Early Films
HOW IT FEELS TO BE RUN OVER. 1900
Director: Cecil M. Hepworth

CRIPPLE CREEK BAR-ROOM SCENE. 1899
WHY JONES DISCHARGED HIS CLERK. 1900
Director: James H. White

SHERLOCK HOLMES BAFFLED. 1903
A GESTURE FIGHT IN HESTER STREET. 1903
THE CHIMNEY SWEEP & THE MILLER. 1902
A WAKE IN HELL'S KITCHEN. 1900
Director: Arthur W. Marvin

THREE ACROBATS. 1899
THE TRAMP'S UNEXPECTED SKATE. 1901
Director: Unknown

AS IN A LOOKING GLASS. 1903
CHIMMY HICKS AT THE RACES. 1900
Director: F. S. Armitage

THE BOYS THINK THEY HAVE ONE ON FOXY GRAMPA BUT HE FOOLS THEM. 1902
FOXY GRAMPA & POLLY IN A LITTLE HILARITY. 1902
Director: Robert K. Bonine

WHAT DEMORALIZED THE BARBER SHOP. 1898
HOCKEY MATCH ON THE ICE. 1898
Director: William Heise

ANIMAL ACT WITH BABOON, DOG, KITTEN & DONKEY. 1919
Director: Hans A. Spanuth

Reviewed by Paghat the Ratgirl



Run Over Comedy was important to the pioneer days of cinema, so that many early films record vaudeville acts, or concoct comic episodes.

For Cecil M. Hepworth's How It Feels to be Run Over (1900), a camera has been placed in a dusty road & captures a passing horse & buggy.

The next vehicle, however, is a horseless carriage which runs the camera right over, as well as, in imagination, the viewer of the kinetoscopic film.

It's really quite an creative little movie, that looks like it might really have been an accidental capture, but no such thing for a film that has to be complete in under a minute. The driver is director Hepworth himself, & the well dressed passenger is May Clark

Cripple Creek With Cripple Creel Bar-room Scene (1899), an elaborate stage design recreates a wild west saloon interio0r, with a huge jug of "Red Eye" sitting beside the bar.

A drunk for no good reason except being drunk knocks the hat off a man who has fallen asleep in his chair, trying to start a fight.

The proprietress squirts the drunk with seltzer to try to calm him down, but he has to be thrown out of the bar. The guys who were playing poker stage right helped the proprietrice, who rewards them with free cigars.

It seems an awfully lot of stage design & big cast of six to create a mere three-quarters-minute show. It's considered a historical moment for the nascent cinema, however, in establishing the western saloon setting for oh so many future westerns, & is sometimes tagged "the first western."


Holmes Ah, the very first Sherlock Holmes film, Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1903),but with a satiric "story" completely unrelated to any written tale we may know. It's a half-minute of nonsense.

A burglar can appear & disappear at random. Holmes tries to ignore him by smoking a cigar, then tries to reclaim the sack of stolen goods, but the sack vanishes from his hand. It is so ridiculous to think the baffled man is Holmes that it really is good for a laugh.

It would be a delight to have known who the actor was who first brought Holmes to moving pictures, but his identity is uknown. The precise date of production is unknown, probably 1900, though its copyright date is 1903.

The occasionally suggested 1905 date doesn't match the 1903 copyright & is probably just a confusion for the lost Vitagraph film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom (1905).


Gesture Fight The director of Sherlock Holmes Baffled was Arthur W. Marvin, who lie James H. White & others liked recording vaudeville entertainers, including the following three shorts:

Hester Street was the business district of a Jewish neighborhood, & some race stereotyping can be detected in the vaudeville skit A Gesture Fight in Hester Street (1903), but it's not hateful.

On a stage with backdrop decorated as Hester Street, a Jewish street vendor is hawking ties. Another bearded vendor comes by with a push-cart, & an argument begins with exaggerated physical gesturing quickly escalates to a fight. An Irish cop intervenes, using his bil