1980 - THE BLOODY LADY - aka Krvavá pani

An anti Disney princess movie if ever there was one.  The Bloody Lady is based on an actual individual Countess Elizabeth Bathory who along with her servants was possibly responsible for the deaths of 80 women.  These crimes turned into a folk legend that claimed she bathed in the blood of the women she killed in order to maintain her youth.

 This is an animated horror film with cute little furry animals in the forest and a virginal princess until it takes a turn to the dark side.  The animation is stylized and the backgrounds are minimalist for the most part.  The style of the film kind of reminds me of one of those Hanna-Barbara or Filmation cartoon productions that showed up on Saturday mornings but this one has plenty of exaggerated blood for the horror gang.

 

The director is a man named Viktor Kubal who was based in Slovakia and is practically unknown in the west.  There are some examples and completed cartoons of his work on YouTube which are worth a look particularly if you are a fan of animation.

 

The Bloody Lady is  available on YouTube in a complete and good transfer. 

The film runs 72 minutes and was written by Viktor Kubal

1987 - GANDAHAR, another interesting science fiction film from René Laloux

Another visually striking science fiction film from Rene Laloux.  Gandhar has a fascinating story and at times some weird visuals.  It's the third and final feature for Laloux which had been preceded by Fantastic Planet and Time Masters.

 Gandahar's story is set in a future earth like planet inhabited by a female lead ruling council.  The council's scientists has developed a sophisicated organic technology over a more machine based approach in their daily existence.  One day Gandahar comes under attack by some robotic men who appear to be programmed to destroy Gandaharian society.  Needless to say the organic science is no match for the robot men.  Sent out by the ruling council, Sylvain, one of Gandahar's agents is tasked with learning the secret of the robot men and stopping them if possible

 

Simply put the film just looks interesting from a design point of view. The creatures featured in this film have fascinating looks to them particularly a race of mutants.  The animation is little more fluid than the animation in Fantastic Planet and the story moves along without any slow spots.   Definitely worth a look for science fiction fans not scared off by the animated film format.  This film also exists in an English version called The Light Years which replaced the original French music soundtrack with a more American sounding score.  It's probably best to stick to the original film.

 Gandahar was written by Rene Laloux, the running time is 79 minutes.

1940 - PINOCCHIO, on the big screen

Three years in production this is the followup to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  Pinocchio shows the very talented team of Walt Disney's artists and technicians really on top of their creative game.  A very good digital print of Pinocchio screened at our local revival theater and it is quite an impressive artistic achievement.

If you spend a little time on the internet, you can find a decent synopsis of Carlo Collodi 's original story which was serialized for 30 chapters in a weekly magazine.  The Disney storyboard artists did a brilliant job revising and condensing Pinocchio's story into a 90 minute film with no slow moments.  The Disney artists also elevated and developed the minor character of Jiminy Cricket as Pinocchio's conscience who  in reality is the narrator of the film.

 

Unlike Disney's first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio does not have kind of a 1930's feel which gives Snow White a bit of a dated look.  The careful use of color particularly the color blue is stunning.  Disney also used their famous multi dimensional camera which gave the illusion of 3-D.  

 

Incredibly this film did not make money on it's initial release despite excellent reviews at the time.  The  reissues of this film started in 1945 and the film made money.

 

The film was written by Ted Sears, Otto Englander, Webb Smith, William, Cottrell, Joseph Sabo, Erdman Penner and Aurelius Battaglia, the running time is 88 minutes,

1973 - FANTASTIC PLANET, interesting, unusual science fiction film.

If you are looking for a fully fluidly animated feature film in the style of a Disney cartoon keep looking.  This is not a film that advanced the technique or art of animation.  However this is a fascinating science fiction film with a very interesting story.

On an earth like planet live two species.  The giant blue Drags who dominate a smaller humanoid species called the Oms.  The Drags treat the Oms as inferior pets at times almost like ants.  When one of the Oms escapes with a piece of Drag technology that educates individuals by directly transmitting information into their brains, the story becomes a metaphor for race relations as the Oms start to rebel.

 

The film has a unique look to it.  The animation may not be the pinnacle of full movement but the story and visual qualities of the film more than compensate for this lack of animation.  

 

The film was written by Rene Laloux and Roland Topor, the running time is 71 minutes.

1983 - FIRE AND ICE, an animated fantasy epic.

Probably looking for a commercial hit after the success of Arnold's Conan the Barbarian. The director Ralph Bakshi along with the comic book artist Frank Frazetta dreamed up this story of muscle bound heroes, nearly naked buxom babes, evil magicians, scary monsters and did I mention nearly naked buxom babes.

To save money on animation Bakshi and his crew rotoscoped the main characters. This is a technique which involves tracing over live actors to make them look like comic book people.  The now animated characters are then placed in exotic backgrounds  The result is interesting if a little jarring at times when viewed.  Bakshi had used this technique on several R rated cartoons notably Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic.  He had uneven success in Hollywood as R rated animated cartoons didn't exactly make for a family night at the moves.

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Fire and Ice is loaded with lots of fighting and entertains as an action film although the story is really nothing special.  The good vs evil fantasy stuff had been done before and in better films.  Fire and Ice is at best an okay time killer.  The weird looking animation does give it an interesting look.

The film was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, a couple of comic book writers.  The running time is 81 minutes.

1999 - FANTASIA 2000 - sort of a follow up to FANTASIA

Fantasia 2000 was made due to the involvement of Roy Disney, the nephew of Walt and a major shareholder in the company.  To say that the other Disney executives were not enthused about this project would apparently be an understatement.  Still Roy Disney was a big deal at the Disney company so this film which was basically an update of Fantasia went forward.

Once again the Disney company marshaled their creative and technical staff.  The format was to be the same, musical segments were based on compositions from classical composers such as Beethoven, Respighi, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Dukas, Elgar and Stravinsky.

 

The plan this time was to hire a series of performers to introduce each segment to make the film seem more "hip."  Steve Martin opens the film with a rather tiresome comic bit.  Quincy Jones shows up in his introduction for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  Magicians Penn & Tellar do an already dated magic trick.  "Darth Vader" himself James Earl Jones gets a bit and finally Bette Midler introduces some segment which I can't recall.  Sticking all these actors into this film smacked a little like desperation.

The animation was at a very high standard.  When the Disney Corporation put their minds to it, nobody could produce more stunning traditional animation and in his case aided by computer enhancement, than this talented group.

 

This film like the previous Fantasia also did not do especially well with the general public.  The film lost money.  The critical reviews were all over the place and it was clear this wasn't going to be the animation masterpiece Roy Disney had hoped for.  The problem with Fantasia 2000 was that it was for the most part a very boring film.   No amount of elaborate and stunning animation was going to help this film.  Nice try but no cigar as they say.

The film's running time is 76 minutes.

1940 - FANTASIA, Disney's classic animated concert film.

Fantasia was two years in the making. Walt Disney along with conductor Leopold Stokowski decided to aim very high with an animated film that consisted of musical segments created by the Disney organization's talented artists and craftsmen.  The musical segments were to be drawn from  a selection of classical music composers.  At this point the Disney company was at the peak of it's creative powers.  Fantasia was an expensive production with perfection set as the goal.  It was a big ambitious risk for Walt Disney.  

Besides pushing animation to a high level of artistic creativity, Walt Disney also developed an early stereophonic sound system to go with the film which further drove costs  up.  A lot of money was spent on a sound system that had to be installed inside theaters showing this film.  Again, Disney wanted nothing less than perfection for the finished soundtrack in the animated segments.  The excellent live action color photography of Fantasia was photographed by one of Hollywood's top cameramen, James Wong Howe who is surprisingly not credited for his contribution to the film.

The end result was a unique film which featured visual interpretations from composers, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Ponchielli, Mussorgsky and Schubert.  If not all of the musical segments come off (the Beethoven Mount Olympus segment is kind of silly), they are all  spectacular with the animation and special visual effects perfectly blended together.  

 

The plan for the release of the film was to add and replace musical segments every few years which would keep the film in circulation.  Unfortunately the film was so expensive that the initial run didn't really bring in the box office results Disney was looking for.  World War 2 didn't help things as it closed off a lot of foreign markets that would have generated revenue.

Still even with CGI and all the latest technological mumbo jumbo junk that the entertainment industry can muster today.  This film is an amazing achievement when you compare it to the current cookie cutter animated films that are released.

The story credit is given to Joe Grant and Dick Huemer although you can be sure this film is also the result of input from the creative artists and the producer Walt Disney as well.  The running time is  126 minutes.

1986 - CASTLE IN THE SKY aka LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY

Hayao Miyazaki temporarily abandons his themes of mankind's interaction with nature and children adapting to life in a complicated world in favor of this action packed fantasy adventure.

 Our hero Pazu,  is a young boy working in a coal mine.  One night he finds a strange girl named Sheta literally drifting through the sky while wearing a magic crystal.  The two young people team up to learn more about Steta's past life and the magic crystal.  This story features a series of amazing action set pieces that rival and at times surpass about anything that can be found in American action films.  The staging and animation are incredibly exciting throughout the film.

This is sort of a change of pace film for Miyazaki who would write and direct more contemplative films later in his career like My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo on the Cliff.  Castle In The Sky is actually kind of a throwback to an earlier fllm of his, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which I believe was his first major feature film and also featured a number of exciting action scenes.  In many ways Castle In The Sky has much in common with The Castle of Cagliostro.

 

Disney had cut a deal with Miazaki's home studio Gibli and reworked the  soundtrack replacing the original Japanese voice talent with American actors.  Anna Paquin is now Sheta, James Van Der Beek is Pazu.  Cloris Leachman is the leader of a group of flying pirates and Mark Hamill is the chief villain named Muska.  Disney was fairly careful creating the re-dubbed soundtrack even though at times it's a little jarring to hear American voices come out of Japanese characters.  Still for the most part it works fairly well.

 

Along with the stunning action scenes one has to point out the animation background design with it's  airships, floating islands and giant robots.  Visually this film is also a real treat to look at.  A stunning film.

The film was written by Hayao Miyazaki,  the running time is 124 minutes.

2023 - THE BOY AND THE HERON aka How Do You Live?

Supposedly Miyazaki's last film however there are rumors that he is actually working on another project.  Hayao Miyazaki is 82 years old so who can say what is exactly going on with him.  The Boy and the Heron is in many ways a typical Miyazaki film if you can use the word typical when it comes to one of his films.  The film looks beautiful, the storytelling is interesting and the hand drawn animation is impressive.

 Prior to seeing this film I sat through the usual bunch of film previews which included two computer animation cartoon films.  One of them was about a bunch of ducks flying around New York for some reason and the other was the latest sequel from the once mighty Pixar studios, a company which seems to have lost it's way when it comes to making good films.  The point of all this is, the artistry of The Boy and the Heron really puts that computer animation junk to shame.

 

The plot of this film is difficult to summarize, it's loaded with symbolism and references to Japanese mysticism and culture.  There is the personal journey of a young boy who from what I can tell learns to be less selfish in life and starts to accept the role of fate for better or worse. But this is a very trite explanation of a very layered and complex film narrative.

 

This film is an impressive achievement particularly in animation.  Written by Hayao Miyazaki, the running time is 124 minutes.

1981 - HEAVY METAL, the adults only animated film

A series of animated science fiction and fantasy stories based on stories from a magazine called Heavy Metal.  The quality of the animation is extremely variable but the look of the film is interesting for the most part.  The film ties together nine stories with some sort of interconnecting theme of a mysterious green orb that has the power to do evil things or something like that.

Heavy Metal has a lot of vocal talent but it's chief interest for me were some of the performers of the SCTV TV show contributing to the various episodes.  I identified John Candy with his distinctive voice in three of the episodes, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis and Eugene Levy are in a couple of the stories.  "Dean Wormer" himself, John Vernon from Animal House and the writer Doug Kenny of Animal House and Caddyshack fame are also in the film.  This casting is probably unsurprising since one of the producers of the film is Ivan Reitman who went on to have a fairly successful career with films like Ghostbusters, Stripes, Twins and Kindergarten Cop .  Reitman had been associated with most of these performers off and on during their careers.

 

OK back to film.  Heavy Metal's reputation rests chiefly on it's blend of nudity, sex and violence.  So if your tolerance for this kind of stuff, particularly in a cartoon format is low, this film is probably not for you.  As I said the film does look interesting and you have to give the production and animation team points for making something different.  

The film has a rock score from Black Sabbath, Blue Oyser Cult, Sammy Hagar, Cheap Trick  DEVO, Journey and Nazareth but I don't recall any of the music particularly standing out.  Hollywood composer Elmer Bernstein of all people provided the symphonic score.

 

Heavy Metal has a series of writers and directors but the writer Dan O'Bannon (Dark Star, Alien, Total Recall) is the only person who I recognize.  The running time of this film is 90 minutes which is just fine as a little of this cartoon sex and violence stuff can only go so far in an animated film.

1926 - THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED, early animated feature film

A very early animated film from a German animator named Lotte Reiniger.  The film is animated with a technique using silhouettes and hand painted backgrounds.  The results are still fairly impressive even today.

The film took about three years to make with all of the drawings beaning moved to match the 24 frames per second speed of the camera, this was probably very detailed and laborious work.

 

The film is a visual treat and many of the effects are very impressive.  For fans of animation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is well worth a look.

 

The film was written by Lotte Reiniger and the running time is 65 minutes.

1985 - THE BLACK CAULDRON , large scale animated fantasy from Disney

 Looking to hit the animation jackpot, the Disney company purchased the rights to a five book fantasy series called The Chronicles of Prydain.  The Disney animators took the first two books in the series and reworked the story now called The Black Cauldron into an 80 minute film with very mixed results.

By the time the film was completed The Black Cauldron was considered to frightening for younger children so 12 minutes were cut from it after a management change at the studio.

Disney may not have been the best place to make this film.  The story of The Black Cauldron uneasily jumps from good action scenes to some very cloying humor particularly with the creatures Gurgi and Doli.  It's as if the Disney animators didn't have the courage to completely make the film an adventure fantasy without resorting to a bunch of cartoon creature silliness.

 

This was an expensive film for Disney coming in at 44 million dollars back when 44 million dollars meant something in the 1980's. The film made only about half it's cost back when released.

 

Of course considering the present climate when it comes to animated pictures the film plays pretty well.

Written by Ted Berman, Vance Gerry, Joe Hale, David Jonas, Roy Morita, Richard Rich, Art Stevens, Al Wilson and Peter Youn.  Lots of writers, never a good sign for a film.  The Black Cauldron runs 80 minutes.

1961 - ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS, another high point for the Disney animated film.

 A very good animated film from the Walt Disney Company.  

In this film the animators and artists simplified their approach to the story.  They were clearly influenced by the work that UPA was doing with their animated product.

The result was one or Disney's least overstuffed films.  Gone were the elaborate settings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.  The film is definitely all the better for it.  This is a simple story told clearly and effectively.

The film is so good that Disney paid it the ultimate compliment, remaking it as a live action film.

The writer was Bill Peet, the running time is 79 minutes.

1949 - THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD

Is this one of the greatest animated Disney features?  No but it's very good.   These two stories show the skill of the Disney production company and they each run about 30 minutes.

The Wind In The Willows is narrated by Basil Rathbone and is based on the Kenneth Grahame children's book.

The second story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is narrated by Bing Crosby and is based on Washington Irving's "The Sketch Book".

The film runs 68 minutes and doesn't wear out it's welcome.

1937 - SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, still an impressive animated film.

2 years in the making,  Disney's first full length animated feature is still very impressive.

Walt Disney worked with a lot of people to achieve this one of a kind film.  The film making skill behind this film is very impressive.  Particular attention is given to the color pallet, the design, music and the camera angles used throughout the film.

Probably the one area that dates the film a little bit are the characters of Snow White and Prince Charming.  They have sort of a 1930's look to them, but this is really just a minor whine.

As I indicated above this was a film that was created by a number of artists.  However Walt Disney had the final say on all the scenes that went into the picture.  At times having the animators completely change finished scenes because they didn't meet his high standards.

The film was written by Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander, Dick Rickard, Earl Hurd, Merrill De Maris, Dorothy Ann Blank and Webb Smith.  It runs a perfect 83 minutes.

1959 - SLEEPING BEAUTY, on Blu Ray

Walt Disney went back to the well with another fairy tale story.  Disney had very good luck in the past adapting these types of stories.  This time The Disney studio spent lavishly on Sleeping Beauty, animating it in CinemaScope at a then record breaking budget of six million dollars.

Sleeping Beauty is one of Disney's most beautiful films.  Every scene looks incredible.  The design of the film is stunning with the visual qualities of the film always in the foreground.  Unfortunately this lush pictorial beauty tends to overwhelm the characters and more importantly the story.

The score was adapted from the Tchaikovsky ballet.  The film's director Clyde Genonimi is credited as the supervising director but really this type of animated project is the result of many artists and technicians.

The film runs a brisk 75 minutes. 

1979 - CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO, Miyazaki's first feature.

Hayao Miyazaki, made the transition to features with this film based on an animated character named Arsene Lupin, a thief.  This was the second feature film featuring Lupin and it's an exciting action film.  

Miyazaki has taken stock action characters, the thief with a heart of gold, the evil Count, the bumbling police inspector and the innocent blonde girl in danger and somehow managed to make them work in a story about counterfeiters operating out of a castle with a dungeon no less.

The animation technique may look outdated and let's face it the characters are very cartoonish looking at times but Miyazaki turns these liabilities into  assets.  The pace of this film is so fast and the action scenes integrated into the plot are so well done,  a viewer will probably not be bothered by the rather primitive look that pervades the film at times.

Action movie directors could learn a thing or two about making these kinds of movies studying Castle of Cagliostro a few times

100 minutes, written by Haruya Yamazaki and Miyazaki.