Puppets in Hell
We say goodbye to Just Plain Weird Week with something called “The Devil’s Ball”, which is actually a fragment from a much longer French film called “The Mascot” created by the great Russian animator Ladislas Starevish. Don’t look for any plot — most of that has been edited away in this version (although, for the record, the original is about a toy dog saving a little girl from scurvy, so rest assured this clip is just the tip of the iceberg as far as refined oddness goes.)
If the elegant creepiness of the animated puppets seems eerily familiar, you may be a child of the eighties. This same clip was rerun relentlessly on the old cable TV standby “Night Flight” (does anyone else remember that weekend goulash of rock videos, documentaries and stock footage?)
Monday we are off and dancing with another week of ReFrederator.
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On September 29th, 2006 at 12:00 am
This looks like it would have been an influence on the Muppets.
On September 29th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I also noticed that it ends with the gangsta dude pulling what looks like a CD out of the monkey’s throat. What does it MEAN??
On October 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am
One of my all time favorites. I recently reviewed this and a bunch of other Ladislas Starevish films while looking for cool things to show on halloween, and I couldn’t help but noticing that this seems to be light years beyond anything else he ever did (that I know of). Don’t get me wrong, he did some quaint stuff with deceased insects, and some cuddley bunny films, but nothing else with dancing glass fragments, phantom fish carcasses, leering imps, and musical balloons.