Can't imagine Halloween without Count Floyd - and here, the host of "Monster Chiller Horror Theater" introduces RUSH, the excellent progressive rock ensemble (Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, Neal Peart).
Like Count Floyd, Vincent Price is always a key Halloween ingredient!
One of our favorite Roger Corman flicks is THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, co-starring Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Boris Karloff.
When Vincent Price and Peter Lorre made a bunch of movies for Corman, it is apparent that they were trying to make each other laugh!
Between takes on THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, no doubt Boris Karloff enjoyed a nice hot cuppa joe.
Then there's the Corman adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's fever dream Masque Of The Red Death, in which I'm shocked, shocked that Vincent Price does not flat-out say "and because I'm so deliciously evil. . . "
And now for something completely different, this blogmeister is a big fan of comedienne Ana Gastayer's dead-on Martha Stewart impersonation and the following Halloween sketch.
On the topic of semi-spooky SNL sketches, it's true - we will NOT feature David S. Pumpkins this Halloween.
From SNL to stop-motion, here's THE OLD MAN & THE GOBLINS, a 1998 film by the stop-motion animators at Screen Novelties - Seamus Walsh, Chris Finnegan and Mark Caballero. It's got the Halloween spirit in a profound way. Love the tie-ins to O'Brien, Starewicz and Svankmajer.
Who made the most vividly Halloween-themed animation? Starewicz, of course!
Favorite Fleischer studio Halloween film? SWING YOU SINNERS!
Almost as cool as SWING YOU SINNERS: the 1933 Screen Song cartoon Boo, Boo, Theme Song.
Another Fleischer classic underscores the reality that if one happens to be an insect, by all means DON'T check into a hotel run by spiders! The Cobweb Hotel is also the diametric opposite of the mid-1930s trend of imitating Disney. Jack Mercer's voices, as always, are a hoot.
How can we properly finish a Happy Halloween post?
With elephants smashing pumpkins (not Billy Corgan & the Smashing Pumpkins but pachyderms) at the Oregon Zoo, that's how!
First and foremost, let's plug some cool screenings.
It's no surprise to readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that we're big fans of Halloween cartoons and Frankenstein (both young and not-so-young).
A Sunday matinee selection of spooky stop-motion madness in GLORIOUS 16mm, Peculiar Puppets vol. VII, shall be the order of the day tomorrow at Roxy Cinema NYC tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m. EST.
The press release elaborates:
Roxy Cinema hereby presents a seventh retrospective screening featuring various peculiar examples of puppet films from the 1930s through the 1950s+.
This particular showcase features spooky subjects in celebration of the Halloween season. Warning: You may find some of the offerings to be rather creepy, possibly unsettling, and even potentially controversial!
This event is programmed by early animation archivist and historian Tommy José Stathes, and prints are hand-selected from his personal 16mm film archive. Film presentation will be followed by a live Q&A session with Stathes.
Ten days later on October 30, there shall be a Halloween cartoon program at Manhattan's Metrograph on 7 Ludlow Street. Showtime is 5:15pm. NYC aficionados of vintage animation and classic movies, check these Cartoon Carnival shows out!
Also of note: October 20 is National Chicken & Waffles Day.
Not DON & WAFFLES Day, but National Chicken & Waffles Day!
One way to start celebrating National Chicken & Waffles Day is to watch the following cheesy commercial from the even cheesier early 1970's. This one's cheesy enough to be MST-3K worthy.
Since we did not include Jay Ward ads in recent posts featuring a slew of animated TV commercials, here are two excellent ads for Aunt Jemima Frozen Waffles featuring our breakfast pals, Professor Goody and Wallace The Waffle Whiffer.
The best Chicken + Waffles combo this writer/waffle enthusiast has sampled was at a long-gone but incredible restaurant (the name of which utterly escapes me) in Oakland, CA. The food was outstanding!
That said, the famous Chicken & Waffles chain remains Roscoe's in L.A.
Not surprisingly, there are numerous videos on YouTube about how to prepare chicken & waffles.
There are more chicken & waffle recipes on YouTube than one can actually watch or eat in a reasonable time frame.
Our favorite is invariably Alton Brown, here with the chefs of Cutthroat Kitchen.
First and foremost, it's Tea Time with Ted Eshbaugh, who spun off the glum gloomy gus guys from The Sunshine Makers for this industrial film extolling the virtues of a cuppa hot tea.
Seared into my consciousness as well as the very souls of numerous individuals in my age group: the following much televised Chef Boy Ar Dee spot for Beefaroni and Beef-o-getti.
Levis produced these early 1970's time capsule ads, designed with psychedelic style by Chris Blum.
The following Levis commercial would go perfectly with that advertising film Johnny Carson made plugging his clothing line.
The Simpsons, not surprisingly, starred in commercials. . . LOTS of commercials.
As The Simpsons and Ren & Stimpy were going great guns at the same time, that brings to mind the following question. . . Did Spümcø and John K make commercials? Yes - here are two very good ads Spümcø produced for OLD NAVY.
One source of fantastic stop-motion commercials is the Dutch Animation Project. This masterpiece for White Horse Whiskey would be this scribe's pick for the coolest ad ever.
LOVE this Quaker Oats commercial by Joop Geesink's Dollywood studio.
On Cartoon Research on a Thunderbean Thursday, Steve Stanchield posted the following trio of humdinger animated commercials mastered from 35mm, including a BRYLCREEM ad animated by Fleischer Studio stalwart Bill Sturm (who I did not know worked with stop-motion) and one for motor oil by Ub Iwerks' Animated Cartoon Films studio.
Closing today's post: a selection of pretty darn spectacular ads by the ridiculously talented Canadian-British director, educator, animator, draftsman/illustrator supreme, voice actor and Who Framed Roger Rabbit contributor Richard Williams (1933-2019) of The Thief And The Cobbler fame.
Today, the spotlight's on "pixillated" content, since last weekend's post plugged Cartoon Carnival, which is presenting a stop-motion show, Peculiar Puppets vol. IV at NYC's Roxy Cinema tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m. EST.
Kicking a very animated Stop-Motion Saturday off: a documentary about the incredible Willis O' Brien (1886-1962), the prehistoric world-creating genius behind The Lost World, King Kong and Mighty Joe Young - and the animation genius who inspired Bob Clampett to make cartoons.
Follow that by delving deeply into a Willis O' Brien playlist and then watching this piece on the great artist O'Brien mentored, Ray Harryhausen.
LOVED seeing The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason & The Argonauts on the big screen!
The new Blu-ray set of Harryhausen classics is a keeper.
Like director and dyed-in-the-wool animation buff Joe Dante, we're big fans of George Pal.
The stop-motion fans at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are especially fond of the George Pal Puppetoons.
Love the 1930's Puppetoons produced in Holland (often as advertising films promoting Philips high fidelity audio products), followed by the series made in America for Paramount Pictures in the 1940's.
The George Pal Puppetoons have been restored, thankfully.
The Puppetoon Blu-rays get our highest recommendation.
Of the restored Puppetoons, especially like volume #3.
There's very cool stop-motion animation on YouTube.
In particular, the Dutch Vintage Animation YouTube channel is quite a treasure trove, including a bunch of classic films by the brilliant Joop Geesink.
How can one follow such blazing stop-motion genius? By watching more blazing stop-motion genius by delving deeply into the incredible work of entymologist turned filmmaker Wladislaw Starewicz (1882-1965).
Hope to see such outstanding Wladislaw Starewicz films as The Magical Clock released on Blu-ray in the United States.
The Starewicz family and Doriane Films have made a few of these terrific films available in Europe.
Could the great-grandchildren of Wladislaw and grandchildren of Irina Vladislavovna Starewicz please, pretty please, travel to the U.S. and remind us dumb American classic movie buffs of the stop-motion animator's greatness and present a retrospective on Turner Classic Movies while you're at it?
Wladislaw a.k.a. Ladislaw Starewicz, Ladislas Starevitch, Ladislaw Starevitch and Ladislaw Starewitch created astonishing cinematic works, first in Russia, then for decades in Paris.
Wladislaw and Irina Vladislavovna Starewicz produced exceptional stop-motion films from 1912 through the end of the 1950's.
When someone innocently asks this blogger, Paul F. Etcheverry (A.K.A. Psychotronic Paul), "what's your favorite film?" one response that always gets the conversational ball rolling is, "that love triangle tale in which all the characters are dead insects - LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!"
We dig the 1922 Wladislaw and Irina Vladislavovna Starewicz gem FROGLAND the most!
The Starewicz masterpiece The Mascot packs more startling and surreal imagery into its 33 minute length than can be found in 140+ minute feature films.
How do we finish a stop-motion Saturday? With the ridiculously talented filmmaker, animator, director, special effects innovator and movie comedian Charley Bowers.
Known to the French (very enthusiastic fans of his films) as "Bricolo," Mr. Bowers began his cinematic career in the teens as producer for the Barré-Bowers Studio (Mutt & Jeff cartoons), a decade before he starred in the Bowers Novelty Comedies, a series that blended stop-motion animation with live-action slapstick.
Charley Bowers remains our favorite eccentric inventor in the history of motion pictures! Within that eccentric inventor persona, Bowers merges Buster Keaton's understated style with elements of the equally unconventional and imaginative silent movie comedian Harry Langdon.
After Bowers' starring 2-reeler series for FBO and Educational Pictures (a.k.a. "The Spice Of The Program") ended in 1928, he did make a successful transition into talkies and continued producing highly original (and way-out) stop-motion animation showcases.
The last stop-motion films by Charley Bowers and frequent collaborator Harold Muller were produced in the late 1930's and early 1940's.
One, Wild Oysters, appeared as part of the otherwise undistinguished Animated Antics series released by Paramount Pictures in 1940-1941. Am hard pressed to think of another cartoon that features crustaceans not only as main characters, but as bad guys!
It's likely that the usual suspects at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are finished - at least for the moment - overworking all the superlatives available in the English language when discussing such filmmaking innovators as Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, George Pal, Joop Geesink, Wladislaw & Irina Vladislavovna Starewicz and Charley Bowers.
Well, it's Thanksgiving (and the start of hearing godawful holday season music everywhere) yet again!
Thanksgiving means turkey songs!
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog posts the same Thanksgiving turkey cartoons every year. Alas, we have no plans to stop that practice anytime soon!
We'll start, not surprisingly, with an inexplicably odd one from the oddest and most inexplicable of all cartoon studios, Screen Gems. I personally get a big kick out of these cartoons but can certainly imagine the likes of Sid Marcus and Cal Howard pondering "what weird bit can we do to vex audiences now?"
There are a bunch of Warner Bros cartoons about Thanksgiving and turkeys. We've posted several repeatedly over the years. As fervent Daffy Duck fans, we note that at least two of the very best Thanksgiving cartoons feature the wacky fowl.
While it's tough to pick one favorite Thanksgiving-themed cartoon, the following ranks high on the list.
It's directed by Art Davis and stars a diabolical but not-too-bright Daffy Duck who becomes Tom Turkey's personal trainer, while devouring food in mass quantities.
Hugh Harman made a pleasing cartoon for MGM starring an all-turkey ensemble patterned on Borrah Minnevich & His Harmonica Rascals. Seems like I post this one every year!
Happy Thanksgiving! Keep calm and watch cartoons before and after the courses (and between football games)!
And, along with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, tomorrow's Turkey Day entertainment shall include George Pal Puppetoons!
Been watching Puppetoons volume 1 and eagerly await the latest volume (#3) on Blu-ray.
Today, in between remembering many folks we love who have left us - the latest being singer/songwriter/bandleader/guitarist and activist Sinead O' Connor, silent movie accompanist and conductor Sir Carl Davis (who we saw accompany Abel Gance's NAPOLEON), Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman) and ace Walt Disney Studios expert, author and historian Jim Korkis - and reading the latest indictment, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog seeks refuge in very odd classic movies. First and foremost, there's the indescribable love triangle noir melodrama Desert Fury. . . IN COLOR!
None other than Eddie Muller introduces this oddest of noirs at the 2016 Seattle Noir City fest.
Don't know who directed the following short subject starring beloved comedian, actor and cartoon voice guru Billy Bletcher getting chased around by a lobster. Who cares - we love it!
Always liked such experimental films of New Zealand sculptor-painter and sometimes animator Len Lye as Rainbow Dance, Colour Box and Trade Tattoo, and was thrilled to see he made a stop-motion animation short back in 1933.
The last time this blog posted something by the incomparable genius of stop-motion animation Ladislaw Starewicz, his family contacted me to mention that the films are under copyright.
While not knowing if the European copyrights hold for U.S. bloggers or not, promptly took 'em down. So here's a brief 5 minute clip from one notable Starewicz masterpiece; if the great artist's descendents want me to subsequently delete it, that's okay. Alas, I have given up all hope of ever seeing a 35mm print (let alone a nitrate original) on the big screen of any films by the incomparable Ladislaw and Irina Vladislavovna Starewicz; please, Starewicz family, come to the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museun and prove me wrong!
Recently ordered the Stop-Motion Marvels Blu-rays from Thunderbean Animation, so such otherworldly and bizarre cartoons as the following produced by Kinex will be waiting!
This blogger's tombstone no doubt will say "he liked bad cartoons for some reason," along with "WAY too much in moderation" and "didn't follow orders," so here's MOTHER HUBBA-HUBBA HUBBARD, a zany and definitely bizarre cartoon from the hated and despised Screen Gems studio. Do I find it funny, very funny? Yes - absolutely. Do I know why? NO! Does anybody else, including those who made the cartoon, like it? Probably not.
Watching this, wonder if it was a product of Bob Clampett's cup of coffee at the then-unraveling Screen Gems studio. That opening animation with the dog (starting at 0:22) sure looks like something Bob would have done at Warner Brothers with wacky Rod Scribner as "featured soloist." I'll still take this and most of the other Columbia cartoons (sans - ouch - A BOY, A GUN & BIRDS and the horrible Lil' Abner series) over a 1951 Famous Studios opus 365 days a year.
And, while speaking of Famous Studios, this begs the question who made our favorite bizarre classic cartoons of all-time. Well, that would be many of the same artists who made Noveltoons and Little Audrey cartoons in the 1950's, but 25 years earlier!
Way back in the 1920's, long before other studios recruited them, these super-talented animators were cranking out frequently brilliant (and bizarre) cartoons at the NYC studio of Max & Dave Fleischer.
Behold - KOKO'S EARTH CONTROL! The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, as always, are suckers for The Inkwell Imps and Out Of The Inkwell!
This Sunday, we're jet-lagged yet undaunted - and thinking of many things, especially the bad news about untimely passing of classic film enthusiast, archivist, presenter-curator-showman, historian and teacher Dennis Nyback two weeks ago. Literally just heard about this as I was waiting at the gate in Terminal 5 at JFK and going through my e-mails on the laptop in the hour before boarding.
The intrepid gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has nothing but respect and admiration for how the even more intrepid Dennis quite literally took inventive, entertaining programs of classic movies in glorious 35mm and 16mm all over the world.
We pay tribute to Dennis, a friend of both this blog and the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival as well as a super nice guy, with a post full of imaginative and cinematic stop-motion goodness, courtesy of the one, the only Charley Bowers (June 6, 1887 – November 26, 1946).
So, this Sunday, October 16, 2022, we respectfully tip our vintage Max Linder top hats to champion of classic movies Dennis Nyback and champion of animation Charley Bowers.
Charley Bowers is among the most idiosyncratic and relentlessly inventive figures from the history of cinema and animation.
This writer first became aware of Charley Bowers when Louise Beaudet of the Cinémathèque québécoise (and, later, the Cinémathèque Francaise) brought a devastatingly wonderful retrospective to the United States. It was screened at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive, among other venues, in 1984 - and I was there!
The considerable exploits as an animator, cartoonist, journalist, silent movie comedian, stop-motion innovator and children's book author accomplished by Charley Bowers make many of us classic movie and animation buffs wish we could time-travel and land some interviews with him way back when. As Mr. Bowers passed in 1946, such historians as Michael Barrier, Milt Gray, Mark Kausler, John Canemaker, Leonard Maltin, Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald did not get to interview him.
It would be an understatement to note that the Charley Bowers Blu-ray is a must for any film buff's collection.
The producer of this set, Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films, has been an enthusiastic champion of Bowers' stop-motion animation.
Leonard Maltin penned a rave review of the Bowers Blu-ray on his website.
Bowers' unique approach combines the silent 2-reeler format and sight gag comedy conventions we associate especially with Buster Keaton with way-out animation. As the wacky Vitagraph comedy shorts starring early 1920's "king of prop comedy," the equally cartoony Larry Semon, found an audience decades after their original theatrical release on Italian television as Ridolini, the films of Charley Bowers enjoyed new fame and acclaim in France, starring the comedian-animator as Bricolo.
In some Bowers Comedies, he plays a tall tale teller who can top all the other tall tale tellers with his outrageous stories.
In other Bowers Comedies, he plays an eccentric inventor to the hilt.
Within that eccentric inventor persona, Bowers merges Buster Keaton's understated style with elements of the equally unconventional silent movie comedian Harry Langdon.
Although Bowers' starring 2-reeler series with FBO and Educational Pictures had ended in 1928, he did make a successful transition into talkies and continue producing the most original (and way-out) stop-motion animation showcases.
The last stop-motion pieces by Bowers were produced in the late 1930's and early 1940's.
One, WILD OYSTERS, appeared as part of the otherwise undistinguished Animated Antics series released by Paramount Pictcures in 1940-1941. Am hard pressed to think of another cartoon that features crustaceans not only as main characters, but as bad guys!
A documentary about the career of clay animation guru Will Vinton, which made its premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, is now making its way to college screenings and indie theaters.
Released last weekend and now playing in NYC, L.A. and Portland, this film by Marq Evans covers the 30 year clay-cinematic career, the rise and fall of the stop-motion innovator, best known for The California Raisins.
The successors to the often wonderful 1950’s clay animation of Art Clokey and the predecessors of our favorites, the stop-motion mastery of Nick Park, Peter Lord and others at Aardman Animations - the claymation films were tremendously popular.
By the mid-1970's, Will Vinton Productions proved quite ubiquitous in the 16mm animation programs sought out by aficionados of the art form. There were documentaries on claymation produced as early as the late 1970's.
Many of us who started schlepping 16mm projectors around to university screening rooms, tiny art-house/repertory cinema spaces, as well as the homes of our fellow animation and stop-motion enthusiast friends back in the 1970's pre-VHS days to watch MOVIES ON FILM remember the Will Vinton Studio’s work fondly. The film that introduced this writer and many other film buffs to clay-mation was CLOSED MONDAYS by Will Vinton and fellow stop-motion animator (as well as the inventor of the clay-mation technique), Bob Gardiner.
CLOSED MONDAYS won the Oscar for best short subject in 1975.
Vinton and Gardiner followed this one with MOUNTAIN MUSIC, which makes one wonder if one animator at the studio was playing acoustic folk music at work, while the other was listening to Black Sabbath.
Favorite Will Vinton production? Hands-down, it's Super Seinfeld!
The Will Vinton Studio made so many noteworthy films from the 1970's through the mid-1990's, it's tough to know where to start or stop.
The documentary's Claydream press release elaborates: Structured around interviews with this charismatic pioneer and his close collaborators, the film charts the rise and fall of the Oscar® and Emmy® winning Will Vinton Studios. It’s an astonishing journey, rich with nostalgia and anchored by a treasure trove of clips from Vinton’s life’s work.
Documentarian Marq Evans (The Glamour and the Squalor, 2016) brings to life the battle between art and commerce, while inviting us to fall in love with his subject, making this an affectionate, insightful portrait of an artist who put so much of himself into his craft."
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog were actually not aware that Laika, the production company which produced Coraline and other stop-motion films we like a great deal, actually was the former Will Vinton Studio, lost after prolonged legal battles to the owners of Nike, the Knights.
Will Vinton passed in 2018, but not without leaving behind a memorable 4-decade legacy in short films, features, television shows - and some of the best animated commercials!
Have not seen Claydream yet, but look forward to at least two viewings, start-to-finish, soon.
On the topic of stop-motion filmmakers, Aardman Animations, George Pal, Joop Geesink, Charley Bowers, Willis O' Brien, Ray Harryhausen and Emile Cohl have all to some extent been covered here, although words frequently escape this writer to begin to describe their blazing genius. In all these years of blogging, one stop-motion master we somehow haven't covered is Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, stop-motion animation's answer to the surrealists.
The Quay Brothers are so much the artistic and spiritual descendents of Švankmajer (and the surrealists) that they produced a homage titled The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer.
Like the Jan Švankmajer films, this could be seen as a homage to Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.
And, speaking of artistic and spiritual descendents, both Jan Švankmajer and the Quay brothers would very likely mention that among their key inspirations in the stop-motion field was the one, the only Wladislaw Starewicz.
A.K.A. Ladislaw Starewicz, Ladislas Starevitch, Ladislaw Starevitch and Ladislaw Starewitch, he created astonishing works and could be considered in a three-way tie with Cohl and Bowers as the most innovative of the early stop-motion animators.
While Starewicz films can be difficult to find on Blu-ray and DVD, the following DVD can still be ordered via Amazon.com. This Starewicz compilation is an astonishing compendium of stop-motion brilliance.
The Mascot packs more startling imagery into its 33 minute length than can be found in 140 minute feature films.
Another stop-motion master is the great filmmaker Henry Selick, responsible for several of our favorite movies.
First became aware of his work via a couple of independent short subjects featured in Tournee of Animation programs back in the late 1980's - early 1990's.
A year or two later, was utterly bowled over by the first feature film packed with Henry Selick's signature stop-motion, The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The Nightmare Before Christmas was followed by another compelling and enjoyable feature, James & The Giant Peach. Both were in many respects departures for Disney at that point riding high from Beauty and The Beast and Aladdin.
The 2009 film Coraline, preferably seen at the movies in glorious 70mm (or 35mm), or at least on Blu-ray on a big screen HDTV, is a particularly outstanding synthesis of stop-motion animation and CGI.
Read about a Henry Selick feature titled The Shadow King, which Disney and Laika opted not to release and eventually would be distributed by K5 International. Don't know the "who what when where why" behind just what happened with the film - or how accurate the following video is regarding what happened. Since Henry Selick specializes in unorthodox, unusual and unconventionally beautiful films which do not fall into formula or practice "sequel-itis," it's clear how difficulties with studios and distributors could occur.
There will soon be a new Selick film, Wendell and Wild, featuring voice work by Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, two actors comedy geeks know quite well from their very funny and appropriately named television series Key and Peele (and, before that, Mad TV).
