I don't know if 11 minutes are sufficient enough to do wonderful things, save a life or find happiness, therefore I can't be much stressed about seeing this nonsense experience. I won't say I wasted my time but something was wasted on the way. I couldn't feel a thing over it, not a single burst of joy or amazement, not a tear was shed. I got nothing from here except maybe, maybe some ideas about the little importance this might have had with future generations when it comes to illustrate bad trips with drugs. "La Folie du Docteur Tube" tells about a doctor making some experiments with a powerful drug. Mr. Abel Gance provides us bizarre and twisted images, everything is completely modified, blurry and enlarged followed by the psychodelics sounds of Karlheinz Stockhausen - the latter came from a remastered version released a few years ago.So, Gance was testing - just like the doctor in the movie - new ways to compose images, editing techniques and all. I'm fine with that. But where's the high purpose? Where's the entertainment or the higher knowledge? It's so empty and dull you watch this with a straight face thinking "Uh huh, so...? Oh that was it? What's the big deal?". I'm giving two stars. Why? Here's a little anecdote to connect with and a good answer to such question. A known director while making his earliest films at college asked his master, the great John Houseman, about his thoughts on his thesis film. Houseman, who had seen plenty of those that day and none of them moved him, replied to the young filmmaker: "Well, at least it didn't made me sleep". Case closed. 2/10

It’s ironic that, of Gance’s more celebrated Silent work, this should be the one I watch first: it’s a one-reel short about a mad scientist – hence its inclusion in the “Horror Challenge”, though the tone throughout is distinctly comical! The titular figure is played by Albert Dieudonne – later the incarnation of Napoleon in the director’s eponymous epic of 1927 – and who’s fitted here with an exaggerated domed head, which he finally shelters inside a cage! Even so, its raison d’etre is Gance’s use of the wide-angle lens in depicting the disorientating effect on people when subjected to a drug (in the form of dust particles) concocted by the protagonist. However, this gimmick – which actually prevents one from following what’s going on! – is kept up for an inordinate length of time: consequently, even at a mere 10 minutes, the gimmick outstays its welcome…

'La Folie du Docteur Tube' only exists to try some new techniques. The story tells of a professor in a lab inventing a weird powder that disfigures living creatures. First he tries it on an animal, then on himself and the boy that helps him. In a parallel story we see men approaching two women. The women want to fresh up before going on something like a date and they also end up covered in the professor's powder. With make-up they try to conceal their disfigurement but lucky for them the two men below the window are also covered with the powder. In the end everything turns up back to normal where they share a drink.I liked Albert Dieudonné who plays the professor. His way of acting is actually quite funny. The story itself is not interesting at all, only an excuse for director Abel Gance (who would go and make the great 'Napoléon') to use trick mirrors to distort the picture. He plays this trick too long; after a minute we understand what he wants to show us but he keeps things like that for five minutes more. I am glad to have seen it since it comes from an important figure in the cinema, but that would be about the only reason to recommend it.

I'm doing my homework for an anticipated viewing of "Napoleon" and "I Accuse" though I suppose I'll have to settle for now with bootleg versions on small screens.Toward that end, I begin with this little thing. Let me describe it. A mad scientist is working in his lab, with a black servant. The scientist is mad, and has an extreme extension to his bald head.He has invented some sort of powder that alters space when sprinkled on beings in that space. The distortions of space may have been accomplished with bent mirrors, or perhaps lenses. Its a bit perverse and ends with the doctor putting his head in a cage. This last bit is inexplicable and quite disturbing.The whole deal lasts 6 minutes or so. It seems to fold what the doctor sees as he becomes drug addled with what we see. That much is clear immediately, which is why the head in the cage is so very spooky.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.