What I loved about “The Spine of Night” is that directors Philip Gelatt, and Morgan Galen King don’t shy away from the fact that their movie is meant to be a modern “Heavy Metal.” It’s an unabashed celebration of Ralph Bakshi, Frank Frazetta, steam punk, and heavy metal right down to the rotoscoping animation that is used to bring the film’s vision to life. The animation is right on par with what you’d expect from the master Ralph Bakshi but I was happy that the pair of directors who write the film kept true to the story that they were telling through the very end.
Tag Archives: Animation
Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham (2023)
It’s crazy that I’d never actually read 2001’s “The Doom that Came to Gotham” despite hearing about most of Batman’s stories. This re-imagining of the Batman lore is fantastic in that it meshes Batman with Old Century Gothic, and HP Lovecraft. This is about as close to HP Lovecraft as Batman’s ever gotten with a story that really is relentless in its bleak tone and vicious implementation of Lovecraftian monsters and beings. This is a threat that not even Batman is fully capable of handling.
Lily C.A.T. (1987)
It’s pretty astonishing how “Lily C.A.T.” manages to be such a blatant copy of some classic eighties films, and yet still comes out looking pretty shiny when all is said and done. The 1987 science fiction deep space horror film heavily borrows (or rips off, depending on how kind you are) material from the likes of Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror film “Alien,” as well as John Carpenter’s 1981 masterpiece “The Thing” with even the crew brandishing flame throwers to ward off the monster. It’s a prerequisite for a movie that pretty much has fun with its premise, delivering so much in such a short time.
The Adventures of the Scrabble People in A Pumpkin Full of Nonsense (1985)
Also known as “A Pumpkin Full of Nonsense,” this animated short from the eighties is probably one of the more bizarre product tie ins I’ve ever seen. While it’s traditionally known as a Halloween special, the idea of Halloween is only minimal in what is a more unusual fantasy adventure. The entire narrative lives and breathes by the implementation of the trademark letter tiles, in so many unusual and baffling ways.
The Five Scariest Studio Ghibli Monsters
Founded in 1985, Studio Ghibli has managed to give us some of the most fantastic, scariest, and emotional animated movies ever made. Along the way with masters like Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, we’ve always been introduced to some truly heinous beasts and entities that have either passed through these worlds or met the heroes of these respective films. Among the myriad, these are five of, what I deem, the Scariest Studio Ghibli Monsters.
The Bootleg Files: Oceans of Love
BOOTLEG FILES 843: “Oceans of Love” (1956 animated short from the Terrytoons studio).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: The rights holder will not make it available.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
Cartoon lovers of a certain age will recall the glory days of Terrytoons, an animation studio founded by Paul Terry that specialized in cartoon shorts that were usually lacking in artistic genius but more than compensated with good silly fun. Terry himself acknowledged his studio’s shortcomings regarding its low-budget animation, once describing Walt Disney’s operation as the “Tiffany’s in this business” while his was “the Woolworth’s.”
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Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! (2023) (DVD)
Warner Bros. killed it and decided to throw it away, never to really be seen. Then thanks to uproar from the hardcore comic, Superman, and Scooby-Doo fan bases, “Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!” was thankfully saved and thrown in to the already massive library of “Scooby-Doo” movies. This was of course put over in to the straight to home media market where Hanna Barbera’s cash cow rests comfortably. But that’s not at all a slight, as “Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!” is a very good mixing of the crime fighting mutt, and Superman’s poochy pal.