Segundo De Chomon: ‘The Red Spectre’ (1907)

Time for another silent film. This time I’m taking a break from George Melies to take a look at a piece from one of his rivals, Spanish film director Segundo De Chomon.

Much like Melies, De Chomon created short films with optical illusions and camera stop tricks. He started off working at the Pathe Freres company in Spain. Eventually, he developed colored stencil prints as well as mastering his trick short films. In 1905 he moved to Paris. Up until 1912, De Chomon collaborated with various film directors like Ferdinand Zecca, who was the Pathe Company’s leading director, Emile Cohl, and Gaston Velle. Some of De Chomon’s films include Gulliver en el país de Los Gigantes,  La Guerra e il Sogno di Momi,  El Hotel eléctrico, and the one I’m going to briefly go over in this post, Le spectre rouge or “The Red Spectre” in English.

Co-directed with Zecca, De Chomon’s short begins with a coffin emerging from the hell’s fire. A demon appears. However, he appears to be bored to death. So he decides to amuse himself by creating all kinds of evil illusions with help of very pretty muses he’s held captive. The demon takes two women, wraps them up, and burns them. When he collects their ashes, a fairy appears and she opposes him throughout the film. She reveals the women’s souls are behind another part of the cave. Then she vanishes. In one of the most well-known scenes of this short, the demon produces three bottles. He goes towards the camera. In each bottle, a small woman would appear as he pours ashes into them. The fairy reappears to mess with demonic magician’s tricks again by making the captive women in the bottles disappear.

The demon gets an aisle with has an image of a rooster on it, which resembles the Pathe Company’s logo. He goes on to create what looks like a very fancy television set where we get a moving picture of a woman and another with two other individuals. Of course, the demon can never catch a break because the good fairy comes back to stop him. He makes one more tv set out of boxes (?), which produces a moving image of a woman with her dog. The good fairy appears once again and she’s just about done with this demonic trickster. She reveals four pillars surrounded by fire. Out of the flames comes out a group of women. One of the girls takes the demon by the hand, brings him downstage, and reveals herself to be the good fairy. The film ends with the fairy trapping him underground and pours water (holy water?) on his body, which melts him into nothing but a skeleton.

The Red Spectre is a fun, yet creepy short film. I can go on about how much I love the fact this demon got beat by a woman. That bit in the story is awesome. However, I want to focus on De Chomon’s visual style and effects right now. Where Melies’s work appears more on the fantasy side, De Chomon’s piece here is more horrific but with fancy flair. The demonic illusionist looks creepy. He’s dressed in black with an outline of a skeleton on it and a cape. He doesn’t seem to have a name but his strong presence is felt. De Chomon already mastered his trick techniques by this time and they are highly effective here, specifically the three bottles and “tv” screens. Seeing the girls in those bottles made feel me suffocated and trapped myself. The rotating images feel like he predicted the future cinema and television. Ok! Maybe he wasn’t predicting anything, but De Chomon was a pioneer for his time. The Red Spectre is definitely a fine piece of cinema magic.