While doing background research on The Beetle, I discovered tons of sites that included information on early motion pictures. Many of them mentioned The Beetle, a British film from 1919. Curiously, not even stills from this classic are to be found anywhere, while other films from this era such as Nosferatu (1922), Frankenstein (1910), or Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1920) have stood the test of time and are regarded as some of the best silent films of all time. I wonder if the fact this movie was never as popular as the others is why we don’t hear so much about the novel? After all, it was more popular than Dracula when the two horror novels had been released. All of us grow up hearing about other early monsters (Frankestein, Dracula, Hyde) that had established their dominance on the silver screen well before our time but rarely do we hear about Richard Marsh’s creation. Would The Beetle novel be just as popular as these other monsters if the film was more popular?
I also kept on seeing results for The Golden Beetle (1907) which was one of the first ‘colorized’ films (each frame was hand painted in post-production). The Beetle brought up the ideals of the New Woman, so I loved how in this film a badass lady beetle captures a man and destroys him.
Your visuals for this weeks entries are fantastic! I do agree and think if the novel was more popular the movie would be too. What I don’t quite understand is why at that time the novel wasn’t popular. In my opinion I liked this book more than the book Frankenstein. So why isn’t this equally up there with the rest?
Hi Calista,
I really enjoyed your entry this week. I especially loved your findings of the Golden Beetle. First of all, I can’t imagine hand painting each of those scenes post-production. What a time-consuming and strenuous task, but I can see that it paid off because the colors are beautiful in the scene you have added to your page. I also find it interesting that this seems to be a movie that empowers women, as you mentioned the “new woman.” This is really interesting to me because the novel the Beetle treats women as the “other” if they stray too far from social expectations.