An Over-Incubated Baby
“An up to date idea and a great picture.”
About An Over-Incubated Baby
Professor Bakem shows a mother his new baby incubator. She leaves the child with him. He puts it in the machine and lights an alcohol lamp underneath. The lamp runs too hot. When he opens the lid, the baby is about two feet taller, with long hair and a full beard. The mother is furious.
Cast & crew
More about An Over-Incubated Baby
Walter R. Booth directed the trick comedy for producer Robert W. Paul in 1901. The growth is a substitution cut in a single setup. An Edison catalogue sold the picture in the United States and supplied the line used here as the tagline.
Themes
Making
Booth and Paul made a run of trick films in 1901. This one stays in the professor's laboratory and changes the baby with a splice.
Reviews
Michael Brooke, writing for BFI Screenonline, called the idea imaginative and the execution one of the simpler Booth-Paul tricks of 1901, built on jump cuts.
Technique
A substitution splice turns the infant into a bearded child while the camera stays on one laboratory setup.
Preservation
A print survives and is on BFI Screenonline.
Notes
- The film is also called The Wonderful Baby Incubator.
- Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline calls it one of the less elaborate Booth and Paul films of 1901, and says the idea was strong enough that it did not need more than basic jump-cut changes.
- The same Screenonline note ranks it among the most original trick films Booth and Paul made that year.
- The beard and the long hair are a wig and stage makeup, swapped in on the cut.
Scenes
- Bakem lights an alcohol lamp under the incubator.
- The lid opens on a child with long hair and a full beard, and the mother turns on him.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Over-Incubated Baby (1901) - yt.webm)
