The knock-knock queen of Rainbow Town dies and becomes a witch, haunting the town until she is defeated by a half-vampire-half-girl. Written by then-5-year-old Nora Lee.
Tag Archives: Children’s Film
FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SUNBURNT UNICORN (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: Nick Johnson
FEATURING: The voices of Diana Kaarina, Kathleen Barr, Laara Sadiq, Brian Drummond, Tabitha St. Germain
PLOT: After a car crash, teenager Frankie searches the desert for his father, who has been abducted by the Cactus King.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: An unlikely candidate, Sunburnt Unicorn is, objectively, a children’s adventure ‘toon with broad humor and a simple structure. However, it is also objectively a movie about a kid wandering the desert with a glass shard sticking out from his forehead being guided by a tortoise whose rear half has been crushed by a car.
COMMENTS: Every festival, I make it a point to see as many cartoons as scheduling allows. This is not just because I enjoy bright colors and moving objects (that said, I do much enjoy bright colors and moving objects), but also because I’m on the hunt for weird movies with a broader age appeal than, say, El Topo, Tetsuo: the Iron Man, or The Devils. So it is with a missionary’s—or pusher’s—”get ’em while they’re young” zeal that I seek out kid-friendly weirdo cinema. Nick Johnson’s Sunburnt Unicorn is just such a film, appealing to, judging from the audience, middle-schoolers and middle-aged reviewers alike.
First, the wholesome part. Frankie is on a road trip with his dad, who has insisted the pair of them visit the engineering college that the patriarch (and patriarch’s patriarch) graduated from—no doubt with honors. Frankie, aged somewhere in his early teens, wants nothing to do with this serious, analytical nonsense, and instead wants to pursue a career in writing. The two argue under the withering glow of the hot sun and the uninterested gaze of a insect-seeking lizard. Brakes peal, then smashcrackbang, and so begins Frankie’s exposure to the outdoors, where he undergoes challenges, earns opportunities for growth, and shares humorous banter with various animals, in particular a helpful tortoise who witnesses the car crash.
Now, the weird part. This tortoise witnessed the accident because it risked crossing the desert road, and paid for it by losing the back half of its body. From the moment we meet it, Tortoise moves, observes, and pontificates with good-natured wisdom; all the while, its jelly-pink organs dangle from its behind. During stretches of travel and talk you forget this strange state of affairs, only to be smirkfully reminded by a change of the camera angle. The reason this tortoise, and many other animals—including a trio of, heh heh, self-sacrificing desert fox cubs—aid Frankie is that every animal-jack of them believes him to be a unicorn. If memory serves, the first time we see the boy is after the crash, and a glorious, jagged shard of cracked windscreen thrusts nobly from his forehead throughout. It has its effects, and even a super power. Though it pains him greatly, he can flick it to emit a resonant and useful twing.
And so, sitting there in a cinema, having nabbed this strange beast, I was swept away by the easy flow, quality lessons, and omnipresent grisliness whenever it caught my attention that Sunburnt Unicorn tells the story of two critically injured creatures. This is by no means the weirdest thing under the sun, and there are “family friendlier” films out there, but I am delighted to have experienced Johnson’s fun little ‘toon; it hits a cozy point where conflicting genres intersect.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: GHOST CAT ANZU (2024)
化け猫あんずちゃん
Bakeneko anzu-chan
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DIRECTED BY: Yôko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita
FEATURING: Voices of Noa Gotô, Mirai Moriyama, Munetaka Aoki
PLOT: Abandoned in the sleepy beach town of Iketeru, 11-year-old Karin finds herself in the care of Anzu: a 37-year-old, human-sized “ghost cat” with a penchant for pachinko and speedy scootering.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Seeing as we’ve certified a charming tale of someone pulled into realm of the spirits, I’ll suggest we include this differently charming tale of the spirit world slacking around amongst us people. Also, there are too few children’s movies on the list, and never enough giant cats.
COMMENTS:
“Whoa, that’s one big frog.”
Gah! Who are you?
“I’m Anzu, a ghost cat. Who are you?”
I’m a giant frog monster. Ribbet-Ribbet!
And so it goes in Iketeru, the idyllic waterfront village where a young girl finds herself ditched by her deadbeat dad who has some complicated debts he needs to take care of in Tokyo. From this pedestrian kick-off, directors Kuno and Yamashito rise to an impressive challenge: crafting a laid-back, deadpan, almost Coen Brothers‘ world in a whimsical, Ghibli-style animation.
Karin is cynical before her time. Beyond her difficulties arising from the ne’er-do-well father, we learn that she lost her mother at the age of eight, and has been under the guardianship of a grown man barely more mature than she is (perhaps even less so). In many ways, her circumstances don’t change when she is introduced to Anzu, a human-sized—and very human-acting — cat, who can perceive and interact with the spirit world. Anzu helps Karin’s grandfather maintain the small local temple, as well as a taking few odd jobs around town. He travels by scooter, though an early brush with the law strips him of his beloved transport.
Mythical Japanese beings emerge for a cocktail party hosted by Anzu, and Karin meets a Hag, a giant mushroom-man, a stone-form baby Buddha, the “giant frog monster” mentioned earlier, and more. Anzu’s slack sensibilities keep him from ever working too hard (he is a cat, after all), but he is a good friend: he feels bad after gambling away Karin’s earnings at the local pachinko parlor. It’s all so very natural, despite the entities in question. Frog and friends get jobs at the golf course whose woods they inhabit. Karin teases the two local boys (self-proclaimed creators of a “Contrarian” club). Grandfather oversees the temple. And so it goes.
But most of all, Karin misses her mother, and she undertakes a daring escapade into the underworld, with the considerable assistance from the God of Poverty, who is bamboozled into the task by Anzu. Entering through the crematorium’s out-of-order toilet while on a day-trip to Tokyo, Karin, Anzu, and the god visit the underworld hotel, and their capering unleashes demons and the God of Death onto the surface. The film lays on silliness and peculiarity thickly, and the picturesque animation maintains a perfect tension with the near-flippant attitude suffusing Kuno and Yamashito’s collaboration. Strange spirits, it seems, are all around us. And they’re just about as lazy as we are.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE PIED PIPER (1986)
Krysař [AKA Ratcatcher]
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DIRECTED BY: Jirí Barta
FEATURING: Voices of Oldřich Kaiser, Jirí Lábus, Michal Pavlíček, Vilém Čok
PLOT: A retelling of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’: a town is overrun by rats, a piper is hired to get rid of them, and when the town leaders renege on their agreement… it’s not good.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA : It’s a visually striking adaptation, and the uncompromising mood and tone is equally striking. It’s not your average children’s Christmas special—and it still remains a relevant and timely tale.
COMMENTS: Genuine folktales are not known for being warm, snuggly, and uplifting; ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ is definitely not so. It’s centered on rat genocide, with financial deal-breaking and child kidnapping as mere side dishes. Adapting it to family-friendly entertainment programming can be an especially tricky business, ending up soft-pedalling some elements of the tale, usually by adding songs and turning it into a musical.1
Intended as a children’s Christmas special for Czech television, Barta’s adaptation could have gone that route. Two previous directors had been fired for not taking a light enough approach to the material. But Barta, going back to source (mainly a 1915 novella by Viktor Dyk, as well as the original tale) instead leaned even further into the dark elements. In this iteration, the term “rat” doesn’t just apply to the usual rodents. In mammals, there’s little difference between rats and men; well, maybe the 4-legged kind aren’t as overtly cruel as the 2-legged.
The film opens on morning in Hamelin. The grinding of gears in the town clock chime to start the day as the townspeople scurry to do business: toiling laborers and craftsmen, coin minters, haggling merchants and customers, and merchants cheating customers. There are also cruelties: a rat killed for stealing pastry, the jeweler who barbs a necklace to cut the skin of the woman who will try it on, and the gluttony of the leaders of Hamelin as they indulge their appetites to obscene excess.
Business continues; people scurry to and fro, trying to get whatever coin they can, which goes into hidden stashes, while the rats grab whatever leftovers they can… behavior blackly reinforced in the overnight actions of the subterranean rat community.
The town is wealthy, corrupt, and debased—overrun by rats. And in this iteration, it gets what it deserves: the Exterminator. (It’s worth noting that the translation of the original title is “The Ratcatcher,” which is much more fitting to the mood and tone.)
Not your average children’s television special, certainly. But it was successful, both in Czechoslovakia and worldwide. Much of that success is rooted in the onscreen artistry: the design of the production is incredible, intricately textured with puppets carved from walnut and characters rendered in Cubist style—the angularity emphasizing their grotesque natures. The Piper himself resembles a gaunt specter of Death.
No one is innocent in this take, aside from a fisherman, an infant, and a female who comes to an unfortunate end. The Piper has come to cleanse the town of all of its rats. A glimmer of hope and happiness comes to fruition at the end—but only after the cleansing.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
HOME VIDEO INFO: In 2023, Deaf Crocodile issued a Region A Blu-ray featuring a new restoration of the film with a commentary by Czech film expert Irena Kovarova and film historian Peter Hames. Also included is a restored Barta short, “The Vanished World of Gloves”; “Chronicle of the Pied Piper”, a behind-the-scenes featurette on the production; a new interview with Barta; and a booklet essay by Kovarova.
- The exception to this may be the 1972 musical adaptation directed by Jacques Demy, featuring Donovan, Donald Pleasance, and John Hurt, with music by Donovan. This writer has not seen it but from the description, it seems to be a fitting candidate for us to feature in the future. ↩︎
CAPSULE: CREATING REM LEZAR (1989)
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DIRECTED BY: Scott Zakarin
FEATURING: Jack Mulcahy, Courtney Kernaghan, Jonathan Goch
PLOT: Ashlee and Zack mysteriously share an imaginary friend, a being whom they must aid in a search for his medallion before the sun sets and the evil Vorock triumphs.
COMMENTS: This pint-lengthed movie hits above its weight in the realm of cringeful oddness. Filmed in the late 1980s, it has the hair extremes and the soft-n-smooth musical flair of a stone polished into a glassy spheroid. As a children’s movie, it features the inevitable amateurity found when young actors are thrust to the fore. Multi-cultural feel-good-ism gets an extended nod during a the protagonists’ Central Park encounter with a gang of flamboyant a-cappella greasers, who then move on to a hip-hop black fellow, with then a pair of fiddlers. And the aesthetics behind the titular hero’s ensemble might raise questions, were the viewer not struck dumb by the intense blue motif—blue lycra body suit, blue cape, and Rem Lezar’s mullet dyed blue to match. Creating Rem Lezar is a trial by Aghh, waltzing from one schmaltz piece to the next at a speed which leaves no room for the viewer to collect their wits. That said, presuming you can endure the vehicle, the various messages in this experiment are worthwhile.
Tykes Ashlee and Zach are day-dreamers, often in trouble at school and home for ignoring their surroundings in favor of spending time with a mutually manifested entity who comforts their fears and doubts. Rem Lezar’s creation—through sheer force of belief and cooperation by the youngsters—leads to many teachable moments. And despite his absurd appearance, Lezar has much wisdom to offer—to children in particular, and to people in general.
The pair of kids differ vociferously about how to overcome the challenge from the villain (an ’80s-FX malevolent head), prompting Lezar to calmly explain, “Differences of opinion are fine, and you have to stand behind what you believe. But you have to work together, and giving in a little doesn’t mean giving up.” Later, Zach complains about not fitting in, asking his hero why others have a hard time understanding him. Quite Socratically, Lezar asks the boy, “Why do you think others have a hard time understanding you?” This kicks off a moment of reflection on how comprehension needs to go both ways.
That, and many similar moments, left me with overall positive feelings about this little film. Every piece of advice on offer is sensible, thoughtfully phrased and communicated, and largely dispels the immediately preceding (and surrounding) obtuseness. There’s a lot of hate for this movie among reviewers, with much condemnation of the film’s alleged “creepiness.” This could hardly be further from the truth. Creating Rem Lezar often approaches insufferable, but I was relieved at how harmless the titular character proved to be, and delighted at how well-anchored the film is in regards to how we should treat one another. I only wish these sentiments hadn’t been buried under this mountain of expired cheese.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Emil Hyde, who called it “quite possibly the worst/best/weirdest ‘children’s’ film ever made” and went on to add, “It’s not quality like most of the films on the list, but it is baffling on every level”. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
