Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown (1986)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Jim Reardon

Writer:

Jim Reardon (writer)

Genre:

Animation | Short | Action | Comedy

Plot:

Charlie Brown is on the run from the Peanuts Gang after the Great Pumpkin puts a bounty on his head in this wild animated student short by Jim Reardon.

Plot Keywords:

Bounty | Peanuts | Great Pumpkin | Explosive | Football

Cast

Etienne Badillo	...	Charlie Brown (voice)
Rich Moore	...	Charlie Brown / Narration (voice)
Mike Reardon	...	Charlie Brown / Additional Voices (voice)
William Holden	...	Charlie Brown (voice)
Ethan Kanfer	...	Linus Van Pelt (voice) (as Nate Kanfer)
Bret Haaland	...	Lucy Van Pelt / Additional Voices (voice)
Jeff Pidgeon	...	Great Pumpkin (voice)
Ed Bell	...	Additional Voices (voice)
Bruce Johnson	...	Additional Voices (voice)

Runtime:

4 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Cal-Arts

Goofs:

Factual errors: The closing credit "'Charlie Brown' - The Platters" is incorrect, with the song playing over the credits being the Coasters' hit recording of "Charlie Brown", a song the Platters are not known to have recorded.

Quotes:

Charlie Brown: See you in hell!

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Taxi Driver (1976)

Soundtrack:

Charlie Brown

The ultimate Peanuts parody ever!

(Revised on 4/9/2005 - I originally wrote it in 2001 out of memory!)

I'm sure many people have watched twisted parodies of Charles Schulz beloved PEANUTS comic strip like MAD TV's "South Parknuts" and Saturday NIGHT LIVE's Peanuts tribute sketch in 2000, but none of them have the fast-paced thrills of this obscure animated student short done at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1986 by renowned animator Jim Reardon (who later worked on cartoons like MIGHTY MOUSE: THE NEW ADVENTURES and THE SIMPSONS)! The short has been screened at Lunacon (a sci-fi con I regularly attend) since about 1997 or 1998, and I was immediately hooked! This was the best of the old CalArts student shorts among what Lunacon showed (before I saw Craig McCracken's WHOOPASS STEW, which later became THE POWERPUFF GIRLS)!

Most of the other Peanuts parodies always had Charlie Brown die or commit suicide, to all of which I say, "been there, done that," but this was about the first time I've ever seen Charlie Brown unleash the beast within (something I, and possibly some other people, always wanted to see him do after some of the Peanuts Gang were so cruel to him)! In this short, the Great Pumpkin puts a bounty on Charlie Brown's head, and the rest of the Peanuts Gang race against each other to kill Charlie Brown in all sorts of ways, until Charlie himself, when getting chased by the gang at one point, becomes Rambo/Schwarzenegger-like and goes around blowing away all of the Peanuts Gang with his uzi! Then, for some reason, we see other cartoon characters slaughtering each other (Mickey Mouse, Popeye, the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla with a sound byte from GODZILLA '84 etc.), and amongst all the carnage and destruction, Charlie Brown stood victorious! The climax was just hilariously chaotic! There was even a funny (and long) disclaimer in the closing credits ("This film is not intended to ruin the good name of Charles M. Schulz's PEANUTS characters," etc. etc.)!

This short may not be for the more sensitive fans of PEANUTS, but if you're lucky, give BRING ME THE HEAD OF CHARLIE BROWN a try! It is, by far, the best of the twisted PEANUTS parodies!