Special Delivery

"Alice" heads off to her judo class leaving husband "Ralph" with one instruction - clear the snow from the path! He forgot! When he returns home he finds an uniformed corpse at his front door. It's the mailman - and he's clearly slipped on the ice and will post no more. Bundled into the house by a panic-stricken "Ralph", he must now think of a plan to get shot of the body before he ends up on the wrong end of a costly lawsuit. Firstly, though, he decides to finish of the man's delivery round so suspicion wouldn't fall on his home, but he leaves his keys in the wrong trousers, gets apprehended by the police trying to break into his own house and that leaves the unsuspecting "Alice" to come home to a forced window, a naked postie and an half drunk bottle of Scotch. Turns out she had romantic history with the postman - so now it is her who must find a way of disposing of the body! It's only then she realises that he's not just passed out, but deceased. Did "Ralph" do it? She flees and when he returns from his trip to the cop shop, he sees there's no longer a body (or a wife) so decides it's best to just forget all about it and sit by the fire... I did quite enjoy the black humour here and the daftness of the last two minutes with police and coroner deciding that convenience was the better part of valour. The simple, snowy, animation is effective and Sandy Sanderson's narration keeps his tongue well in his cheek.

This is a good story.

It is, however, entirely told by a narrator; rather blandly indeed, but it still makes for a pleasant listening.

The art is classically quite good, yet I have one issue with the entire thing: it doesn't add anything to the narration. In a way, it misses the point of being an animated film. To me, the pictures should come first, and if possible be self-sufficient.

I don't think that the opposite is true, that Special Delivery can tell its story without the narrator. To verify, I'd have to wait until I forget the events, and watch it without the sound, which is not going to happen.

Anyway, there's this flaw in the execution, but it doesn't make it bad in the least. It's a good tale, told with an average delivery instead of the expected special one.

Canadians have a way of twisting noir into humorous shapes.

This one does so both in the story, and more importantly in the way the world is drawn.

The story is an amazingly clever and entertaining journey of right turns. Its more noir than noir and the jags in the story are so extreme they're really funny.

But what makes this valuable is the way that the world, as drawn, complements this. As scenes change, parts of the world melt into and grow from each other. It is itself a series of unexpected causal linkages. See it. Its good.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Just discovered on Thad's Animation Blog this weirdly funny Oscar-winning short directed by Eunice Macaulay and John Weldon. It seems Alice is going out and tells husband Ralph to shovel the walk before he goes to work. He doesn't and when he returns home, he finds the mailman lying dead on the icy pathway. What Ralph does afterwards and the consequences that result changes all three lives (well, two of them anyway) forever...With the exception of the organ music and the narrator who delivers his lines in the same monotone style throughout, this animated short is silent. Despite the brief running time, Special Delivery has so much going on that every twist the narrator tells and the animators show us earns more laughs than the one before. The only other thing I have to say is I'm so glad I live in a place where it doesn't snow. (though occasionally there have been exceptions...)

This gem of an animated short shows us what can go wrong when you forget to clear the snow and ice off of your stairs. A funny, nicely animated, wonderfully narrated short, and it's easy to see why it won an Oscar. A typically outstanding feature from Canada's National Film Board.