The Terrible Turkish Executioner (1904)

Original title

Le Bourreau turc

Directed by

Georges Méliès

Genre

fantasy film, comedy film, silent film

Country

France

Runtime

3 min

Rating

6.2 of 10 from 28 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Turkish executioner tries to behead prisoners in a comic fantasy. Their heads keep coming off but the victims do not die. The executioner gets a surprising punishment for his troubles.

whimsicaldarkly comicplayfulsurrealfast-pacedcampyslapstickinventive

What happens

Le Bourreau turc, sold in the United States as The Terrible Turkish Executioner, or It Served Him Right and in Britain as What Befell the Turkish Executioner, is a 1903 French silent trick film by Georges Méliès. It was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 534–535 in its catalogues. Méliès himself plays the executioner in the film, one of several Méliès works involving disembodied heads. The special effects are created with substitution splices. The execution in the film emulates an effect popular for two centuries in magic lantern shows, in which severed heads or similar phenomena could be shown in motion using overlaid glass slides. In a study of Méliès, Elizabeth Ezra notes that the film "exploits the stereotype of Oriental despotism and cruelty," with the prop heads giving "a visceral immediacy closer to Tarantino's lurid (though ironic) gore than to Méliès's standard dancing Disney-style body parts." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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