The World's First Horror Movie Was Made in 1896! 🎃

Before Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and every horror movie you've ever watched… there was a three-minute film from 1896. 🎬👻

In 1896, French filmmaker and magician Georges Méliès made Le Manoir du diable, released in English as The Haunted Castle. A bat flies into a castle and turns into the Devil, then ghosts, a skeleton and witches appear and vanish, all done with in-camera tricks, costumes and carefully timed cuts. Guinness World Records recognizes it as the first horror movie (Paris, December 24, 1896).

It was made to amaze and amuse, not to terrify. Then the film was lost for decades, until archivists in New Zealand identified a forgotten print that had been bought in a Christchurch junk shop. The find was announced in 1988.

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Sources: Guinness World Records (First horror movie); Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, ref. F4988; 1895 revue (AFRHC), "Trois films de Georges Méliès retrouvés en 1988" (1989); Malthête & Mannoni, L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès (2008).
Footage: Le Manoir du diable (Georges Méliès, 1896), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; only surviving print held by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (NZ). Photos: Georges Méliès c. 1890 (PD); 1896 Théâtre Robert-Houdin poster (PD, Musée Carnavalet); Lumière Cinématographe no. 101 by Benoît Prieur (CC0); Colombo Street, Christchurch, 1930s (PD, Christchurch City Libraries). Archive, archivist and junk-shop scenes are AI illustrations (labelled on screen). Music: original.