AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

JoeytheBrit Another example of the highly colourful hand-stencilled films Pathe were putting out at the turn of the last century, this fantasy depicts the fate that awaits a butterfly collector and his two female assistants as they venture into a wood in which the butterflies are as large as vaudeville actresses in butterfly outfits. The two assistants are transformed into grasshoppers – although this being 1906, the transformation takes place off-screen – while the collector is shepherded to a sort of kangaroo butterfly court where it is decided he will receive a taste of his own medicine by being pinned to a giant cork. It's quite a busy little film, and entertaining enough on its own modest terms.

tavm Just watched this Gaston Velle silent color-stenciled short on the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection. Like his contemporary Georges Melies, Velle did fantasy movies in the early 20th century and they hold up pretty well today despite the theatrically of the pictures themselves. In this one, a butterfly collector gets a lesson in capturing the creatures for his own enjoyment when giant versions of them (actually ladies dressed in costume) impale him after previously taking his two assistants to their lair. What happens after that I'll let you find out for yourself but the whole thing is pretty entertaining in a primitive fashion and there's also some realistic looking giant grasshoppers in some scenes that provided some wonderful shocks for me. So on that note, I highly recommend The Talion Punishment (the title on the DVD I watched).

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre The single cleverest thing about this early short film is its French title, which unfortunately doesn't work nearly so well in English. 'La Peine du Talion' would translate roughly as 'The Point of Law' ... which (because of this story, involving a sharp pin) is a play on the word 'point', and which is also a pun ... because 'Peine' in French also means 'pain'. So, this film's title actually has three different meanings!We see a rather ridiculous-looking hobbyist in a grotesque set of plus-fours and matching jacket: he looks like an overfed version of Mel Brooks in a bad toupee. His hobby is butterflies: we see him carefully piercing each specimen with a pin and affixing it to his album. That is, until some enormous butterflies (played by chorus girls) put a pin through the hobbyist (at a spot just slightly north of his navel), after which the butterflies celebrate their victory.This movie is very crude even for its time ... which actually works in its favour, since the plight of the human protagonist -- impaled on an enormous pin -- is staged in such a phony-looking manner that it's funny rather than distressing. (There's no bloodshed.) However, the enormous butterflies are less impressive than some grasshopper costumes worn by the acrobats. Science-fiction historians might want to note that this is (to my knowledge) the first giant-insect movie.The movie ends happily: after giving the lepidopterist a taste of his own medicine, the butterflies release him. Vowing (in broad dumb show) never to trap an insect again, he breaks his butterfly net and flings the fragments away.This brief comedy reminded me of those EC comic books from the 1950s -- 'Tales of the Crypt' and so forth -- in which some hapless protagonist would suffer a tit-for-tat fate reflecting his own behaviour ... for instance, a space traveller who kills a daisy by playing "she loves me not" with it, plucking its petals off one by one, is captured by a botanical alien organism that proceeds to pull off his limbs in an equivalent ritual. Here, a man who pins butterflies to a sheet of paper is pinned in turn by bigger butterflies. Crude but amusing. I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10, mostly for its very clever title.