Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906)

A short, silent film starring John P. Brawn as the titular fiend, who having gorged himself on Welsh Rarebit — melted cheese on toast — stumbles to bed via a rather hallucinatory encounter with a lamp post and falls into a troubled sleep. Inaugurated by a trio of pickaxe-wielding demons, his subsequent cheese-fuelled dream involves an inelegant flight through his window and over an urban nightscape, finally ending with a skewering by his pyjamas on a weather vane. The film features some pioneering special effects including a fully spinning sky and the aforementioned demons. The sequence is based on a comic strip by Winsor McCay, alias “Silas”. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was McCay’s longest running comic, totalling over 300 episodes more than his better known Little Nemo. More here: