Balloon Land

"Tickles me the way they rate me!"-- The Pincushion Man.

And how WOULD you rate the Pincushion Man? He's a man made of pins, and he lurks in the woods outside of Balloon Land. Now, he does not like the Balloon People. In fact, from birth the Balloon People are warned against this evil dweller. Of course, once in Balloon Land, the deep-voiced villain goes on an alarmingly cheerful rampage.

Dark, horrific, but very intriguing. This is well worth watching, but it may traumatize you! Just take heart, and realize that the Pincushion Man is not real and you are not a balloon. The voice work is very well done, as is the animation. The Pincushion Man is easily up there on a list of top cartoon villains.

Ub Iwerks, the man who helped create Mickey Mouse, was not a success as owner of his own studio, although his output was of a consistently high quality. This is one of his better cartoons from that period which provides a fine example of his lively imagination. The film opens with a deceptively light-hearted sequence in which we are treated to balloon versions of comic icons Laurel & Hardy and Chaplin and also see balloon children being born in Balloon Land. Things turn much darker, however, when two of the kids venture out into the forest, disregarding their elder's advise to stay away from the pin cushion man, a truly frightening creation.

The juxtaposition of gaily coloured, cheerfully drawn balloon characters being popped to death at the hands of the devilish pin cushion man is certainly incongruous, but adds an edge to a cartoon that could so easily have gone the way of Walt Disney's far more soppy Silly Symphonies. It's a shame Iwerks didn't succeed as an independent - you can't help feeling that his imagination was never really given free rein once he returned to the Disney Studios following the collapse of his own studio.

Just watched this restored Ub Iwerks ComiColor cartoon on the DVD collection "Saved from the Flames". It is inhabited by creatures entirely made of balloons which includes three looking like Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin. Well, actually, there is a villain called the Pincushion Man who's what his name is and he likes popping anyone that comes near him so watch out! As with many of these '30s cartoons, there's plenty of music and the main characters are a boy and girl in love who persevere against all odds. The sound and colors are excellent and this was quite an entertaining cartoon from this period but I urge discretion if you want to expose your kids to this. So on that note, Balloon Land comes highly recommended.

This is a visually impressive cartoon, which should be expected from an Iwerks cartoon. As plots go, this was actually a pretty intricate one for the Iwerks studio, with a great villain voiced by a Disney regular, Billy Bletcher, who did Pegleg Pete, among others. The funniest bit for me was the town's "alarm" system. The Pincushion Man is really the most interesting character in the short, but it does offer some entertaining moments and is genuinely tense and frightening in spots. Iwerks deserves more notice and credit for what he had a responsibility for at Disney. His stint running his own studio wasn't as successful as he would have hoped, but he did produce (with an incredibly talented team, as a glance at the names of his employees will attest) some very good shorts. Balloon Land is one of the best that the Iwerks Studio created. Well worth watching. Recommended.

Balloon Land (1935)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

The title refers to a land where everything from the houses to the people are made out of balloons. The people are trained to fear the Pincushion Man because he can obviously kill them. Two newly formed kids decide to test that theory by going into the woods where the Pincushion Man follows them home and starts to terrorize the community. This two-strip Technicolor short from U.B. Iwerks is actually an incredibly dark little picture considering that the entire subject deals with the possible death of these people and there's a sequence where the Pincushion Man goes on a murdering rampage through the city. This was certainly a highly entertaining film thanks in large part to the characters who were either lovable (the balloon people) or downright hated (Pincushion Man). Another very big positive was the wonderful colors used for everyone. I watched this with my son and he said they looked like ICEE colors and he was pretty much correct.