Hydrothérapie fantastique (1910)
*** (out of 4)
aka The Doctor's Secret
This here isn't the best film Georges Melies ever made but it's certainly one of the most bizarre. An overweight man goes to a doctor (Melies) looking for "help" so the doctor does a couple experiments on him. It starts off by drilling a hole into the man and sucking out some sort of fluid and eventually they accidentally blow the man up and have to put him back together again. It's funny that this film would be made the same year as Edison's FRANKENSTEIN because this movie starts out like a liposuction ad and turns into a Frankenstein-like tale. The ending where the man gets blown up and then put back together was extremely well-done as the director clearly had better technology where his editing tricks could be done without being as noticeable as in previous years. I thought the moments right after the man being put back together were quite good as he pretty much has to learn to walk again and this too could be connected back to the Frankenstein tale. The earlier stuff is just as weird as they do a variety of experiments on this man and needless to say, not many of them go right.