SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Boring, long, and too preachy.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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.

In the very early days of film, outright stealing of ideas was rampant. Often, when a good idea developed, other filmmakers would copy it EXACTLY or as exactly as possible and market the product as their own. It clearly was theft and nowadays you'd get sued for such blatant ripoffs. But in the 1895-1910 era, the problem abounded. For example, I've seen an alternate version of the groundbreaking "Voyage Dan Le Lune" (Georges Méliès) that was so close to the original that I thought perhaps Méliès had decided to rework or remake his own film.In the case of "The Old Curiosity Shop", Walter Booth decided to make a film that wasn't exactly a copy of Méliès' work--but was very strongly inspired by it. It features a scene that is very, very similar--with a man making things appear and disappear through the use of double-exposures and stop-motion. But, unlike a Méliès film, the tricks come VERY rapid-fire--so quickly that the film lacks grace--though the tricks, by 1901 standards, are quite nice.One other note. The plot of this knockoff film is not exactly as it is described in the IMDb summary. Perhaps there are various versions of this film varying in lengths. The one I downloaded from archive.org (which are often linked to IMDb--but this film is not) had cute gnomes and no hint of the old lady wanting a kiss from the conjurer.

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.

I viewed the British Film Institute print of this early 'trick' film. This brief and enjoyable comedy is purely a vehicle for some conjuring tricks, all of which are achieved in the camera rather than through stagecraft. The tricks are well done, with the jump cuts and other fakery being rather more difficult to spot here than in many other 'trick' films of this same era.The Edison Company's synopsis, included on IMDb's web page for this film, is accurate enough. I was intrigued by the business featuring a beautiful woman divided into upper and lower halves. This impressed me for two different reasons. Firstly, the earliest example (to my knowledge) of a stage conjuror sawing a woman in half was P.T. Selbit, about 20 years AFTER this movie was made: is it possible that the well-known stage illusion was actually inspired by this movie?Secondly, I was intrigued that this movie was imaginative enough to introduce the top half of the woman without the bottom half, and then show her bottom half walking into the scene. This is much more clever (and unexpected) than the more obvious lurk of showing a normal woman, then making her divide into halves. Compare this with the awful scene in 'Follow the Boys' when Orson Welles supposedly saws Marlene Dietrich in half, in front of a live audience of servicemen. Marlene's lower half gets up and walks away, while the soldiers hoot with delight ... but this is blatantly a camera trick, so we know that the 'audience' aren't seeing what we're seeing, and we know they're giving a scripted reaction.The magic tricks in 'The Haunted Curiosity Shop' are actually more convincing than the make-up job on the actor playing the antiques dealer. My rating: 9 out of 10.