Year: 1895
Country: U.S.
Subgenre: Historical Horror (also Film First/Silent Horror)
Runtime: 1 minute is the given time (it's more like 20 seconds)
Director: Alfred Clark
I am lover of the silents and love reading about the beginnings of film--particularly those from the 19th century; at nearly 125 years of age, this little film ranks as one of the earliest narrative films to have been made. While, Méliès' Le manoir du diable is regarded as the very first intentionally made horror film; that film was released in 1896, one year after this Edison production went out to nickelodeons. However, this film is often listed as a horror film; and, I think, rightly so. It reportedly so horrified people in parlors, that many of them fainted (and not all of them were women). It is a very brief film; as the saying goes, "if you blink, you'll miss it," but it's impression was very long lasting! As mentioned, it is an Edison Laboratories production directed by Alfred Clark, who was new to the company. He is a figure that doesn't get near enough attention or credit in the annals of film history. It was he who brought a number novel ideas to the Edison studio, including trained actors, scenario plots and film editing. This film is regarded as the very first "hard edit" in any film--and it was so realistic that many people actually thought a woman willingly gave up her life for the making of it. So you can add infamy to it's list of descriptions. In reality the actor who played Mary Stuart was in fact a man named Robert Thomae; it is his only known film appearance. The hard edit in this is considered a special effect, the first of it's kind, and the film is listed as the very first "trick film." Again, this was prior to the king of trick films, Georges Méliès, bursting into the brand new film industry in France the following year. Because we are so fortunate that so many of Méliès hundreds of film shorts have survived, this Edison short often get over looked. So how about giving it a look right now?
