Madame Tutli-Putli, crafted by Clyde Henry Productions in association with the NFB, is a short animated film I’ve been anticipating for quite some time. It’s the first instance I’ve come across of someone deliberately using the “uncanny valley” of realistic animation for the purposes of establishing an unsettling mood. What sold me was this statement, made by co-director Maciek Szczerbowski in one of the numerous interviews available on the site.

“When the train starts going very fast, you’re quite happy because you’re going to get there on time if not earlier. There’s nothing scary about a train going fast. What’s paradoxically very scary is the train actually being stopped in the middle of the night. Nowhere. And you look out the window and you just see 100 km of nothing until the horizon, and the other way as well. And that’s the kind of thing we discovered was actually the real fear of being on the night train.”

What other macabre images inspire Clyde Henry Productions?

Attached is a photo that we came across recently while doing research on an upcoming project, The White Circus, a fantastical war story we are in the process of writing. The picture shows a World War I battlefield, with earth, wire, clothing, and a German corpse blending into a macabre, yet oddly beautiful pallete of grays; a singular landscape broken only by bare white teeth.

James Farr is the evil mastermind behind the incredibly popular cartoon serial Xombie, which is quickly becoming an industry onto itself with spin-offs including an illustrated novel, a comic series currently available from Devil’s Due Publishing and a feature film in the works. What scares you, James Farr?

The Shining. Yes, it’s a ridiculously obvious choice. Although I can’t honestly remember being scared by any other film quite so much. Aside from the seemingly random yet masterfully placed flashes of dead children, angry bathroom ghosts and blood that could ride elevators, the overall atmosphere was consistently chilling. The same feeling you get being alone in a giant, empty house, or traversing the halls of a strange hotel late at night - The Shining was able to maintain that basic, profound sense of unease for the entirety of the film.

Also, I think we all know it’s only a matter of time until Jack Nicholson comes to kill us with an axe.

Online video service Guba has nearly four dozen Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons available, from Boo Bop to Spook and Span and all points in-between. I was always more of a fan of the Harvey comics than the cartoons, which makes the fact that I immediately recognized all five random cartoons I checked out just a little disturbing.

Link courtesy of the always entertaining Monsterama.

I just received a press release for a thriller called Deadly Suspicion. One part of the description caught my eye.

It’s not long before Heather discovers a fearful but manipulative matriarch and a house full of family skeletons that may prove deadly.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, just once, they really were skeletons? And not just ordinary skeletons, but magical reanimated skeletons, like in Jason and the Argonauts? How cool would that be? You could write copy just like the above, no one would see it coming, and the unsuspecting audience would flip the fuck out.

Jay, let’s get on this!

A few days ago My New Plaid Pants posted a link to an MP3 of Fiona Apple covering Sally’s Song from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Supposedly this is a 2-disc set was produced to coincide with the 3-D rerelease of the film, with the first disc being comprised of the original soundtrack and the second including five covers from various bands and assorted demos by Danny Elfman. Another track that’s popped up early is Marilyn Manson’s version of This Is Halloween, available at Deaf Indie Elephants.

Many of the most frightening moments encountered in arts and entertainment come from the most unexpected places. One of the numerous things to have inadvertently scarred me as a child was an episode of The Smurfs. When Lazy Smurf gets bitten on the tail by a purple bug, he becomes purple, aggressive and starts biting his fellow Smurfs on the tail as well. Soon the contagion has spread throughout the Mushroom Village, with a handful of survivors fighting off the horde. Sound familiar? Watch the entire segment above. GNAPP!

How did this one sneak by? I knew legendary pop culture documentarian Ron Mann was filming a “Big Daddy” Roth film, but I had no idea it was being released so soon. If you don’t dig yet, lay your orbs on this interview with Ron Mann.

There was a shift in culture in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Roth was like Wolfman Jack or Mad magazine; he was someone who put a message out into the culture. That message was that it was okay to be weird. That being weird was cool. I personally liked Roth’s shirts and graphics because my parents hated them—those Basil Wolverton-esque monsters were great. When you were a kid you wanted to wear a T-shirt with Rat Fink on it and build those models.

Tales of a Rat Fink is playing the festival circuit right now, but Varsity Cinema in Toronto has it for a week-long engagement, right now. Lucky bastards.

Rated F for Finks everywhere.

While deciding on the best way to approach their latest video, The Killers jokingly considered Tim Burton. One thing led to another, Tim Burton agreed to their request, and he’s currently working on the creation of the video for their single “Bones”.

Burton shot the Killers’ performance on August 17-18 in Los Angeles, and according to their label, Island Records, he and a team of animators are now hard at work in London, creating an entire town and cast of characters that inhabit it. While additional details are scarce, the Killers say the clip features plenty of nods to Burton’s big-screen roots — including models, miniature sets and, of course, skeletons — but with a decidedly Vegas twist.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have a special place in my heart for stop-motion animation. It seemed tough and go for awhile there, so it’s nice that this form of animation is getting the resurgence it deserves.

Found via Dark Horizons.

As I’ve hinted now and again, I am an animator by trade. While it may seem as if my days are filled with nightmares, exploitation and pornography, the truth is that the majority of my time is spent with gentler souls. Sometimes, however, the two intersect, and in honour of Warner Bros. animation director Isadore “Friz” Freleng’s 100th birthday I would like to discuss a few of those moments. Freleng’s career spanned the entirety of the Warner Bros. studio, even before and after it was Warner Bros. (don’t ask). He was the elder animator at the studio when the young turks like Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin and Bob Clampett came in, giving them a foundation from which they could push against and innovate. It’s entirely possible that without Friz there would have been no Warner Bros. cartoons, or at least there wouldn’t be any as we recognize them today.

It’s been speculated that the reason Freleng has been somewhat neglected by the general public over the years has been because his Warner Bros. isn’t as iconic as other directors he worked with. I suspect that in truth it was his reserved, gentle demeanour and unwillingness to agressively promote himself that may have been the cause of this oversight.

And it’s that personality trait that brings us to the reason why I’m writing about him here, on a horror site. While there were other directors who created spooky Warner Bros. cartoons, none were as adamant as Freleng. Actually, that’s only partly true. Freleng was even more specific in his obsession with horror, as he was the only director at the studio to adapt Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde not just once, but three times in the films Dr. Jerkyl’s Hide, Hyde and Go Tweet and Hyde and Hare. And while it may seem out of sorts for the studio’s finest creator of vaudeville and musical-inspired mayhem to place an axe in the hands of an animated madman, it actually makes complete sense. Who else but the studio’s most repressed craftsman would distort some of the world’s most beloved characters in ways that even the mavericks of Warner Bros. animation wouldn’t dare.

As I’ve already mentioned, these aren’t the first times that Warner Bros. cartoon creations have been menaced by horrific forces. The difference is that in each of these shorts we see such iconic Warner Bros. characters as Tweety, Sylvester and Bugs not only threatened, but undergo monstrous transformations which make them threatening themselves. This is Freleng trading on the good will and affection of his audience by creating grotesque mockeries of characters beloved by generations, even then. Despite the gags, this subversion of our expectations is discomforting, almost as if the hundreds of cartoon shorts that came before were just a slow burn that led up to this moment. Surprise!

This has been my contribution to the Friz Freleng Blog-A-Thon. If you’re interested in reading more about Freleng, please check out the other contributions. And happy birthday, Friz!

“Trapezoid’s kisses burn.”

I caught the premiere episode of the previously mentioned stop-motion cartoon What It’s Like Being Alone on CBC last night. The show is of the cutesy gothic variety exemplified in Slave Labor Graphics titles like Lenore and Gloomcookie and the animated ouvre of Tim Burton. It revolves around a group of freakish orphans, including a pint-sized version of the Creature From The Black Lagoon, a child who is constantly aflame, a cyclops kid with no mouth, a two-headed baby and many more, as they attempt to find a way to escape their orphange.

As I’ve said before, I’m a huge fan of stop-motion animation. I love the how tactile and improvisational it appears. What It’s Like Being Alone has some wonderfully subtle acting, with most of the best gags being visual in nature. There’s one little bit with a worm and a creature in the rafters, and another with some dead bunnies, that lend the show the little details that make it just watchable. However, nearly everything else falls short.

One of the main problems with the show was that there were, as I’ve already mentioned, far too many characters competing for airtime, with the result being that I had forgotten about nearly half of them by the show’s end. In addition, What It’s Like Being Alone seems to be covering too many comedy bases, with an overabundance of fart jokes ruining what little quirky charm manages to be conveyed. By far the worst offence in the show is the grating voice acting for many of the characters. Special mention has to be made for the main character of this episode, Princess Lucy, who is so incredibly annoying that I was hoping the rest of the characters would feed her to the lake monster.

As someone who is all too aware that sometimes a show needs a few episodes to work the kinks out, and who was impressed by the concept, setting, character design and animation, I’m willing to give it another shot. I’d certainly like to see more of Aldous, Seymour Talkless, Armie and the rest of the gang, but if they’re going to be hanging out with bad apples like Princess Lucy, maybe they’re better off being left alone.

The crew at Lion in Zion have crafted one unsettling little short. A man visits his friends at their flat before heading out for a night on the town and slowly discovers that something is very, very off about the entire situation. The animation consists of large computer-generated heads grafted onto live-action bodies, a technique that I would normally abhor but which works wonderfully to give the entire thing an off-kilter, anxious look.

It appears to be stop-motion animation day here at The Horror Blog. Animation Magazine has an informative review of Equinox, a 1960s backyard homage to Harryhausen madness by special effects pioneers Dennis Muren, Dave Allen and Jim Danforth. Leave it to art-house favourites Criterion to give the deluxe treatment most budget DVD companies wouldn’t even touch. I’ve been waiting for this one for months, and it doesn’t sound like it will disapoint.

Fans of mainstream movies will probably want to take a pass, but those who appreciate bizarre cinema, stop-motion animation and low-budget, creature feature drive-in fun (you know who your are!) will definitely want to add this one to their collection.

Add “Likes long walks on the beach” and you’ve got my personals ad. Check out a scratchy trailer for the movie here.

I can’t believe this escaped my attention for so long. I just found out that CBC television will be airing a new stop-motion animation show on June 26th entitled What It Is Like Being Alone. Any show that combines freaks, snot, scorpions and suicide is alright by me. More YouTube clips are available here.

Welcome to Crazytown. Twitchfilms points out rumblings among the otaku crowd that there may be an anime remake of Argento’s Suspiria by Studio Gonzo in the works.

Oh, c’mon! Tell me you aren’t the least bit intrigued. If you have to produce a remake, at the very least take it in a completely different direction. That way, if you fail, well, at least it was a spectactular failure destined for cult status instead of an inferior retread that mimics the original shot-for-shot.