I'm going to be doing a presentation on Georges Méliès for a French film class, and a couple of the topics that I'm going to be covering include his innovations in the area of special effects and influence on later filmmakers. This might be a little bit of a stretch, but would there be any way to draw a line between Méliès and Mario Bava? I was thinking of finding a still or two from Planet of the Vampires or Hercules in the Haunted World or something else vaguely reminiscent of something out of one of Méliès's films.

I'm also trying to think of some way to connect Méliès to HK fantasy. I couldn't help but notice the last time that I watched The Super Inframan that Princess Dragon Mom's skeleton minions look a little like the Selenites from A Trip To The Moon.

I've seen my share of HK fantasy, but I can't think of anything...well, I know I've seen some Méliès, but it's been an awful long time. Maybe ZU: WARRIORS FROM THE THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN might be appropriate.

Beyond possibly your two examples, I'm drawing a blank for Bava. I mean, BARON BLOOD (nah...), DR GOLDFOOT (let's not go there)...?

For examples in general, if you haven't already got this one, let me suggest FIRST MEN IN THE MOON and maybe CITY OF LOST CHILDREN. My memories pretty vague...maybe something by Svankmajer or the Brothers Quay.

I get the feeling that I'm stumbling around in the dark, so I'm stopping here.

I can connect Bava to HK fantasy alright - just check out the climax to HERCULES AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH (IN THE HAUNTED WORLD if you live Stateside) and tell me that horde of flying zombies didn't inspire a very similar denouement that closes A CHINESE GHOST STORY; first time I saw the Hercules flick the connection seemed incontrovertible. (Granted, the Bava film dials down the kung fu action.)

Méliès to Bava...well, it would take someone with a superior knowledge of in-camera effects-work that both masters employed to draw precise links, but I think both employed the double-exposure trick, didn't they? Rolling back the film in the camera and re-exposing it again to create optical illusions - I'm pretty sure Bava did this in ERIK THE CONQUEROR to multiply up his Viking hordes on-screen into a veritable legion, simply by repositioning the same actors, refilming them on the same reel of negative and superimposing one image over the other to give the illusion of two or three times as many soldiers. I've only ever seen clips from Méliès' mini-epics, so can't offer any corresponding sequences to reinforce that parallel...but given that the French fantasist pretty much invented the art of SFX single-handed, I'm sure you'll find many concordances between the two. Glass shots, forced perspective miniatures...they're all there. (Was it LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO where Bava used a cardboard cut-out of a glowering castle to stand in for the real thing? Genius, really - indistinguishable from its three-dimensional prototype.)

Just a couple there off the top of my addled head.

Bava's special effects knowledge came from his father Eugenio, who was a contemporary of Méliès. Throughout his career, Mario utilized silent film special effects techniques -- matte paintings, glass mattes, glass shots, colored filters, miniatures, tricks with light and shadow. The incubus in SHOCK was created with double exposures and stencils.

The connection between SUPER INFRAMAN and its roots only go as far back as its source material, the Japanese superhero and anime series saturating HK television in the early 1970s -- programs like ULTRAMAN, KAMEN RIDER, MAZINGER Z, etc. The "Skeleton Ghost" foot soldiers in SUPER INFRAMAN were directly inspired by the Shocker Commandos of Toei's KAMEN RIDER series (themselves inspired by masked pro wrestlers who were popular at the time):

Thanks for your comments, everyone. I have a feeling that going into this stuff would probably get a little too complex for this assignment, and I'm probably going to save it for a future presentation. Also, it probably doesn't help that I'm not sure that anyone but me in the class has even heard of Mario Bava!

Amazon.com page for The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Apropos of Melies, the above link provides info on a new children's book, in which Melies figures somehow. It's by Brian Selznick (any relation to David O.?). I only just heard about this book from my nephew, who engineered the audiobook recording of it. My daughter works in the children's section of a local Barnes & Noble and she's heard good things about it and she's going to get me a copy. Martin Scorsese has apparently optioned it for the movies.