Silent Horror Shorts Vol II

Abertoir, Wales’ International Horror Festival are back with a  new collection of early silent horror shorts from the dawn of the 20th century. This collection features the lighter side of cinema’s first adventures into the realms of the macabre and the other-worldly. The four films, which delightfully embrace both the sinister and the just-slightly-bananas, are set side-by-side with one of the truly classic dark films of silent horror.  All of these films are accompanied  by a specially commissioned score by the Abertoir Horror Festival whcih will be performed live by silent film pianist Paul Shallcross.

The films in the package are:

Un Homme de Têtes (1898)
Georges Méliès, France, 1 minute.
Written, directed and acted by the great French innovator of early film Georges Méliès and featuring four decapitated heads, all of them belonging to Méliès.


Une Excursion Incohérente (1909)
Segundo de Chomón, France 9 mins.
A family day out in the woods turns into a day of horror. Chocolate worm cake, maggot roll and mice eggs are all on the menu as Chomon treats us to one of his finest surrealist fantasies.


Prelude (1927)
Castleton Knight, UK, 8 mins.
“To be buried alive, is beyond question, the most terrific of the extremes of agony which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.” A man sits reading these words of Edgar Allan Poe and in the darkened room familiar objects soon acquire a sinister overtone; a tolling bell, a funeral procession, falling earth, a struggle beneath the shroud. A beautifully crafted dark film inspired by Rachmaninov’s famous Prelude in C sharp minor.


The Thieving Hand (1908)
J. Stuart Blackton, U.S.A. 6 mins.
An artificial arm is endowed with an uncontrollable instinct for thievery. It takes over the life of an innocent purchaser and leads him to the only place where the arm can feel safely at home. Originally made as a comedy the film’s realistic stop-motion portrayal of the very mobile artificial arm has earned it a well-deserved place in the annals of early horror.


The Haunted House (1921)
Buster Keaton, U.S.A. 21 mins.
Keaton’s spoof on the then popular ghost-house genre is packed to the rafters with gags and stunts to delight all audiences. Apart from Keaton himself, the starring role in this film is taken by none other than a collapsing staircase.


For more information on this new package of short films and how you can book them please visit the Abertoir Website 

 

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