The Uncle Josh series by the Edison studio was among the first narrative film series to feature a recurrent character. It was also very much in the slapstick vein. In this film, which runs a little less than 2 minutes, Uncle Josh finds himself in a haunted hotel with a decidedly mischievous ghost and a less than understanding hotel manager. These films, another of which, Uncle Josh's Nightmare (1900), is in a same narrative ball park, are examples of the very wide influence that French filmmaker Georges Méliès had on early fantasy films. Edison, never to be a "one upped" by anyone, felt the need to make "trick films" in-house. They are fun to watch, but never match the brilliance of Méliès earlier (and later) works. Director Edwin S. Porter was a fine filmmaker in his own right, and left to his own devices, was also an innovator. But in this style of film making, which involved a lot of editing, the finished product comes off as a bit of a lazy rip off. But, still, these little films are fun to watch and deserve their place in American cinematic history as being some of the earliest examples of the fantasy genre produced in the United States.
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| (all stills from The Library of Congress) |
What a troublesome spook!
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