A Major Disappointment

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Once more, a traveller finds himself in a nightmare. He tries to simply enjoy a good night's rest. While his is getting ready, various pieces of furniture disappear and reappear. At one point, he takes off his pants and they fly through the air. Soon it's his bed. The man is frantic and overacts like crazy, which is great fun. These crazy living quarters are a real treat and must have been a delight to the viewers.

And here he does it even in the truest sense of the word. Even if it runs over 100 seconds and is pretty long for that era back then, this short film is packed with an amount of action that is almost too much for its running-time. A man enters an inn and from the moment he undresses things get awkward. Everything appears, reappears or moves with no logical explanation behind it. Every time he focuses on a new object, you could be certain something was about to happen with it. That includes primarily his clothes: coats, boots and pants, but also a chair keeps changing his position and the highlight is the big bed disappearing. No rest for him, it seems. Only his massive beard stays exactly where it is. Solid work from Méliès, neither among his best nor worst.

Among the films of Georges Méliès available today this is the first to feature one of the cinema magician's most common trick film formulas—that of the weary traveler being tormented in his hotel room. Méliès's earlier films "A Terrible Night" (Une nuit terrible) and "A Nightmare" (Le cauchemar) (both 1896) established the outlines of a man's rest being interrupted, but here is the earliest available instance where he is at an inn and the entire room seems to conspire against his restful night's sleep.This was done by both theatrical and cinematic tricks. For instance, a splice of the filmstrip made a chair disappear as he tries to sit down, while his boots are pulled away on strings. These movements, appearances and disappearances of his clothing and the room's furniture end up driving the man to run out of the room in terror. Additionally, it shouldn't be overlooked how much Méliès's own performances in front of the camera added to amusement of these productions.This weary traveler at an inn genre was employed again in such Méliès's films as "Going to Bed Under Difficulties" (1900), "The Inn Where No Man Rests" (1903) and "The Black Imp" (1905) with variations on this theme in "A Roadside Inn" (1906) and "The Diabolic Tenant" (1909). Other filmmakers were quick to imitate and improve upon these films, as well, including Edwin S. Porter's "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" (1906) and J. Stuart Blackton's "The Haunted Hotel" (1907).

Bewitched Inn, The (1897) *** 1/2 (out of 4) aka L'Auberge ensorceleeMelies plays a man who shows up at his motel room where ghostly things start happening right from the start. We get to witness all sorts of magic tricks throughout this film including his clothes flying through the air, his boots walking off and of course a scene where he goes to sit in a chair only to have the chair move on him. The special effects are, needless to say, terrific and it's amazing at how well they hold up today. The magic Melies brings to the screen is certainly something very special and this film contains plenty of laughs to keep you entertained. The highlight of the film has to be the exploding candle.