Dream of a Rarebit Fiend is a 7-minute 1906 film directed by Edwin S. Porter, based on Winsor McCay's comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
A man at a restaurant makes a pig of himself gorging on Welsh rarebit
, a cheese-and-toast dish that does not include rabbit. The man staggers out of the restaurant, and soon begins to hallucinate, staggering down the street as the world spins around him, finally clinging for dear life to a lamppost. After being helped home the man collapses into bed, but then has an elaborate dream in which all his furniture marches away and devilish imps emerge from a floating Welsh rarebit chafing dish to poke at him. Finally the man's bed flies off into the sky, taking him on a wild ride over the city, before dropping him—back into bed, where he wakes up.
Tropes:
- Acid Reflux Nightmare: The man is severely impaired even before he makes it to bed, but after he falls asleep, he has a bizarre nightmare.
- All Just a Dream: Or rather All Just An Acid Reflux Nightmare, as the man's dream ends with him plunging from a weather vane into his bed. He wakes up with everything back to normal, and the film ends.
- Big Eater: The man sure does put away a lot of rarebit.
- I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: Welsh rarebit. Cheese on toast with sauce. Hits the man like a ton of bricks, sending him home reeling like a drunkard before he falls into bed and has a bizarre dream.
- Jabba Table Manners: The man makes a disgusting spectacle of himself at dinner, smearing his face with cheese and sauce, drinking sauce straight from the chafing dish with a ladle, spitting a drink across the room.
- Jump Cut: A jarring cut from the man chowing down at a restaurant table to the man staggering out the front door of the restaurant.
- Live-Action Adaptation: The original comic strip was not serialized, but rather was a series of one-off gags in which people had bizarre dreams after eating Welsh rarebit.
- Stop Trick: This effect, very common in the early motion picture era, is used to show the man's furniture disappearing.
