What if...?

    What if Cartoon Cuties had been a Saturday morning show back in the 80's? Is this what Crissy and Roger would've looked like?

A Quick Look at TV: PIGGSBURG PIGS

    Here's an obscure one. Produced in 1990 for the Fox Network, this was one of the last classic shows from Ruby-Spears. It was an odd one, too. Basically, it was a funny animal version of a classic Archie-style teen comedy -with monsters. 

 

   Somewhere along the coast, evidently in California, was Piggsburg -a town populated entirely by cartoon pigs. It bordered a gloomy forest region called The Forbidden Zone, and was prone to visitation by monsters of all variety. The first episode involved body-snatching mummies from outer space! The main characters were the Bacon brothers. Bo was the regular guy supported by his more comedic brothers Portly (modeled on Curly Howard) and Pighead (based on Art Carney). They had a pet duck named Quackers (the pigs had fowl as pets rather than dogs). Portly and Pighead competed for the affection of their friend Dotty, while Bo favored a blonde piggette named Lorelei. Also interested in Lorelei was rich-but-shallow snob Rembrandt Proudpork. Others in the regular cast included frequent babysitting subjects children Piggy, Pokey, and Prissy. Piggy and Pokey were troublemakers who loved to pull pranks on the others, Prissy their sweet sister who tried to keep peace. Peripheral to all this was a pair of wolves named Huff and Puff, who kept trying to snare Piggsburg citizens in order to eat them. Fortunately, their attempts usually backfired with the pigs being entirely unaware that the wolves were even on the scene. 

 

   For some reason, Piggsburg was a magnet for the supernatural, with monsters frequently trying to invade and use the city as a base for world conquest. All this was evidently set in the real world, too, and the characters occasionally interacted with human beings. Unfortunately, they tended to be mad scientists and the like. The results felt akin to the old Bowery Boys pictures in a way. Strange as it sounds, it could be a pretty good show. It didn't quite catch on, however, and was cancelled in the first season. Only 13 episodes were made, and they remain difficult to find. The only known DVD release was in the UK, which consisted of but six episodes spread over three disks.

A Quick Look: HOMEBODIES (1974-color)

    One of the quirkiest flicks I've run across. HOMEBODIES tells the story of a group of elderly folk who live in a condemned building in a city slum area. The block is being cleared for an industrial project by it's owner, but the tenets of this building refuse to move out of their familiar surroundings. When an accident causes delay in construction of a new skyscraper, the elders begin arranging for more accidents to keep their building standing a little longer... One oddball picture. It's opening sequences imply it's going to be about the hardships of the elderly in an uncaring world, but we eventually figure out that these people are just insane (standing in the way of progress out of selfishness more than anything else, but beyond being able to realize it). A weird one, to say the least, but I gotta admit that it kept me engaged. Plenty of familiar faces here, including Ian Wolfe, Peter Brocco, and Ken Tobey. An odd one you might not return to very soon, but intriguing in it's own quirky way.

Daisy Duck, Pinup Girl?

 

A Quick Look: THRILLER (1983-color)

    Say what you will about Michael Jackson, he certainly earned his title of The King Of Pop in the 80's. Truly, the Jackson sound defined 80's pop music. Once a member of the Jackson Five, Michael embarked on a solo career which produced hit after hit and really defined the new entertainment form of the music video (while the format went back to the dawn of the cinematic age, it really became a force in the opulent 80's). Still considered one of the best music videos ever made, THRILLER was an ambitious project directed by John Landis, co-written by Landis and Jackson. The two-reeler was a tribute to classic monster movies, which is somewhat ironic as Jackson reportedly hadn't seen all that many monster flicks. (Despite his performance here, he thought the genre too scary!)

   The plot is fairly simple. We open with a sequence in which a young lady is shocked to discover her fella is a werewolf, but this turns out only to be a movie being viewed by Jackson and his girl (Playmate Ola Ray) at the theater. Despite the fact that the couple is IN the movie they're watching, she finds the picture more terrifying than enjoyable so Michael walks her home and begins singing the title tune to calm her down. Unfortunately, as they pass a cemetery, the corpses start crawling out of their graves. When they surround the couple, Michael becomes a zombie himself and leads the undead in an elaborately choreographed production number.

   Running a full 14 minutes, the film is an incredible work of art. Rick Baker (no relation) provides the make-up (amusingly, within the zombie horde is a fella meant to resemble Tor Johnson). Elmer Bernstein provides the "scary" music in between the song sequences. Vincent Price provides some spooky voice over during the scene where the zombies are emerging from their graves. Co-producing with Jackson is legendary music man Quincy Jones. Forry Ackerman and Charlton Heston are visible in the theater audience. The budget for the film, that was released theatrically, was five times what the average video cost. 

   Reportedly, it only took four days to shoot, which is pretty impressive. Jackson proves a decent actor as well as a great singer, although at this point he's already had his nose reduced beyond the point of no return (which makes his zombie makeup effective, but I could never figure why a singer would risk his craft by having his nose operated on -not that he was the first by any means, Dean Martin had his nose reduced and obviously his voice never suffered for it). Given his later escapades, it's difficult to praise his work with such relish, but there's no denying the incredible talent on display here.

   THRILLER remains one of the most popular music videos of all time, and like so many of Jackson's tunes from this period has you humming the song endlessly after hearing it.

A Quick Look: BLINKY BILL (1992-color)

 

    America has Mickey Mouse, England has Winnie The Pooh, Canada has The Raccoons, and Australia has Blinky Bill. Ironically, the pride of Australian kiddie fare was actually the creation of an immigrant from neighboring New Zealand. Reportedly, Dorothy Wall invented the character to entertain her young son, but the books she authored became huge hits. Almost from the start, Dorothy knew the character would be perfect for the animated screen and she simplified the (originally more realistic) character designs before shopping the the idea around to every major animation studio in Hollywood. She failed to generate much interest, and then she suddenly passed away in, I think, 1946. Blinky lay dormant for decades, but continued to become ingrained in Aussie culture. It was Australian cartoon studio Yoram Gross which finally brought Blinky to the screen in 1992.

 

   BLINKY BILL, in short, tells of the sudden calamity which befalls the animal community of Greenpatch when loggers (illegal ones, the film stresses, lest it come across as an attack on the logging industry as a whole) crash through and harvest all the trees for lumber. As the villagers seek shelter in some caves, Blinky Bill mounts a rescue operation to save his friend Nutsy, who has become trapped in the loggers' home where their young daughter wants to keep her as a pet. During the rescue operation, Blinky finds his missing mother, who has been trapped inside the tree they lived in and has been stranded inside the wood pile slated to become wood chips. The mill, as one might expect, suffers heavy damage before the animals drive away in the loggers' own truck.

 

   Most of the characters that would carry into the resulting series are present. There's Blinky the young, and quite 'cheeky' koala, of course, and his very sweet feminine counter-part Nutsy. Their friends include the insecure marsupial mouse Marcia, who after being rather frightened in this picture would go on to front a courageous personality. Flap is the amusing young platypus who would go on to become one of the most visible characters in the franchise. Splodge is Blinky's closest friend, a young kangaroo. The sage of the group is the elder Mr. Wombat (whom everybody calls "Wombo" much to his dislike). Mayor Pelican is the loud-mouthed windbag he would continue to be throughout the resulting series, and so on. 

 

   The movie seems to rely on the audience being aware of the characters, and it helped me that I'd already seen the resulting TV series (it pretty much HAD to go to series, since the movie ends with the animals still in exodus). It's notable for the Yoram Gross trademark of laying animation over live-action background plates. All the following series would opt for traditional drawn backgrounds. I'm not sure the film works all that well as a stand-alone vehicle, but it was a success and television was quick to continue the story.

 

   The Adventures Of Blinky Bill followed the animals as they set down roots in a new territory and rebuilt their town of New Greenpatch. This included an uneasy co-existence with a family of dingoes, which is interesting to watch develop over the course of the series and it's sequels -as the dingoes go from trouble-making neighbors to strong allies. Notable is the character of Daisy Dingo, a figure of womanly proportions who became first crush to a lot of Aussie boys.

 

   Essentially the second season of the show, the follow-up series was Blinky Bill's Extraordinary Excursion. Starting and finishing with more typical Greenpatch adventures, the larger middle of the series found Blinky and his friends getting lost and wandering the outback as they searched for home. That was the last of the 90's episodes, but the series continued to be popular and in 2003 a new series came along simply titled Blinky Bill. This one was basically one long serial as Blinky, Nutsy, and Flap rescued some abused circus animals and then traveled the globe to return them to their families. This series was noted for it's slight change in aesthetic (which might be best described as looking more like a comic book than a cartoon series), but it was also a bit more energetic than the first two series (which grow on you, but it must be admitted start kinda slow).

 

   Finally, in 2005 came a second movie BLINKY BILL'S WHITE CHRISTMAS, which returned to the more comfortable aesthetic of the first two seasons. The cast was reduced somewhat for this vehicle, as it mostly follows Blinky and Flap as they search for a pine tree to present to Wombo as a Christmas present.  Following this, the whole franchise was re-tooled and the results are reportedly pretty weak. Despite all this material, the only bit of it that has gotten to the US so far is a DVD set of the first season of the teleseries (and it was rather weirdly packaged, showing the show opening, then all the episodes playing back-to-back without titles, and the end credits playing on the last episode).

   In the end, it may not have been the most perfect franchise, but it was incredibly charming. Those interested in some relaxed fun could do far worse. As to the movie itself, well, I think it helps if you can follow it up with the teleseries. Particularly if you can follow it through to the delightful Christmas special.

   An odd little side note is the interaction betwixt the animals and humans. In the movie and the first series, neither understands the other when they speak. In the second series, the animals can understand humans if they actively listen to them. By the third series, there's no language barrier at all!

Moth Girl experiments