Sunday, January 18, 2015

Festival of Bad Animation, Part 1: Don't Eat the Mushrooms in Oz



What a strange labyrinth is YouTube. I often find stuff I haven't seen since I was preverbal. It strikes me very strangely now. Perhaps cartoons were my first language.

This one, though, Jesus Christ, who let this out of the bag? And WHAT is it, anyway - why can't  I find any information on it? It isn't just the bizarre non-animation, it's the disjointedness of it in general, the way songs inexplicably burst forth out of nowhere. And the creepiness, probably unintentional. It gives me the impression of an outline or rough draft, perhaps a trial balloon for some ambitious project involving actual animation. But even that would have to make a modicum of sense. This is just a truncated chunk of story, starting in the middle and ending a little further along in the middle. 

Perhaps this was shown at Masonic retreats, or at Shriners conventions before they brought on the dancing girls covered in whipped cream.



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Festival of Bad Animation, Part 2: The Completely Bizarre Adventures of Hercules




Do you-all remember those godawful Mighty Hercules cartoons ground out by Trans-Lux in the early 1960s? Believe me when I say that they'll look like Fantasia beside this strange thing. I can't figure it out, don't know what the story is supposed to be. The animation appears to be construction-paper shapes moved along by an invisible hand, or maybe there's a magnet on the back. It's all so unexplained. I want to know more, but in a funny sort of a way, I don't.



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Festival of Bad Animation, Part 3: Who the Hell is Paddy the Pelican?








I don't know why this is, but I keep on dredging up stuff on YouTube, animated things that are just inexplicable. They are so primitive that they hardly qualify as animation, and in this case the lines barely stay on the screen but seem in constant danger of falling off. I see lots of plagiarism of Disney's Big Bad Wolf, not to mention a generous dose of Heckle and Jeckle. It seems every animator from these old cartoons "started with Disney", working for slave wages in Uncle Walt's sweat shop as a kind of badge of honour. I don't think this guy ever got out of his basement. Disney, my ass! He should be making those flip books, I mean the ones drawn on pads of paper, not all this computer nonsense. But there IS something outstanding about Paddy the Pelican: the theme song. The words, in particular, have come to haunt me day and night.

(I can't seem to get rid of the dud video at the top of this, and don't want to make a new post - lazy - so watch this one - or don't. Ha, ha, ha, ha-ha HA hah haaaaa.)




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