Les escargots

A strange short piece - I watched this because I like René Laloux's Fantastic Planet a lot. If you like strange and odd things and got the chance put this 10 minute running piece on your screen, you won't regret it, or at least won't lose much time.

This was an odd cartoon, for several reasons. It was in the middle of this DVD collection I bought of 1930s cartoons and this was made in 1965. It also is French. It also is more of a science-fiction story out of the 1950s, or even a horror story, much more than a comedy which one normally associations with cartoons. An "animated short" is a better description of this strange story.

That story is about a farmer who is trying to grow lettuce. He has no luck until he discovers one day that his tears make the salad grow. He brings an onion with him and then hits himself our the head - whatever it takes to make him cry and produce these big heads of lettuce. The bad news is that snails invade these big vegetables and the snails turn out to be giants. They invade the nearby city and capture the humans, kids and adults. If this were a '50s film, you just know it would be called "Attack Of The Giant (or Killer) Snails!"

These escargots (snails) even demolish the city's buildings! What happens after that is even more bizarre, but funny.

I found the artwork strange, too: excellent in spots and primitive in others. Although I found it all interesting, I wasn't quite sure what to think as far as entertainment value. It's more of a curiosity piece. However, if the pace wasn't so slow, this could have been really good because the premise was good.

An old man tries to grow crops on a strange planet. He has no success, even though he waters them. Frustrated, he begins to cry and his tears cause the plants to grow to enormous size. However, at night, snails begin to invade his crops and they grow to an enormous size and begin to attack the planet's inhabitants. Even though they are slow moving it seems they can't be outrun (remember the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes). It's s silly little plot with unique animation in a sort of Monty Python style.

This is a simplistic and slightly silly work of surrealist animation that clocks in at barely ten minutes, but is till far more entertaining and watchable than most science fiction film being produced today (and probably most sci-fi films of the past as well). It is mostly a comedy, at first focusing on a farmer who desperately grows his crops to enormous sizes. Then, through unexpected twists and turns, things get pretty wild and before you know it a giant snail is trying to watch a women undress! This is probably one of the quirkiest science fiction films I've ever seen, and is surprisingly upbeat and lighthearted in overall tone (even if it does contain a fair share of violence an probable death; however all of this is playful and cartoonish in nature so...) considering the same director-animator duo made not only "Fantastic Planet", but also a short animated classic named "Dead Times", which is one of the most depressing f*cking short films I've ever seen. It's good to see that these two can be a little less heavy handed and sad every now and then.

A struggling farmer discovers that his tears make his lettuces grow massive. Sadly this also applies to the snails who feed on the crop. They soon set off and terrorise a city causing widespread destruction.

It's a very basic and silly story-line. It's really only there to allow for some memorable images. It's an early bit of work from Fantastic Planet creator René Laloux. Like others from the director it's has one foot firmly in the surrealist camp. It also reminded me quite a bit of the kind of animation that Terry Gilliam would go on to be famous for in Monty Python. It seems to be influenced partially by sci-fi schlock movies where over-sized creatures run rampant terrorising the local population. But more than anything this is a comedy. It's even occasionally quite funny with scenes of the farmer devising way to ensure he keeps on crying, he wanders his fields reading Hamlet and later with a device that hammers him repeatedly on the head. It's overall too short and slight to make too much of an impression but it's a fun film nevertheless.