Spooked by horror films
QUESTION What was the first horror film? HORROR films can be seen as the descendents of spiritualism and the conjuring of ghosts, which were popular pastimes during the late Victorian era.
Macabre theatre, which reached its peak with the gory exploits of the Grand Guignol in Paris, was extremely popular, as was spirit photography – using double exposures or super impositions to depict ‘ghosts’ on film.
Small wonder then that the early film makers attempted to make horror films or ‘spook tales’.
As early as 1895, cinematic pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumiere produced a fragment called Le Squelette Joyeux, which had a sinister dancing skeleton.
The first fully-formed spook tale came the following year. Le Manoir Du Diable was created by French illusionist Georges Melies and released in English as The Haunted Castle.
It lasted three minutes, a great technical achievement at the time, and featured a plot that included a number of elements that would become key features of horror films: bats, devils, poltergeist, witches, cauldrons, ghosts and trolls – all appearing and disappearing in puffs of smoke.
The film opens with a large bat flying into a medieval castle. It circles the room, before suddenly changing into the devil, Mephistopheles.
An assistant helps the demon conjure a woman from a cauldron. Two cavaliers, or soldiers, enter. The devil’s assistant pokes their backs and they are teleported to different areas of the room, frightening them and causing one to flee.
The second one witnesses furniture being moved around and the appearance of a skeleton. When the cavalier attacks the devil, he turns into a bat.
The cavalier is subdued by four ghosts and is taken to the beautiful woman, who is transformed into a withered old crone.
Mephistopheles is dispatched by the hero brandishing a large crucifix – this would become a classic device in horror films. The silent era saw some of the greatest horror films, notably the German masterpieces The Golem (1915), The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (1919) and Nosferatu (1922).
The American actor Lon Chaney appeared in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom Of The Opera (1925).
With the arrival of talking pictures in 1927, horror films became even more popular. While the first talkies were static and clumsy, the first ‘talking’ horror was a classic.
Dracula, based on the book by Dubliner Bram Stoker and released by Universal Pictures in 1931, starred Bela Lugosi and Helen Chandler as his beautiful victim. It was directed by Tod Browning, a master of the genre.
Ian Penman, by email. QUESTION Which sounds that are common in other languages are not used in English? THERE are many such sounds or phonemes around the world. The classic examples are the ‘click’ languages of Southern Africa, most famously spoken by the Kalahari Bushmen. They use a variety of clicks to replace the consonants in their language.
Another example is a ‘g’ and ‘b’ pronounced simultaneously, known as a voiced labial-velar stop. Its symbol international phonetic alphabet symbol is ɡ͡b. It’s common to many languages in West Africa; an example is the word Gbegbe, the name of a dance in the Ivory Coast.
Alison Beyer, Oxford. THERE are two consonantic phonemes, or sounds, absent in English, but common in Italian.
The letter pair ‘gn’ represents a sound similar to the English ‘ni’ in onion or ‘ny’ in canyon, pronounced like the ‘nh’ sound in the Portuguese word sonho or the ‘n’ in the Spanish word pinata .
The letters ‘gl’, if followed by ‘i’, represent a sound similar to ‘ll’ in million. It is softer than the English ‘l’. You place your tongue on the ridge right behind your teeth to make the sound.
Finally, the ‘r’ in Italian is always rolled: curl your tongue with the tip facing your throat and blow air as you make the ‘r’ sound.
Michael Bresolin, Warwick. I HAD Arabic lessons when I worked in Khartoum some years ago. A glottal stop is much used in Sudanese Arabic.
Abdel Rahman is a fairly common name and the glottal stop is transliterated as ‘h’ in English.
Cockney has a glottal stop that is most evident in wa’er (water). This, with a bit of ‘h’, is the sound in Arabic. It is not ‘ch’ as in loch. In Sudanese Arabic, it precedes many words starting with ‘a’, including Allah.
R. J. Andrews, Farnborough, Hants. QUESTION What is known of Chu Chin Chow, a very longrunning show in the 1900s? FURTHER to earlier answers, as a boy, I stayed with my grandparents near Scarborough in the north of England for the holidays.
I vividly recall the colours, spectacle and music of a performance of Chu Chin Chow on a floating stage in Peasholm Park in the town. It was about 1949-50, after wartime austerity, and made a big impression on my ten-yearold self. The following year, my grandmother took me again, to see The Desert Song. Sadly, we had to evacuate the theatre as the stage started to sink. D. M. Deamer, York. QUESTION What are the most sought-after ‘lost’ TV episodes? FURTHER to earlier answers, the lost programme I would most like to see is The Dark Island, a sixpart mini-series, set on the island of Benbecula in the Hebrides.
A fisherman discovers what appears to be a torpedo washed up on a deserted beach. On closer examination, the container is found to contain materials for a spy. A Naval team, including a young Robert Hardy, arrives and uncovers an international plot.
I never saw the programme, but remember enjoying a 1969 radio adaptation of the drama.
Incidentally, The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965) is not totally missing as nine out of 12 episodes exist. Nor was it the first appearance of the monsters; that was The Daleks in 1963/4 starring the first Doctor, William Hartnell. Jon Marsh, Leicester.
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