Film Credits

Individual Screenplays by: Various People (more likely than not, the same guys down below who directed these animated shorts)

Directed by: Marv Newland, Dieter Mueller, Dan Collins, J. Falconer, Danny Antonucci

Review

Courtesy of the folks over at Lumivision, another collection of animated shorts has been released to feed the craving hordes of animation fans, under the fitting title of The Rocketship Reel. Yes, The Rocketship Reel is an appropriate name for these shorts, considering all of them were made/produced at animator Marv Newland's company, International Rocketship Limited (which, for the unfamiliar, the disc jacket states is "a world famous cartoon company located in Vancouver, Canada near rainbow trout and the College of Lampshade Repairs").

While I (and many friends, as well) love seeing animation released on disc, of the eleven shorts that comprise The Rocketship Reel, only a partial handful stands up to repeated viewing. Of the remainder, only another handful are tolerable even once, not so much due to the animation, but due to the content.

Opening up the disc is the Marv Newland's classic black & white short (and his first film), Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969, b&w, mono, 1m45s), which probably everyone has seen at one point or another. If you're one of the few people alive who haven't, telling you what it's about would ruin the joke, so just use your imagination for now. Because of the age and amateur nature of this film, the image is soft and muddy, as is the audio, but that's the way it's always been.

Next up is Sing Beast Sing (1980, color, mono, 9m15s), a Marv Newland-directed piece that seems to drag on much longer than its actual running time (a problem that Newland usually seems to have). Almost interesting to view once, this short is a single-joke piece featuring a creature called the "Toledo Mung Beast" singing and playing the piano. A pale "line" runs across the screen during the opening credits, but aside from that the transfer is fine. Again, Sing Beast Sing is overlong in the extreme, and I haven't a clue why it was an award winner at the 1981 London Film Festival.

Dieter Muller's The Butterfly (1982, color, mono, 1m30s) is a quick, simple, one-joke sketch about the twisted relationship between a man/alien and a butterfly he comes across one day. Some will find this wickedly funny, others incredibly stupid.

I couldn't find any redeeming features with Points (1983, b&w, mono, 2m15s), a banal "thing" from Dan Collins. All Collins ever does is make these incredibly awful shorts, every one featuring his usual geometric/stick-figure drawings. Of course, Points is just the same as everything else he's done, and I haven't a clue what it's about, nor do I want to find out.

Marv Newland goes completely out of control again with Hooray For Sandbox Land (1984, color, mono, 12m30s), a comedy-adventure tale about a group of weird characters who live in, that's right, Sandbox Land. One day, a tidal wave threatens the existence of the beachside community, and the day must somehow be saved... Although this short is imaginative and fairly interesting to watch once, it too suffers from Newland's typical overexcessive nature and is almost unbearable to sit through a second time; however, some people think otherwise and the short won the vote for Best Animation 1985 from the Canadian Film & Television Association.

J. Falconer's Dog Brain (1988, color, mono, 2m45s) is a really weird little comedy thing that journals what's going through a dog's mind while it is asleep and dreaming. Don't ask me to try and explain it to you, though, okay? Dog Brain won Best Short at the 12th Sao Paulo International Film Fest, Brazil 1988. The image bounces a little bit, but that's the only print-related problem.

Dry Noodles (1985, b&w, mono, 2m30s) is another attempt by "animator" Dan Collins to bore the audience with his stick-figure drawings. This time around, the "story" is about the meticulous (i.e., "dull") acrobatic skills of a stick-figure guy. This black & white short has a very thin black band down the right edge to preserve the framing.

One of the disc's two absolute gems is Anijam (1984, color, mono, 10m), Jury Prize winner of the 1984 Toronto International Animation Festival. Directed by Marv Newland, Anijam features animation by 22 world-famous animators, each responsible for a separate section of the short and having not a clue as to what the others were doing. Each section of this "animation jam" revolves a semi-humanoid lead, Foska, who is placed into bizarre situations. Anijam is absolutely wonderful and the disc is worth it if only for this short.

Marv's also back with Black Hula (1988, color, stereo, 4m45s), a existential look at life on different planets that were visited by interplanetary "missionaries," the entirety of which is accompanied by an old, scratchy Hawaiian ballad playing on the audio track. Not a bad watch once or twice, but it becomes a bit old after that. For those of you keeping up with the awards, Black Hula was a Prize Winner at the 33rd San Francisco International Film Festival. The scratchy stereo soundtrack may annoy some people, but what do you expect when someone uses an old, old recording as the source for the music for this short?

Eegads, run for your life!!! As if two Dan Collins pieces weren't enough for this collection, we're stuck with a third, Waddles (1988, b&w, mono, 2m). Collins' stick-figure this time around is a big square-shaped Picasso-like mass that is struggling to escape from a box...I think. Dreadful beyond belief.

Lastly, we come to Lupo the Butcher (1988, color, stereo, 3m15s), courtesy of Danny Antonucci, which is an absolute riot! Laugh yourself silly...revolt your mundane friends...find yourself repeating lines from the short for years to come...Lupo the Butcher will do all of that for you, and more. This nasty, gruesome, hysterically-evil tale features an always-cursing, way-too-uptight butcher who has a bad run-in with his meat cleaver. Heck, now I've got to go downstairs and watch Lupo again! Anyway, as with everything else in this collection, Lupo has been beautifully-transferred and comes complete with a stereo soundtrack (although only the opening music benefits from it). Lupo deservedly won an Animation Award at the 1986 Northwest Film and Video Festival. Get the disc if only to see this nifty cartoon!

As you've probably gathered from the above (and what I'm going to repeat for you anyway), Lumivision comes through for fans again with outstanding source materials for all the shorts presented in this collection. The source materials are all in fantastic shape, with a sharp focus and strong b&w or color images (except for Bambi Meets Godzilla, the reasons of which were already previously explained), and the disc is in CAV (with perfect still-frames) for those who like to examine their animation in the fullest. Additionally, the CX-encoded digital mono or stereo soundtracks (see individual listings above) are uniformly excellent as well. The Rocketship Reel was pressed at Pioneer and contains 11 listed chapter markers. Additionally, Lumivision had some fun putting together the packaging for this disc, popping in a couple of jokes on the jacket, not to mention two neat copyright warnings both on the disc labels and in the video portion itself (one features Lupo screaming "You make 'a copee an I keel you...bum!!! Getta job!!!"; the other warns "We don't know lawyers, we know cement contractors") -- you gotta just love those Lumivision folks...

So there you have it, animation lovers! It's a shame that a stronger collection of shorts couldn't be had from International Rocketship, but Lumivision did their best with what they had (and should be commended and supported for their continuing efforts!). But no matter what I think of most of the stuff on The Rocketship Reel, I find it an absolutely must-have disc if only to have in my collection perfect laserdisc copies of Anijam and Lupo the Butcher.

Shorts Recap

• Bambi Meets Godzilla
• Sing Beast Sing
• The Butterfly
• Points
• Hooray for Sandbox Land
• Dog Brain
• Dry Noodles
• Anijam
• Black Hula
• Waddles
• Lupo the Butcher