{"id":29328,"date":"2018-10-26T12:54:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T16:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=29328"},"modified":"2018-10-26T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T18:32:08","slug":"the-bootleg-files-the-hangman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/26\/the-bootleg-files-the-hangman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: The Hangman"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 659:<\/strong> \u201cThe Hangman\u201d (1964 animated short).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> No release to date.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It fell through the cracks.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> It would be nice.<\/p>\n

With Halloween a few days away, I was wondering if it would be too corny to stick a horror movie into this week\u2019s column. But rather than go the traditional route of horror movies featuring ghouls, ghosts and God-knows-what the FX people conjure up, I am opting for an intellectual horror story where the real evil does not require the presence of the supernatural or the paranormal \u2013 but, instead, comes from the quotidian.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hangman\u201d is a 1964 animated short directed by Les Goldman and Paul Julian. Goldman was best known for his work as a production manager on Chuck Jones\u2019 MGM Tom and Jerry shorts while Julian was a background artist during the artistic peak years of the Warner Bros. studios; he also worked on the UPA classic \u201cThe Tell-Tale Heart\u201d and did some wonderfully gruesome title art for horror flicks including \u201cDementia 13.\u201d For this film, they adapted a poem written by Maurice Ogden under the pseudonym of Jack Denoya and first published in 1954 in Masses and Mainstream, one of the rare unapologetically Marxist journals to be circulated in the U.S. during the McCarthy era. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hangman\u201d is relayed by an unnamed narrator (the voice of Herschel Bernardi) and takes place in an unidentified town where life seems perfectly uneventful. One day, the title character unexpectedly shows up and constructs his gallows outside of the local courthouse. This confuses the townspeople, who are unaware of any local criminal activity that would warrant this form of punishment. The response, according to the narrator: “He who serves me best,” said he, “Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”<\/p>\n

The hangman begins his reigns by taking \u201ca man who came from another land\u201d from the local population, binding his hands and placing a noose around his neck. As the foreigner\u2019s body dangles from the end of a rope, the narrator sighs that \u201cfor another’s grief at the Hangman’s hand was our relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas for the town, the hangman\u2019s job was not limited to the foreigner. When the new day arrives and the hangman is still positioned at his gallows, the locals are unhappy at his presence. One man yells \u201cShame!\u201d at the hangman\u2019s seemingly jocular response to the crowd \u2013 that man is taken by the hangman and a noose quickly brings about his death.<\/p>\n

The hangman continues to pick out his victims \u2013 first a Jewish man, then a black man, and then others who are not identified by ethnicity, religion or race. Over time, the gallows starts to grow to monstrous proportions and the population shrinks one by one, while The Hangman\u2019s face takes on an increasingly skeletal appearance.<\/p>\n

Can you tell where this is heading? If not, then consider this the prelude to the spoiler. If you don\u2019t want the ending to be revealed by me, check out the film on YouTube<\/a> and then come back. Otherwise, let\u2019s proceed.<\/p>\n

The Hangman did his job so well that the only person left in the town is the narrator. The hangman calls out for this man, who mistakenly believes that he is being sought to dismantle the gallows. Instead, the hangman seizes the narrator, who complains that he was tricked by this mysterious executioner. But the hangman coolly tells him that the scaffold was meant solely for him, as his silence at the hangman\u2019s earlier actions enabled the deaths of innocent people who did no wrong. <\/p>\n

The narrator\u2019s final words: \u201cBeneath the beam that blocked the sky, none had stood so alone as I – and the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there cried \u2018Stay\u2019 for me in the empty square.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hangman\u201d was created in a series of eerie, almost Daliesque still pictures animated by Margaret Julian \u2013 there is scant biographical information about her, and from her surname, I assume she was either the wife or a relative of co-director Paul Julian. Throughout the film, the camera pans back and forth across these pictures while Bernardi\u2019s emotional narration and Serge Hovey\u2019s off-beat music score create a sinister environment. There is a brief bit of traditional animation near the end of the film as the hangman\u2019s appearance changes violently, which gives the impression of a nightmare opening into a full-blown living horror. As a work of animation minimalism, \u201cThe Hangman\u201d scores a maximum effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hangman\u201d was one of two productions to share the short film honor at the 1964 Locarno International Film Festival, but it failed to get an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Subject. For years, it was a staple of the educational film market, and many people first encountered it in a middle school or high school classroom. But, to date, it has been absent from commercial home video release. As a one-shot short released outside of the studio system, it seems to have fallen into a state of limbo \u2013 and while copies have turned up online, these are unauthorized postings. Still, if not for the grey market, \u201cThe Hangman\u201d would be lost to us. <\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall<\/a>\u201d on SoundCloud, now in its third season.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 659: \u201cThe Hangman\u201d (1964 animated short). LAST SEEN: On YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: No release to date. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It would be nice. With Halloween a few days away, I was wondering if it would be too corny to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":29329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1513],"tags":[2118,99,938,2117],"class_list":["post-29328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-bootleg-files","tag-allegory","tag-animation","tag-short-film","tag-the-hangman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29328"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29335,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29328\/revisions\/29335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}