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Here's The Oldest Film Showing NYC Being Destroyed By A Monster
By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 6, 2015
Modified Mar 6, 2015
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 6, 2015
Modified Mar 6, 2015
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Cartoonist Winsor McCay had an early 1900s comic strip called "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend," which was always about a strange dream or nightmare a character (never recurring) would have after eating Welsh rarebit for dinner. The strip started out in the Evening Telegram (published by the New York Herald), but sometime around 1911 McCay started to work with animated film, and brought the characters of these strips to life via that medium.
In 1921 he released an animated short called The Pet, which shows a dog transforming into a giant creature who stomps and eats his way through New York City.
"It consumes its milk, the house cat, the house's furnishings, rat poison, and passing vehicles, including airplanes and a blimp, while growing larger and larger. As it makes wanders among the skyscrapers of the city a swarm of airplanes and zeppelins gather to bomb the beast."
These days we're used to seeing this kind of entertaining destructoporn on the big screen, but The Pet has been called "the first-ever 'giant monster attacking a city' motion picture ever made."
The McCays lived in both Manhattan and Brooklyn (Sheepshead Bay) during their lives, and it seems like there may be a little bit of both portrayed in this video. The destruction begins around the 9:10 mark:
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Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
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winsor mccay
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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