A compilation of eight earlier films, also from 1896, that chronicle the adventure of Rip van Winkle. Rip encounters dwarf-like mountain-dwellers, gets drunk with them and awakes after twenty years, having significantly aged.
An abridged version of the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a lazy American man who wanders off one day with his dog Wolf into the Kaatskill Mountains, where he runs into an odd group of men drinking and playing bowls. He drinks some of their mysterious brew and passes out. When he wakes up under a tree he is astonished to find that 20 years have passed and things are very different. This is a charming story about how the Revolutionary War, only in a different and more subtle way than ever told before.—Shane Rothery