Fun in Balloon Land

I have to write a review of this as part of my therapy program. I landed in therapy as a direct result of this film.

In order to confront my fears now I must face this film. As a warning I suggest no parent ever subject their child to the acid trip known as Fun in Balloon Land.

There really is nothing to spoil, but if you watch this movie and start seeing the ghostly spectre of a tiny boy in gold lame shorts while holding hands with a lobster, I can recommend a good therapist.

The film is what I can only assume passes for fun in hell. Oh and it's set in Balloon Land.

Literally everything about this thing is wrong. The lighting, the acting, the sound, the camera, the music, the writing... everything. And I don't even know if I can consider this as a film, because 70% of this thing is filled with stock footage from a Thanksgiving parade. There's barely any plot, most of the balloons look lackluster, the begining and ending song is terrifying, the poster is just a still from the "movie" with a generic logo slapped in it. If this thing was ever shown in a theater, I'm pretty sure it was just some local centre from wherever this was filmed. (I think it was Pennsylvania?)

Anyways, this thing is just the bottom of the barrel when it comes to filmmaking, alongside Santa's Christmas Elf (Named Calvin), Dingo Pictures, After Last Season, and any other amateur thing that I've probably never heard about yet. Please don't watch this movie, unless you wanna see how bad it is.

So if a movie was filmed, edited, released, and seen by more people than just the director and his mom, it gets an entry on IMDb? You learn something new every day!

A diaper-wearing kid falls asleep, and dreams of something called Balloon Land, which amounts to some gigantic balloons in a pedophile's warehouse/ garage. There is a bit of piano music hear in these scenes, but the piano music is clearly being performed live, by someone sitting behind the camera, as it is obviously live, and drowning in echo. Someone is blowing bubbles on the audio tracks, crew members can clearly be seen moving the balloons around, and the end of the so-called stage can frequently be seen, along with a bit of lighting equipment, before the film pads out its run time with footage of an unidentified parade filled with gigantic balloons, and an unidentified female narrator, who can't seem to decide if she is narrating a kid's movie, or doing a porn flick. It frequently shows the audience reacting to the balloons in this parade, and they look as bored and confused as the few people who have ever seen this probably looked.

How was this ever made, and by who? Was it ever screened publicly, and if it was, how many people saw it, and what was their response to it? Its production history is a complete mystery, no cast or crew received any screen credit. Aside from its title, and 1965 copyright date, nothing is known of its origins.

In reality, this was most likely done by Gigantic Balloon co, Inc., just to promote themselves, and make use of some leftover balloons, the original footage was probably filmed in one morning, and on one take, with the parade footage filmed the same evening, and on absolutely zero budget, guerrilla-style, and the people who made this are likely in prison.

This was obviously a parade that was shot so it could be shown on television, only it did not stop there. No, instead, we get a strange story thrown in to balloon this up to a nearly one hour show. So, if I had to guess, I am thinking they needed to fill an hour time slot on television so they padded this thing so it would fill said time slot using a very creepy story and basically a review of what had just happened. I think they should have simply condensed down the parade footage so that they could simply fill a half an hour slot and just do a Christmas special for the other half hour.

The story, hm, that's a tough one. First you get a song singing about balloon land before switching to a mother reading to her son. He gets up and sticks his nose in the corner and we are off to balloon land where they make no attempt to really make balloons do much and instead have children running around on different sets. The most disturbing being the young boy running around in a golden diaper. Then you watch the average cities Christmas parade which is like every parade...BORING! Seriously have yet to figure out the point of them. Finally, we get a recap of what we saw...

The most crazy thing about the film was the host of the parade who would shout as the balloons went by and describe them in some absurd way. She definitely sounded as if she had a few drinks too as she announced how gay everything was. I realize gay back then was used to describe a happy person, but seriously, she still used it way too much! Get a thesaurus!

So this is not really a film in the truest sense. Just a parade filmed and padded so it could fill the allotted time period. I saw this thanks to the guys at Rifftrax and they made watching this 'film' entertaining as even they were perplexed by exactly who would be watching this thing. So if you want to watch a very strange boy walking around and looking at big balloons and people shouting from a distance as if they were talking, a parade hosted by a tipsy woman and a pointless recap of what you have just seen, this is your movie!