The Chicken from Outer Space

This short was made for the Cartoon Network as a part of their Cartoon Cartoon series, aired in theaters and was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short. The rules have been changed to preclude nominees from being part of a series or conceived originally for television from being eligible. I personally think this is an excellent short and while I understand the logic behind the rules change, I consider it a shame nonetheless. The success of this short led to a series called Courage the Cowardly Dog, one of the better series in a line-up of series that is widely variable as to quality (some of it quite good, all too much of it poor indeed) and is well worth watching. Cartoon Network still shows it occasionally. Recommended.

This is a delightful cartoon as a cowardly dog tries to protect the farm from a chicken who comes rolling in on a flying saucer. The strength of it is in the wonderful caricatures of the farm people and the starkness of their existence. The dog gets no respect but is there when needed. He is, himself, a delight.

I always liked Courage the Cowardly dog because of its Terrifying Themes (I was never scared of the series since I found it interesting and its content was not terrifying) Courage was a Great Program that I Enjoyed for many years, about 4 or 5 years ago I found this pilot of the series and I don't remember well my opinion about this pilot so I decided to see it again and boy was it a Decent start for Courage.

The story as always is based on the cabin in the desert where Courage and his Owners are relaxing in the Living Room of the Cabin, but Eustace's bad guy scares Courage and he goes outside and sees how a ship arrives and from there down a Chicken, but not just any chicken!, A CHICKEN FROM OUTER SPACE!.

To start the series this was not a bad start, the plot is original and quite funny in itself.

The Animation is not the best in the world, it is quite inferior to what it had in the series but this is understandable since it is the pilot and there was not the Budget and Personnel to make an Episode of Higher Quality, but in spite of everything the animation looks warped and the designs look too bizarre and a bit ugly.

The Music is Quite Generic and is only there to give the Short setting.

The voice acting (there are only screams and vocal sounds) is flawed and sounds very strange but that makes the short have a similar setting to the series and makes it feel like the terrifying tone of the series.

In itself, The Chicken from Outer Space is not the Best of Courage but it is a decent start for this great series, the setting and its strange animation make the tone of the Pilot resemble the one it later had in the television series, for everything what I said this short takes a 7.

This is a very funny short. There is no dialogue, and the animation is quite unique - especially the way photographs of people are integrated into the animation (possibly the greatest moment, the space chicken shoots his laser, hits a photo of a guy, and it turns out crooked, with the guy's hair standing straight up).

It is too bad they had to go and make a stupid series out of this short. Cartoon Network is almost completely worthless...have to stay up until 4 AM to see anything good, otherwise we just get Cartoon Cartoons.

I watched Cartoon Network religiously when I was a kid, and one of the programs I remember watching on the channel was "What a Cartoon", which was a 30-minute block of one-off cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that also served as a way for Turner Broadcasting, CN's parent company, to acquire new intellectual properties, or IPs, for the channel. 1996's "The Chicken from Outer Space", which was created, written, produced, and directed by indie filmmaker John R. Dilworth, would be one of those shorts that would spin-off into one of those acquired IPs.

The short focuses on an old farmer, his wife, and more importantly, their pink dog named Courage, who live on a remote farm out in the middle of a desert (this would later be known as Nowhere, Kansas). A UFO lands in front of the home, and out comes its only occupant: a chicken with red eyes with malicious intent of taking over the world. Courage, who is coined as the "cowardly dog" in the opening credits, tries to explain to the farmer and wife (with no words) that an invader from outer space has landed, but they don't believe him. In fact, the farmer constantly scares the hell out of Courage with a mask in response. So it's up to Courage alone to defend his home from the chicken.

If you've seen some of his other works, including his commissioned work for Viacom, or more famously, his independent short "The Dirdy Birdy" (1994), you can see that this is exactly the kind of film one would expect from Dilworth. It is wacky, funny, and "out-of-this-world" (pun most certainly intended), especially during the scenes where Courage duels against the chicken while a "horrific" scene involving the farmer takes place. The way Courage also communicates with his owners, the chicken, and himself without any dialogue is also clever and unique, in that it took notes from the silent film era (think Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, or Buster Keaton) while also giving it a cartoon twist. Courage morphing into various creatures while explaining to his owners that an alien invader has landed would be an example of this in action.

Not only was Dilworth's idea picked up for a now much-beloved television series for Cartoon Network, but it was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. While it lost to Nick Park's "A Close Shave" (one of the "Wallace & Gromit" shorts), this was still a huge success for Dilworth, and three years later, he would be able to continue the wacky adventures of Courage for 52 half-hour episodes.

While it is rough around the edges compared to the series it would later take off from, this is a short I highly recommend giving another look at if you are itching for nostalgia. However, if you're in the more younger crowd and have seen some episodes of the series "Courage the Cowardly Dog" beforehand, this is also definitely worth a look if you are interested to see where it all began.