This short silent film is part of the DVD collection entitled "The Magic of Méliès" and is the fourth volume of THE MOVIES BEGIN series from Kino Video. Unlike copies of Méliès' films that are posted on the internet, the prints for these short films are exceptionally crisp and clean and feature (with the exception of this film) wonderful musical scores. Oddly, though, is that aside from a few films such as THE BLACK IMP and THE IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE, most of the shorts chosen for this DVD are actually not among the best of Méliès' films--having a strong tendency to show is "stagy" material as opposed to the films that have elaborate sets and plots. In particular, my favorites such as BARBE-BLEUE and LE VOYAGE DANS LE LUNE (his most famous film) are not on this DVD.
This particular short is kind of cute and it's about a cook who is being terrorized by little imps created by an angry sorcerer. The sorcerer sicks these mischievous creatures on the poor cook and they make his life miserable--with lots of slapstick jumping and falling and chasing. Not exactly deep stuff and far from his best, this is still an interesting and entertaining film after more than 100 years.