THIS TRAGEDY OF THE FOOTPRINTS ON THE CEILING WILL JAM ANY THEATRE
A long time ago — a million years BC — I resolved to watch every film illustrated in Denis Gifford’s Pictorial History of the Horror Movie, a big green book (though some editions are purple) which loomed large in my childhood. I named this quixotic quest See Reptilicus and Die, and I blogged about my progress until there wasn’t any to blog about. The problem is that some of the films are lost — that’s OK, I discount those, though the idea of remaking them has some appeal — and some were unavailable. The project kind of fizzled after I finally saw REPTILICUS, and failed to die.
BALAOO, THE DEMON BABOON was one of these inaccessible items — and also one of the lost ones. Only fragments survive, and they’re in some cinematheque somewhere. I vaguely thought about travelling there. But YouTube has obviated that requirement!
Excitingly, BALAOO is directed by Victorin-Hyppolite Jasset, director of the evocative and delightful PROTEA, a kind of LES VAMPIRES knock-off which has been entrancing unsuspecting punters since its recentish rediscovery. An amazing work. I see that there’s quite a lot more Jasset out there, and I ought to consume all of it, he seems one of the figures to preserve the charm of the cinema of attractions into the age of sustained narrative. A poet, in other words. I’ve only seen some of his ZIGOMAR films but he also made something called THE MAGIC SACK. What’s not to like there?
Just as PROTEA seems like the start of a serial that never develops or ends, the surviving bits of BALAOO have an evocative quality potentially in excess of the original, complete version’s, though it would have been nice to see those footsteps on the ceiling. Here’s a still purporting to show how they got there.
Doesn’t really make sense, since primitive man is not known for his arachnoid adhesion ability, especially while wearing shoes. Never mind, we’re not here to relitigate Balaoo’s gravity-defying feats, but to praise them.
Although we must first admit that 1913 punters may have felt like they’d bought sea monkeys after seeing an ad, when they Lucien Bataille’s screen makeup, which owes more to minstrelsy or the circus than Jack Pierce or John Chambers. But his physical performance more than makes up for it, and is so athletic and expressively convincing that the makeup comes to seem an exciting alienation effect, there to stop us getting TOO INVOLVED and thereby winding up dead from exhaustion.
I also like that the actor is called Bataille — he’s not the syphilitic tax collector father of Georges Bataille, though it would be lovely if he were.
Based on a mad scientist novel by Gaston Leroux which later became the affecting and underrated DR. RENAULT’S SECRET, the movie-selection features predictive text intertitles, leaping, and some green tinting on both titles and imagery which relates it in a chance yet psychologically evocative way to the front cover of the Gifford. It’s all more than good enough to make you want more, although it’s hard to say how much the movie is enhanced by its frustrating lacunae. Even, say, ALIEN COVENANT might turn into an evocative work if you deleted, say, 90% of it. Although maybe that’s too much to hope for.
Now I plan to finally watch THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET, which will take me an appreciable distance closer to completion of the See Reptilicus and Die project.
shadowplay 