larryloc Reviews

Mary and Gretel (1916)

Silent Stop Motion Toy Animation

[9 March 2004]

This is Alice in Wonderland meets Rip Van Winkle with a drunken white rabbit and bowling dwarfs and two little baby dolls. The drunken rabbit shows real character even with his unmovable face. Sadly this is not the case for the title characters, Marry and Gretel.

This is a stop motion film using toys. There are no expressions on the faces of the models, which seem to be dolls right off the store shelves. The movement is limited by gravity. No supports are used in the walk cycles so both of the feet of all of the models are on the ground at all times. This gives a Tim Conway look to the walk cycles.

Despite these limitations this it is a good story and a fun film. The lighting and camera work is very good with high contrast.

Flat Hatting (1944)

A Watershed Film - a true forerunner to limited animation

[10/10 · 25 July 2003]

John Hubley is most likely the only Disney striker on the picket line because of his belief that Walt was betraying the principals of animation. Hubley felt that animation, by its very nature, is flat and to try to make it a second rate copy of 3-D life is wrong.

Flat Hatting is Hubley's first chance to try out his theories. Flat Hatting, at the time, was the practice of buzzing civilians in military aircraft. Flat Hatters were looked at as heroes in the WWII air corps. Hubley's job was to make them look like fools. To do this he abandons character, as we know it, and gives us a figure that changes in age to reflect the changing maturity of the lead character.

Hubley was the genius behind the new animation and UPA, the studio that brought us this new vision. Most, if not all, of the great stuff coming out of UPA from 1943 to 1952 had his hand in it.

After he was run out of UPA by the Communist witch hunt of 1952 he and his wife, Faith, made a pact to create one animation per year for the rest of their lives. Both of them kept that pact although it took Faith longer to do so that it did John.

A must see for anyone wanting to understand how animation has changed from the Disney vision into what we see today.

Fiend Without a Face (1958)

This is 50's sci-fi at its best

[8/10 · 26 August 2001]

Fiend has everything that a 50's Sci-Fi movie should have; a really square hero that saves the day, a beautiful female lead that falls for him, atomic power misused, and an invisible monster that sucks the brains out of its victums.

It is the stop motion animation at the end when the monster(s) become visible that really makes this film work. Without the animation by Peter Neilson and Ruppell this would be just another 50's atomic caution tale.

Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid (1929)

Harman/Ising Demo Reel After leaving Mintz Studios

[2/10 · 25 July 2001]

How the mighty are fallen, Harman / Ising did not last long at Mintz Studio after he talked them into leaving Disney when he took Oswald away.

This was their demo reel and it owes more to the Out of the Inkwell Koko shorts then it does to Disney. Racial stereo types, awful sound, and very bad acting by Rudy Ising, the human cartoonist trying to play the Max Fleischer part.

It is very hard to believe that they got a job on the weight of this reel. But Schlesinger must have seen something in it or more likely knew their work at Disney.