects are up to his usual standard - in fact they can stand comparison with the special effects in movies made 70 years later. There's not much plot, but then plot was never the most important thing to Melies - he was more concerned with visualising his incredible imagination on the screen. This one is a real treat.
This thirty-second short from 1903 shows demons burning women alive in. Melies had it hand-tinted and the colors are quite startling and alive. When I compare it to modern scenes of horror -- the hordes of undead in THE MUMMY returns, for example -- it comes off very well. Take a look. Your great-grandparents may not have known anything about Gangsta Rap, but they got to see an occasional good flick.