Fun in Balloon Land

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.

Throughout the early days of films, there were lots of poorly made low budget Christmas films such as "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" and "Santa Claus" which have been lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. This movie however is SO BAD that I am not going to describe all of it.

The "film" is about a boy named sonny who is being read a story about Balloon Land by his mother. After this the rest of the "film" is just amateur footage from a balloon parade. The balloons are so badly made and creepy looking. If you want a good balloon parade watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Overall, avoid this "Film" at all costs. Please!

I felt many emotions while on my egregious odyssey through the horrors of balloon land, but "fun" is definitely not an adjective I'd be comfortable with using to describe the tedium and mind numbing insanity inflicted on me while staring into the abyss of this oddly transgressive and borderline creepy "movie" that's really just a very annoying home movie that washed up onto the shores of hell. I swear to all living/breathing beings that enjoy films that I'm not exaggerating when I say this is honest to god the single worst movie I have ever seen in my life. It's so tedious, annoying, poorly made, and irrelevantly ridiculous that it exceeds new levels of badness I didn't even think were possible. I laugh when I hear friends of mine say how bad The Last Airbender or Green Lantern are and take so much solace knowing they'll never be subjected to the IQ dropping levels of stupidity found in Fun in Balloon Land.

F-

-1/10.

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!

Fun in Balloon Land is not so much a movie, in the conventional sense, as it is a series of semi connected events that happen to take place mostly in front of a camera. There is no plot, no logic, no real acting or actors, and no explanation for why such a thing should exist.

The "story" (if it can be described as such) is that little Sonny falls asleep while his mother reads him bedtime stories, then dreams of various adventures in the magical word of Balloon Land, which is filled with giant balloon animals and fairy tale people. What we actually get is Sonny and other unnamed children wandering around a warehouse and interacting with strange balloon people, plus unrelated footage of a balloon parade, narrated by a crazy woman.

One of the first things you notice, aside from grotesque the balloon people are, is that whenever Sonny talks to them, it takes an awkwardly long time for the balloons to mumble something back. Much of this dialog is completely unintelligible, and it's obvious that whoever's voicing the balloon people is just shouting from offscreen. No effort is taken to hide the fact that the "set" is just a warehouse, and at several points workers, set lights, or the end of the stage are clearly visible. Throughout this section the camera moves so rarely that I suspect there was no actual cameraman.

The parade section is somewhat better, insofar as we can tell what's going on, and aren't worried about the safety of the children involved. Sadly, this is mostly offset by the dismal appearance of the balloons, and the extreme length and slowness of the parade. The one source of entertainment Is the woman narrating all this. She's oddly animated, unreasonably excited about each and every lackluster balloon float, and keeps insisting against all evidence that the bored, shivering children love the parade as much as she does. I'm not sure if she's seriously overcaffeinated or just trying way too hard, but either way it's kind of surreal.

So is the whole movie for that matter. Surreal, bizarre, baffling, and utterly incompetent on every level. So incompetent that it makes Ed Wood and Tommy Wisaeu look like real directors by comparison. The only possible reason for its existence is as an extended advertisement for its creators, Gigantic Balloon Parade co, which makes it a strong contender for the worst commercial ever released.

I hesitate to call this the worst movie ever made, because it's not nearly as grating or cringy as some of the other "worst ever" candidates, and aside from a pair of unbelievably racist balloons, there's little that's outright objectionable. That said, it is probably the cheapest, most pitiful excuse for a movie I've ever witnessed, and I can't imagine watching it without help from Rifftrax.