DVD Review: In the Realms of the Unreal (2004)

Jessica Yu's award-winning documentary, In the Realms of the Unreal offers a portrait of one man's astonishing inner life.  Henry Darger was an elderly recluse.  He spent his childhood in an Illinois asylum for 'feeble-minded' children and his adulthood working as a janitor in Chicago.  He lived a quiet life alone in his apartment, while regarded him as a harmless eccentric.  But when Darger died in 1973, his landlady discovered three hundred paintings in his room, some over ten feet long, and a 15,000-page illustrated novel called The Realms of the Unreal.  Darger's magnum opus told the epic story of the virtuous Vivian Girls, seven angelic sisters who lead a rebellion against the cruel, child-enslaving kingdom of Glendillinia.  Bursting with colour and imagination, the artwork was exhibited in major galleries and went on to inspire poetry, music and plays. 

Storybook narration from child star Dakota Fanning sets the tone for Yu's engaging fable.  She weaves portions of Darger's autiobiography read by Larry Pine, interviews with his surviving neighbours, still photographs (only three pictures of Darger exist) and animated excerpts from The Realms of the Unreal, and creates a moving picture book.  As a human being, Darger remains a mystery even to those who knew him.  Many of those interviewed here can't even agree how to pronounce his name, or on small details like where he sat in church.  Darger himself sometimes claimed his real name was Henry Dargarus and he was born in Brazil. 

DVD Review: Les Maîtres du temps (1982)

The second of René Laloux’s widely-spaced sci-fi trilogy, Les Maîtres du temps is the weakest of the three, having neither the trippiness and allegorical smarts of The Fantastic Planet (1973) nor the visual inventiveness of Gandahar (1988). Nonetheless, as a children’s film (the other two have distinctly adult themes and imagery) it shows an admirable moral probity and has a serviceable if rather pedestrian story.

The cold open sees an imperilled spaceship crash-land on the remote and inhospitable planet Perdide. The occupants are a father and his young son. The father, Claude, sends an emergency distress call and gives his son Piel an interstellar communicator before dying of injuries sustained in the crash.

DVD Review: Gandahar (1988)

The third and final animated feature in René Laloux’s sparse but luminous career is often compared unfavourably to his groundbreaking The Fantastic Planet (1973). In fact Gandahar is a compelling, moody, visually stunning work which though flawed evokes a genuine sense of the alien and the dreamlike.

Warrior Sylvain has been tasked by the Council of Women to discover the cause of a recent spate of deaths and abductions in peaceful, agrarian Gandahar. He travels across the ‘circumscribing oceans’ and discovers a race of mute, murderous androids who have been petrifying Gandaharians and spiriting them through a mysterious door. And the mystery deepens: for each body brought through the door, another android marches out.

Before solving the puzzle – an unusually satisfying and cerebral solution for animated SF – Sylvain has time to meet beautiful blue-skinned Airelle and a race of deformed mutants, both of whom are of help in his quest. Indeed, the imaginary menagerie of alien creatures is one of the film’s highlights.

DVD Review: Jan Svankmajer Short Films (1964-1992)

Creator of some of cinema's most weird and wonderful animations, not to mention darkest and most disturbing, Czech director/writer Jan Svankmajer began making films in 1964 after an artistic education that included a spell in the Marionette Faculty of Prague's Academy of Fine Arts - not often you can throw that one into a biog.

During the 1970s, his work had become so bizarre that the Czech authorities temporarily banned him from making more films.  This forced his hand to exhibit his tactile sculptures, which ensured the filmmaking ban was quickly reversed!

Most of his productions combine multiple techniques such as stop-motion, claymation, live action and puppetry and its fair to say all can be filed under the heading 'Surreal'.  An overused adjective maybe, but this deserves it.

The sleeve of this newly released DVD collection is a perfect 'does-what-it-says-on-the-tin' illustration of what is held within.  Your head will indeed feel slightly mashed not long after pressing play, but don't stop watching.

Mad Monster Party (1967)

This is a scream of a film! This animated feature from the Rankin Bass stable has gained some cult cache over the years and apart from an airing on UK TV some years ago, Mad Monster Party remains a hard to find oddity.

Rankin Bass, well known in the USA, released mostly animated/stop motion TV specials celebrating seasonal tales and fairy stories in a very unique, very American way. This, their fourth movie, stars Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller and revolves around a retirement bash organised by Dr Frankenstein with invited guests from the horror canon in attendance causing chaos and grooving out to The Mummy played by Beatle wigged skeletons. This film is supremely entertaining and the animation is simply beautiful. For a relatively unknown production, its influences can be seen all over modern animation in such works as the Tim Burton/ Henry Selick collaborations, The Nightmre Before Christmas and James & The Giant Peach and the Nick Park/Aardman material. Don't just take our word for it - check out this trailer:

Mark Ellis