Fangs for the memories!

QUESTION What was the first horror film?

HORROR films can well be seen as having evolved from the practice of spiritualism and the conjuring of ghosts, which were something of a national pastime during the late Victorian era.

Macabre theatre, which reached its peak with the gory exploits of the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris, was popular, as was spirit photography — using double exposures, or superimpositions, to depict ‘ghosts’ within a frame of film.

Small wonder, then, that the earliest film makers attempted to make horror films or ‘spook tales’ as they were then known.

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 Devil’s Castle.

It lasted three minutes, a great technical achievement at the time, and featured a plot that included a number of elements that became staples 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 Blood lust: Bela Lugosi and Helen Chandler in 1931 horror film Dracula 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 the talking picture in 1927, horror films became even more popular. While the first talkies were static and clumsy, the first ‘talking’ horror film was a classic.

Dracula, an American horror film released by Universal Pictures in 1931, starred Hungarian Bela Lugosi and Helen Chandler as his beautiful victim. It was directed by Tod Browning, a master of the genre. Ian Penman, Malvern, Worcs.

QUESTION What sounds common in other languages are not used by English speakers?

THERE are two consonant phonemes, or sounds, absent in English, but which are 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 letter pair ‘gl’, if followed by an ‘i’, represents a sound similar to ‘ ll’ in million. It is softer than the English ‘l’. To form it, you can place your tongue on the ridge right behind your teeth to make the sound.

Furthermore, the ‘r’ in Italian is always rolled or trilled: curl your tongue with the

tip facing your throat and blow air as you make the ‘r’ sound.

Michael Bresolin, Warwick. 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, who use a variety of clicks to replace the consonants in their language.

Another example, common to many languages in West Africa, is a ‘g’ and ‘b’ pronounced simultaneously, technically known as a voiced labial-velar stop.

Its symbol in the international phonetic alphabet is ɡ͡b. An example is the word gbegbe, the name of a dance in the Ivory Coast.

Alison Beyer, Oxford. I HAD Arabic lessons when I worked in Khartoum some years ago.

A glottal stop is much used in Sudanese Arabic, and I found it easy to pronounce, but BBC newsreaders seem to have difficulty with it. 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 After a death in the family, it was once the practice to stop the clocks, close the curtains and cover mirrors. What was the significance of these customs?

FURTHER to the earlier answer, attending a funeral in Ireland recently, I discovered these old ideas have been updated, and it’s now common practice for folk to cover their television sets, and not to view them for at least one week after the funeral.

It’s also customary not to send or receive cards at Christmas if there has been a death in the family.

With the increased use of retirement homes, unknown in the Republic of Ireland even 20 years ago, it’s common to return the deceased to their family home for the wake. D. M. Deamer, York.

n IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT; fax them to 01952 780111 or email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.