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00:00 [Music]
00:09 [Music]
00:37 My voice is already this annoyingly high.
00:40 Today on the VCR we have a comic color by Ub Iwerks.
00:47 And to say that this is probably one of the strangest cartoons I've ever seen in my life is an understatement.
00:53 [Music]
00:58 But should I take you down to shore and put you on the Gravitron, or should I wean you with a few roller coasters first?
01:04 You see now in the old days, animation was all about effects, what you could or could not do.
01:09 Then in the 20s, character development was the biggest thing, like Felix.
01:13 It was all about a specific character and the animation around him.
01:17 In the 30s with the advance of color, it was more about character orientation rather than a particular character, a group of one.
01:24 Fables were the biggest thing. You take animals and put them in a human situation.
01:29 But as most cartoonists would tell you, you don't have to just rely on animals.
01:34 Your items could be beads, toys, books, anything.
01:38 [Music]
01:46 With that in mind, this is Ub Iwerks' Balloon Land.
01:51 [Music]
01:56 And when I say Balloon Land, it's literally a land made of balloons.
02:00 An entire society made up of balloon people.
02:04 The balloon people itself are just a bunch of balloons wandering around with feet balloons.
02:10 Some of them even have caricatures. We have Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and we got this weirdo bouncing around.
02:16 [Music]
02:18 Now do you remember when I reviewed the cartoon Mini the Moocher?
02:22 I never bothered to point out that if anybody's remembered Look Who's Talking 2, Mikey was watching this in one scene.
02:28 Some people actually recognize the cartoon that way.
02:32 And if I ever get around to reviewing the Talkin' Magpies, I can mention that this was the cartoon that Uma Thurman and her daughter was watching in the ending of Kill Bill Vol. 2.
02:41 Now where did I see Balloon Land for the first time? It was in a movie called Merlin's Magic Shop.
02:48 Now where did I see that movie?
02:54 Yeah, doesn't that just explain everything?
02:59 So as you can assume, the Balloon Society is made up of all the balloons you need, including the animals that are made of balloons, and even the trees that are made of balloons.
03:09 [Music]
03:15 It's original?
03:19 So here they are working in their everyday life, taking sap from a tree and putting it in some sort of Dr. Seuss-like univac here, only to create... they're creating people.
03:29 This is what the machine does? It creates people? That's what tree sap does? Okay, whatever, I'm not going to bother analyzing that.
03:36 [Music]
03:58 So there's your plot. A bunch of Balloon Land teenagers avoid the warnings of the Balloon Land parents and wander out into the wilderness where they're not supposed to go.
04:08 But are you ready for this film's villain? Are you ready for this?
04:13 I'm coming!
04:17 [Evil laughter]
04:20 I'm the old Pincushion Man, terror of Balloony Land!
04:26 It's a Pincushion Man. He's a man made of a pincushion and a safety pin.
04:32 Let me just mention one thing. I usually don't add to that whole propaganda of hidden innuendos of perversion within animated films, but did they really have to put that pin in the front of him like that?
04:45 I mean, I get it, it's a safety pin.
04:50 Still, couldn't they have put it in the back of him? And for that matter, why does he have a thimble on his head? Isn't that thimble supposed to protect you from-
04:57 Oh, what am I doing? I'm actually analyzing a human pincushion made of a safety pin. Why am I doing that?
05:03 So anyway, yeah, as you could assume, he threatens the teenagers and pops balloons all around him.
05:09 But that's not enough, he wants to get into the society and take on all the balloon people.
05:14 What about him getting past the retarded guard over here? My God, why on earth would they put Gomer Pyle as his national security?
05:21 I'd better not. The folks would blow up if I let you in.
05:27 Nonsense! I'm your friend! I've got to give you something!
05:32 Well, they're different.
05:40 Why don't they just kill him?
05:44 What are you going to give me?
05:48 This!
05:50 Oh my God, they just killed him.
05:58 Gee, I didn't see that one coming. And okay, he's killing more people now.
06:04 He's suddenly become a mass murderer, murdering people left and right and playing centipede at the same time.
06:10 Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at cartoon's first slasher villain.
06:15 You know, all this mass murder, though, kind of makes me wonder, what would happen if movie directors took upon the Balloon Land Society?
06:22 You know, like if they did a Balloon Land version of the movie Scanners.
06:27 Or if they ever took on the Balloon Land version of the movie Scarface.
06:33 Or if they ever did the Balloon Land version of Jaws.
06:38 Or if they ever did a Balloon Land version of Apocalypse Now.
06:43 I love the sound of bubble wrap in the morning.
06:46 Balloon Land don't surf!
06:50 All right, well, let me finish up here.
06:54 The Balloon Land soldiers gather up all the sap they could from the trees that they were multiplying with before,
07:00 and they use this as catapults.
07:04 Wait a second, they're catapulting the stuff they used to multiply?
07:10 And, uh, wow, okay, that's pretty disgusting.
07:15 Okay, wait, I can't let that one go.
07:17 Why are they using the stuff they used to make Balloon Land people and attack him with that?
07:22 Why don't they just shoot him or something?
07:24 I don't know, whatever.
07:26 They, in a most disgusting way, turn him into a sap ball,
07:31 and in a slow-motion death scene, he falls off the edge of a cliff, dying.
07:36 Have you ever seen so much grotesqueness in a cartoon before?
07:42 Well, besides that...
07:46 In closing, I heard a theory a lot growing up that Walt Disney and his team were on pot or acid
07:54 when they were doing the movie Alice in Wonderland.
07:57 But what was Abaiworks and his team on, heroin?
08:00 I mean, this is a strange cartoon.
08:03 But to be fair, it was very creative.
08:06 I mean, who would have thought anybody could even pull off making an entire society of balloons?
08:11 It seemed like it would be something that wouldn't even get past a drawing board.
08:15 But Abaiworks pulled off a short film.
08:18 As far as I'm concerned, there should be no limit to what you can do with your imagination in cartoons.
08:24 And Abaiworks did that.
08:26 And isn't that what animating cartoons is all about?
08:36 This is Waddle from Watch Waddle, saying...
08:38 [screams]
08:39 Oh, I can never look at that the same way again.
08:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]