HELLS FUCKING ASSCUNTS YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH \(^w^)/

I had just come back from a two-month hiatus, too. actually I had totally forgotten I had submitted it at all BUT HEY TALK ABOUT GOOD TIMING.

It's nice to see a seven-year project come to fruition, even if the bits and pieces you actually spent working on it really add up to maybe four solid years, even if it is really stupid, even if the prize is worth 1/200000th what you spent on earning it. It's just...nice.

...now to start work on the Squishyfish Sanctuary :D



In other news, I just found another movie from my childhood on YouTube. I rented it ages ago, only remembering one non-creepy scene from when I watched it as a kid, and was surprised to find a sincerely bizarre and disturbing vignette near the middle of a movie otherwise about dopey, happy ants.

The sequence starts at 2:32 here, segueing into the two-headed worm scene which continues into the second part.

As jotted down at the time:

The protagonist ant is assigned the job of guarding the colony’s eggs, so when one rolls off down a hole, he follows. Once well inside, he finds a rock covered in dense crystal. This breaks off, and the rock shines bright enough to blind him, represented by the pupils disappearing from his eyes. As if the white, sightless orbs aren’t bad enough, he proceeds to stumble around in the dark, crying and singing—yes, singing—about how he’ll never see the light of day again. Makes the evil two-headed worm that wants to eat him and the egg after he’s regained his sight pretty mild by comparison, really. The failure to explain why the rock becomes sentient and starts following him around is notably confusing, as well.

In more recent terminology: It comes right the fuck outta nowhere, has no bearing on the plot to the point that it's since been cut by the (presumably less drugged-up) DVD release team, is way over the top in terms of ridiculousness PANTS-WETTING EXISTENTIAL TERROR (ESPECIALLY in the context of the movie), and once it's over, no one ever speaks of it again. I know the distinction may be overused on the whole, but the scene is truly and completely a mmmmmBIG-LIPPED ALLIGATOR MOMENT. And when that happens in a disturbing manner, it forms a brain splinter, since the kid can't link it to anything and thus can't figure out whether it was real or a dream. I am soooo glad this is one of the movies my mother watched beforehand and edited for us.

Oh, and you will never get that Vanterviper song out of your head. Never ever never. Enjoy.

ETA: aaaaugh oh God I forgot their noses moved like elephant trunks oh God oh God

Oh God, guys, this is it. Somebody finally uploaded a semi-decent copy of Samson and Sally to YouTube.

This is seriously one of the worst contenders of Nightmare Fuel I've ever seen. Ever. It's not charming. It's not sweet. It's not whimsical. It has no redeeming values. It does not stop. It's seventy straight minutes of film that's alternately frightening, bleak, depressing, horrifying, dark, and confusing, and consistently utterly fucked up. Granted, that also kind of describes The Mouse and His Child, but at least that has a happy ending and artistic merit. Samson and Sally has neither.

I lost my play-by-play review of it when the House went down (still sore on that), but I wrote 80% of the TV Tropes notation, so I'll copy-and-paste that here as a description of the most damning offenses. LJ-cut for spoilers, I guess?


( Like whales beneath me, diving down )


So, yeah. Yet another piece in the "Why does Del have terrible nightmares every night?" puzzle. Speaking of which, last night I dreamed I was in Horton Hears a Who, but instead of boiling the dust speck, the kangaroos decided he was an enemy of the state because he knew the terrible secret of the corn and blinded him and I had to lead him to the gallows to be hung and he kept getting hurt and screaming and...you know what, never mind, I think I still have some pomegranate vodka downstairs...enjoy, kids.

So I was doing my periodic trawl of the various Nightmare Fuel pages and noticed someone mentioning that the Nostalgia critic had recently reviewed We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. They had a link to a creepy deleted scene, I followed it to the link to the full movie and I remembered that Megan had also asked recently if I had covered the film yet, so here we are by apparently popular request: We're Back!.

The Nostalgia Critic does as great a review as ever, so I won't say much. Just a few points:

--For the record, I do feel that it has merit as a film if you're into this kind of fucked up noise, but you know I am, and I know I have the nostalgia goggles tied on pretty tight most of the time.
--The "cage scene" link should be watched after the end, and watched in the middle of the distorted, disjointed pencil tests for maximum eeriness. While I can understand why they cut it, I wish they hadn't--not enough kids' villains do what they do because they have been shown the universe is cruel, insane, and senseless. It makes the ending particularly sobering, as it changes it from the triumph of good over evil to someone who was driven insane by a vicious act of nature being, essentially, killed by his own brother. Y'know, for kids!
--Also worth noting that Professor Screweyes and his entire plotline apparently didn't exist in the book the movie was based on. There's a special kind of crazy you only get in cartoons.
--I actually kind of dig the overwrought religious metaphor, because it's the weirdest fucking way I've ever seen Christianity interpreted.

Anyway, here are the links. Go nuts.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story
The "Cage" Scene (Professor Screweyes' Origins)
The Nostalgia Critic review


ETA: oh sweet baby Jeebus that is skunk somebody hit a skunk out there oh gawd it's burning my eeeeeyes

(This actually happened a while ago, but I forgot to document it. Remembered while watching Coonskin, the majority of which has apparently been deemed too intense for YouTube since I grabbed it. Hell, the hallucination sequence (5:30 on) was almost too intense for me...oh, Bakshi, you so nucking futs.)

My mother and I are driving somewhere, talking about disturbing cartoons...
Mom: That bizarre Felix movie always reminds me of the time in college when my boyfriend and I went to the only air-conditioned theatre in town because it was so hot out and ended up seeing a pornographic Felix cartoon.
Myself: Yeah, you've mentioned that before. It's a shame it wasn't Fritz the Cat, that would've been EPIC.
Mom: ...oh! You know what? It WAS Fritz the Cat! That was the name of it! I mixed it up with that other weird one!
Myself: You saw Fritz the Cat in theatres? YOU? THE Fritz the Cat? The most famous adult cartoon ever? The first movie to EVER get an X rating? THAT Fritz the Cat? BY ACCIDENT?!
Mom: It was hot out!

So, yeah, it runs in the family. Kind of like this, but with disturbing cartoons and a fifteen-year time delay on the zygote thing. I have yet to watch it, but I'll let you guys know if any scenes seem eerily familiar.

Also? My mom. Totally awesome. As if we needed any more evidence.


ETA: Removed link since I realized it was to the sequel to Fritz the Cat. The movie proper is also apparently too intense for YouTube. Pity.

(Don't miss the last post--snark ho!)

Sweet mothering truck, someone finally uploaded A Journey Through Fairyland on YouTube! Awesome!

If you're a friend or long-time reader of my journal, you'll recall my mentioning JTF before, as yet another one of Sanrio's utterly insane feature films. Sanrio was also the driving force behind both Unico movies, A Mouse and His Child, Sea Prince and Fire Child, and something else that escapes me at the moment. It's a hell of a track record, and JTF is no Nightmare Fuel exception. Unlike the others, I actually saw this movie as a small child. It was the source of my most enduring imaginary friend (Tribble the Black Squiggly Thing, as Treble the Clef Note was lost on me), and it was one of the first anime movies I ever saw. It was also the source of Baby's First Tentacle Scene. While it was my favorite scene, it was out of morbid curiosity as to what the inexplicable thing WAS, not out of interest in what it was doing. My, how things change...

Creepy fetish content aside, the quality's a bit of a wash, but it's still well worth a look if you like old anime, weird cartoons, or, well, tentacles. Really cute in parts and utterly insane in others, this remains one of my bizarre favorites and I've been wanting to share it for years.


In other "bizarre things Del was obsessed with as a kid" news, I found a slime mold today! When I was a kid, I read an article and pictured something akin to the Blob, and spent months trying to find one to keep as a pet. While they're not quite like I pictured, they're almost as amazing--a creature that's not quite plant and not quite animal, with amoebas and spores and all kinds of cool shit in. I actually noted its movement of about a centimeter from where it was before class to where it was after, and it left a red trail in its wake. Possibly it was upset that I poked it with a stick. In short, he's the coolest thing I've ever seen, his name is Archimedes, and I love him. I told the Bio lab tech about him and she was happy to take a look, but vetoed my suggestion that he could be a class pet on the grounds that they're difficult to maintain. That's okay, Archimedes is a ramblin' man.

This one's for you, Archimedes. In several months, you may have managed to amble off, but you will always squish along in my heart.


ETA: wtf the school just went into lockdown? more later
ETAA: Lifted. Freaked out now. Update from home.
ETAAA: I have no idea what that was about. They herded us into the center of the library and turned off the lights--no one knew what the lockdown was for and they were afraid of someone seeing us and shooting at us. Tensest fucking five minutes of my adult life. If I died because I spent an extra two hours at school hugging Pokemon eggs and downloading YouTube videos, I would be so pissed at myself as a ghost. Guess I'll find out later what happened, assuming for now that Archimedes grew to epic proportions and attacked the city. Need vodka now.

So now that school's out, I'm continuing to watch my way through DuckTales (awoo-oo). I somehow managed to leave off last time right before one of the few episodes I actually got to watch as a kid--and, coincidentally, the one that creeped me out on a number of levels. Why? Why. That singing isn't something that I forgot so much as let snuggle down in the folds of my grey matter as a damp, uncomfortable association to certain words like "siren", "Odyssey", "undulation", "eldritch", and "pants-wetting". Always a pleasant surprise before breakfast.

Anyway, in conjunction with having had a nightmare about one of the old-school Mickey Mouse comics the night before (there were these monkey scientists and death rays and...oh, never mind, you had to be there), it reminded me of one of the more bizarre Uncle Scrooge comics I found last fall. Carl Barks never shied away from the unusual and we love him for it, it's true, but this one is really uncomfortably close to Uncanny Valley territory. Now that I know how to convert CDisplay files into JPEGs, I figured it'd be well worth the minimal effort to bring you this rather offbeat offering, just for the halibut and also to recruit some more people into this fandom oh God I'm so lonely. Enjoy.

(Note: Despite the tags, I did not actually scan this. Credit for that goes to some kind anonymous Internet-goer. You know who you are, and we thank you for it.)

(Additional note: Have I mentioned lately how much I want to see Magica DeSpell in a Kingdom Hearts game? Oh God, that would rock so hardcore. So hardcore.)

( The Many Faces of Magica DeSpell )


Next up: Catching up on journals, then brushing the dust off my Screencap Adventure. Until then, peace out.

ETA: *WHEEZE* *WHEEZE* *WHEEEEEEEEEEEEZE*

OH MY GAAAAAAAWD :D :D :D

I catch chill way too easily to live in Michigan. Mom told me recently that I was a few degrees colder than normal when I was born. I don't think I ever stopped.

Anyway, in a special Yuletide episode of Brain Splinters, come one, come all to sit by the fire and enjoy the creepiest animated A Christmas Carol adaptation I've ever seen. It's also the best, with beautiful ink-scratch art and the most direct-from-Dickens content I've seen in any animated Christmas Carol adaptation.* An Oscar winner with Chuck Jones for an executive producer, this is genuine quality in four short parts. Don't miss it.
----
*If I seem over-specific here, you obviously haven't seen The Muppet Christmas Carol, the contender in live-action for these categories. It is also my favorite Christmas movie. Hands-down. Ever. And I watch a LOT of Christmas movies. Watch it, guys. You won't regret it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the latest disturbing cartoon is on the chopping block, and I couldn't be happier.

Roughly four years ago, I read a review on the lolicious Cold Fusion describing a classic mystery cartoon case and the epic lengths gone to to resolve it. Being the animation fag I am, I immediately put this "Jack and the Witch" on my hotlist. However, as the movie a TV special and never released (in English, anyway), finding it was literally impossible...at least, until someone was kind enough to splice the bootleg English VHS audio over the Japanese DVD video and package it up for YouTube.

Cold Fusion does a better job of summarizing it than I could, but I'll go ahead and say this--grade-A, premium nightmare fuel in a variety of flavors. Seriously, it's not strict in how it WTFs, it's a nice big buffet of assorted weirdness. Besides that--and this can be rare in my line of collection--it's a good movie. It has a bright, smooth, kicky style of animation that the end credits suggest is based on pre-sculpted characters, it has a good half-dozen plot twists where the average kids' movie has one or two, it's imaginative, and even the voice acting is charming in that "Oh yeah, this is an early Japanese dub" kind of way. It was fun, in short. Unlike the godawful swarm of low quality that is Felix the Cat the Movie or the uneasy fetish-fest that is Raggedy Ann and Andy, I'd be perfectly happy watching this multiple times. Even if you're not fond of these entries in general, if you like cartoons, this one's worth checking out.

IN OTHER WORDS A++++ WOULD WATCH AGAIN GG TEAM.

In other news, I'm having enough trouble remembering/finding the details about a cartoon I heard about and forgot to hotlist that I'm now wondering if I actually read about it or just dreamed it. WE ARE OFFICIALLY OVER THE SWINGSET, KIDS.

ETA: Oh thank God, it exists. There are some things I really do not want my subconscious to be responsible for.

Myself: (hears odd noises) ? (goes outside, despite being pantsless and it being one in the morning)
Raccoons: (are sitting in the window-ledge birdfeeder; stare)
Myself: Oi, you!
Raccoons: *stare*
Myself: What do you think you're doing, then?
Raccoons: *stare*
Myself: That birdseed's for the birds, y'know.
Raccoons: *stare*
Myself: Fat, sassy things.
Raccoons: *stare*
Myself: Aaaaah, fine, then. (leaves them to it)

Cheeky buggers. Had to open the window before they grudgingly waddled off, and I think I hear them back now.

My connection's back up, and I have some links to sort through before handing out. In the meantime, take a melancholy animated short based on a Ray Bradbury story (the link to the original story is below the video window) and a crazy-ass French safe sex PSA and its "straight" counterpart (latter two NSFW).

ETA: Oh, I totally forgot! I had some spare time yesterday so I did something I meant to do long ago--raid an old educational CD-ROM of ours for a little movie that creeped me the fuck out as a kid. It attempts to explain black holes by showing the White Rabbit falling down one, and is about twice as weird and unsettling as it sounds. It's only a minute and a half long and can be found here. I'd appreciate it if you took the time, considering it took several hours of swearing and sweating to strip it out of the source files. Now that I know how to do it, though, I might go back in again...I seem to recall another short about the Big Crunch that was a mite worrisome.