Book to Film Comparison: The Incal and The Fifth Element

Reading Alejandro Jodorowsky’s legendary graphic novel ‘The Incal’ is no easy task. Here I fancy myself a science fiction super buff with a brain, yet even I found it a challenge to comprehend a lot of the situations and plotlines in the book. This is not to say that it’s completely incomprehensible, what I mean is that this is the kind of book you have to read on various occasions to fully grasp. It’s the kind of graphic novel you should read once, without trying to make sense of it. Hopefully some of its essence should transfer onto your brain on your first read, then when you read it again, keep adding bits of information to what you already know, that’s the best way to go about it. The thing is that The Incal is a barrage of information, an avalanche of science fiction awesomeness. An amalgamation of mystical artifacts, alien races, political intrigue, god like beings and amazing outlandish vistas.One thing is undeniable, this graphic novel, which is really a compilation of comics that were printed separately through a period of seven years (1981-1988), is a juggernaut of a masterpiece, a work of art with a resounding impact on anyone who ventures into its pages. Each page is a gift from the comic book gods known as Moebius and Jodorowsky.

 On the left is Jodorowsky, sandwiched between is a Saudukar Warrior from Jodorowsky's defunct Dune film, to the right, one of the films producers

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of my favorite persons in the world, not just for his films which I adore, but also because of who he is as a person. When I hear him talk in say, the documentary called Jodorowsky’s Dune’s (2014), it’s like I’m listening to a kindred spirit. A true ateur, a realist, a humanist, Jodorowsky has always used his art to comment on humanity, our craziness, our subconscious preoccupations, our collective worries and thoughts. This is why I adore every single one of his films. Yet I had never read any of his comic books, I just had to experience this other area of his art. So I started at the beginning, with The Incal, a graphic novel that is the foundation for ‘The Jodoverse’ a series of comics written by Jodorowsky. Interesting how it was his frustrations with Hollywood that turned Jodorowsky to comics. You see, once upon a time, Jodorowsky attempted with great enthusiasm, to make a major Hollywood science fiction film based on Frank Herbert’s Dune. It was going to be the end all, be all of science fiction films. He had the conceptual art, the actors, the special effects technicians, he just needed the millions. Sadly, Hollywood got cold feet and slammed the door on his face. I’m almost 100% sure Hollywood producers saw him as a quack, a nut job, an unreliable director who was probably going to make a movie that was going to be unmarketable and over budget. But what did they know, right? As Jodorowsky himself always says, all geniuses are a little crazy.

A Young Jodorowsky

The comic book world was a world where Jodorowskys imagination was not limited by budgets or back stabbing producers. Here was a medium in which his imagination could go anywhere it wanted, and boy did he take it places! His writings include: Before The Incal, The Incal, The Final Incal, Metabarons Genesis: Castaka, Megalex and The Technopriests, among many others. The good thing about Jodorowsky’s comic books is that he always partners up with amazing artists, which is what we’re here to talk about today. Jodorowsky partnering up with Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) to produce The Incal, a seminal work in comics, and by seminal I mean you’d better read it at some point in your life, there's still nothing like it out there. It's the story of an anti-hero named John Difool who suddenly comes upon a magical artifact known as The Incal. Once he obtains it everybody in the universe wants it for their own dark purposes. In essence it is a story of ultimate evil vs. ultimate good, about the ambiguity of life and about the unpredictability of life, sometimes you do what you got to do, whether you planned it that way or not.

The story behind The Incal is that Jodorowsky took concepts he had prepared for his adaptation of Dune and jam packed the The Incal with them. I honestly don’t see a lot of Dune in The Incal, save for the fact that the good guys are escaping an evil government and that they have to do something to stop it, I'm thinking he put more of the conceptual stuff he had planned for Dune into The Incal, spaceships, buildings and the such. The real issue here though is how much The Incal has influenced filmmakers and comic book artists from all over the globe. One such filmmaker is Luc Besson, the director behind The Fifth Element (1995). The dirt on The Fifth Element is that Luc Besson ripped off Jodorwsky’s The Incal. I’d say this isn’t entirely true. Sure there’s some similarities, you’re definitely going to see them. But in my opinion, many of these similarities are visual in nature and don’t necessarily subscribe themselves to the plot. An interesting aspect of this whole Incal/Fifth Element issue is that Moebius actually worked as a conceptual artist for Besson on The Fifth Element; so it’s doesn’t really surprise me that Moebius’s style is all over the conceptual part of The Fifth Element. The similarities bothered the folks at Humanoid Press, the company that prints The Incal in Europe, so they sued Luce Besson for supposedly stealing ideas from The Incal for his film. The question is :did Besson deserved to be sued?

Luc Besson directs on the set of The Fifth Element (1995)

Moebius worked as a conceptual artist on some of the best filmmakers. For example, he worked on Willow (1988), Masters of the Universe(1987), Tron (1982), Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland (1989) and The Abyss(1989). He also conceptualized many of the flying cars, buildings and characters seen on The Fifth Element, which is probably why The Incal and The Fifth Element share a few similarities. First time I saw The Fifth Element (1995) in theaters back in 1995 it seemed so new and so fresh to me, I had never seen anything like it before, in fact, I went to see it a record setting five times to the theater! I haven’t done that for a film in a while, my limit nowadays is three times if I really love a movie. It was only years later, after I started reading Moebius’s work that I learned about what an influential artist he was and about how the reason why I loved The Fifth Element so much was because it was partially conceptualized by Moebius.

Here’s a list of the similarities:

The novel starts with John DiFool, the protagonist of the story, being thrown from the balcony of a building. On his way down he has to avoid a zillion flying cars as he makes his way down to the grimiest parts of the city, the lower levels. This happens in The Fifth Element when Leeloo jumps from a building also having to avoid a zillion flying vehicles on her way down to the most uninhabitable parts of the city. The architecture in these scenes is extremely similar to certain images from The Incal. But of course, Moebius was the artist behind both projects; it makes sense that they’d have some similarities from a visual standpoint.

In The Incal, the main character is a man called John DiFool. He’s a private detective, but also your typical loser type, hence the play of words on his name. It sounds like John ‘The Fool’. He doesn’t want to be a hero, in fact, he’s an anti-hero. He saves the day anyway, but he is constantly finding a way to avoid responsibility, he seems to only want to live for fun. John Difool likes smoking, drinking and what he refers to as “homeo-whores”. In The Fifth Element the main character is also a loser type, he lives in a dingy little apartment filled with crap, he looks, un-kept. He doesn’t take shit from anybody, but he also doesn’t give a shit. He’s a taxi driver about to lose his job (and his license) because he has way too many parking tickets, yet ends up being the films hero anyways. Korben ends up making out with a god like being, same as John DiFool in The Incal.

In The Incal there’s this black liquid that’s taking over everything which is referred to as "The Great Darkness". It is turning everybody evil. Our hero John DiFool and his friends must battle it in order to save the universe, they all end up battling it together. In The Fifth Element a black planet keeps approaching the earth and if Korben Dallas doesn’t find The Fifth Element and activate it, the black planet will destroy the earth. Korben and his friends end up helping him uncover the powers of The Fifth Element. Also, same as in The Incal, the black evil takes liquid form. It can be seen two times during the film, dripping from the forehead of the films villains.

One of the chapters in The Incal is actually called ‘The Fifth Essence’, this should be enough for anyone to see the influence.

Above, a scene from The Fifth Element (1995) and below a scene from 'Harry Canyon' one of the stories on Heavy Metal (1981)

At the end of the day, I would say that The Fifth Elementborrowed a bit from The Incal, but its different enough that it’s not really a rip off; which is probably why Humanoid Press didn’t win the lawsuit. I mean if Vanilla Ice could get away with ripping off Queen's Under Pressure as blatantly as he did, anybody can rip off anything. But then again, that’s the trick of borrowing ideas, you have to change them just enough to make them your own. In fact, if we get down to it, The Fifth Element feels like a dumb as hell movie when compared to the complexities on The Incal. Speaking of rip offs, I’d say that if The Fifth Element ripped off anything it was actually a segment from Heavy Metal (1981) called ‘Harry Canyon’, which plays out note for note exactly the same as The Fifth Element (1995). If you don’t believe me check out my review for it, in which I detail the similarities between both films, or better yet, check out the segment for yourself. So while The Fifth Element blew my mind the first time I saw it in theaters, it was actually a rehash of previously conceived ideas from various films and comics. I’m still waiting for a brave filmmaker to make a film adaptation of The Incal. The one problem that an adaptation like that will confront is that The Incal is just too freaking weird, jam packed with ideas and craziness all the way through. You hardly get a chance to catch your breath when the next crazy adventure begins. The Incal is an onslaught of craziness, but in a real good way. So whoever decides to tackle The Incal's cinematic adaptation will have one huge challenge ahead of them. I hear that Nicolas Windig Refn the director behind Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013) has talked with Jodorowsky about translating the book into a film, the two have created a kinship, so let's hope this project comes to fruition at some point. Jodorowsky and Moebius never spelled things out for us, when you read The Incal, you are not treated like a fool or an idiot. It is expected that you have a brain on you and that you are fully capable of using it! So use it, and immerse your neurons in this one of a kind comic book experience.    

Make it so captain! Nicolas Windig Refn holding a copy of The Incal

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)

Director: Frank Pavich

There are certain documentaries out there that really dive into what it means to really make a film, a side of movies we hardly ever see, the creative side, the side that struggles to make ideas come to cinematic life. All we have to do as an audience is sit, and take in the movie; sometimes we forget just how grueling an experience making a film can be. I mean, it’s not just shooting a film, you have to go through the whole process of writing the script, of casting it, of assembling the team that’s going to help you bring your dreams come to life. One of my favorite documentaries that explores this side of filmmaking is Lost in La Mancha (2002), which chronicles the rise and fall of what could have been Terry Gilliam’s take on Don Quixote, a film that was to be called ‘The Man Who Killed Quixote’. Unfortunately for Gilliam, the whole project collapsed on him through a combination of raging storms that destroyed equipment and a protagonist who fell ill, amongst other catastrophes. Many millions were lost and the film never got made, but what an incredible spectacle it is to watch it all happen! That documentary is special because they actually filmed the whole disaster as it occurred. I always recommend it because it’s a brilliant peek into the frustrations of a filmmaker who desperately wants to make a film, yet the universe conspires against him. Gilliam is still trying to get that film made believe it or not, I hope he finally gets there because there’s nothing worse than a director who never got to make that one film he or she has always wanted to make. This brings to mind Jodorowski and his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi, Magnus opus, Dune. A film that sadly never got made. This documentary goes into all the pre-production work that went into the film, and the reason why it never took off.

Jodorowsky (left) next to what would have been one of the Emperor's Saudukar Warriors. To the right, Michel Seydoux one of the films hopeful producers.

Alejandro Jodorowski was eighty four years old when they shot this documentary, but boy, his mind is as clear as if he was 30! I mean at 80, most people are with one foot in the grave, begging for forgiveness, yet here is Jodorowski alive and kicking, still a creative force to be reckoned with. I mean, to this day, Jodorowsky still directs films! His most recent one is called The Dance of Reality (2013), which I will be seeing and reviewing here soon. He writes for a French sci-fi show called ‘Metal Hurlant Chronicles’ and every now and then continues writing incredible comic books and graphic novels. I love the guy, I want to be like him when I get old, just writing and creating cool stuff. Which is why I think it’s such a tragedy that he didn’t get a chance to make his version of Dune. If his pre-production archives are any indication, this movie was going to blow everyone’s mind!

The Man, The Myth, The Legend, Alejandro Jodorowsky

To hear Jodorwski talk is pure delight, he speaks like a genius mad man, a point that the documentary makes clear. There cannot be great art without some madness. Hearing Jodorowsky say how his Dune was going to change the world, you believe him. Then you see the story boards for the film, and it becomes evident, this film was going to be something special. But it was not to be, the powers that be shied away from greatness. I mean, here’s a project that has influenced many others after it, and it wasn’t even made! Can you imagine how it would have influenced other filmmakers, had it actually gotten made? Jodorowsky planned this movie so well that he had this giant ass storyboard book he printed that included every scene, shot and camera move. There’s a myth amongst movie buffs that says that many a Hollywood director/producer copied from this book, George Lucas included. Elements from Dune have always popped up all over the Star Wars saga and I’ve always noticed them. Could it be that George Lucas simply loved Frank Herbert’s Dune and was influenced by it? Or did Lucas get a peek at a copy of Jodorowsky’s storyboard book? I don’t know the answer to that one my friends, but there are some blaring similarities between what could have been Jodorowsky’s Dune and George Lucas’s Star Wars.

H.R. Giger working on conceptual artwork for Jodorowsky's Dune, these paintings would go on to be some of Giger's most recognized works. 

There’s this moment in the documentary where Jodorowsky totally looses it and his anger emerges, you can see he is truly upset that after so many plans and after so much time spent, his version of Dune never took off. He is so passionate about the film that I’d give him the money if I had it! Instead, he offers the film to any other young director out there willing to take a crack at it, Nicolas Winding Refn the director behind Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013) seems to admire Jodorowsky enough, so much so that he dedicated Only God Forgives to him, maybe their kinship will give us Jodorowsky's Dune someday? Here's hoping!  Let’s see, many directors have been about to make the new Dune, but as of yet, nothing. It’s so sad because you can see that what happened to Jodorowsky is the typical situation in which Hollywood detects weirdness and runs away from it like a child running away from the boogeyman. Movies with strange premises, films that they don’t know how to sell, films that don’t follow a formula or a structure, auteur directors with a knack for the bizarre, these are just some of the things that Hollywood tries its best to run away from. It’s sad seeing true artistes like David Lynch, Terry Gilliam and Alejandro Jodorowsky struggling to make movies. I mean, here’s a bunch of directors who can truly add something to cinema, yet these are the voices that Hollywood silences. Worst part is that they shut the door on Jodorowsky and crew, yet just a few years down the road the project gets done with an even bigger budget and with a similar production plan. I’m sure this was a slap in the face to Jodorowsky, getting doors shut in your face only to see Hollywood copy your idea and do it their way.

A promotional poster for the would be film. 

Jodorowsky says he was relieved when he saw Lynch’s film because according to him it was terrible, which is kind of weird seeing one ateur hit on the work of another like that, but Jodorowsky makes it clear, he knows Dune was taken from Lynch and that it was a film done primarily by the producers, he actually aknowledges Lynch as a true creative force. Many film buffs and critics don’t consider Lynch's Dune a true David Lynch film, Lynch himself included. You ask me, I don’t hate Lynch’s Dune (1984), I in fact love it. Out of all the adaptations of Herbert’s work, it’s the biggest and most epic of all, production wise. And even with all the bitchin’ and moaning you hear about how supposedly “bad” Lynch’s Dune is, when we get down to it, it’s a pretty close adaptation of Herbert’s book. But rest assured my friends, Jodorowsky’s Dune would have been something else entirely different. There’s this line in the documentary that has to be the best line in it where Jodorowsky says that when you adapt a book, you cannot do it exactly the same, you have to rape it. And then he says, “that’s what I was doing, I was raping Frank Herbert!” Then he pauses and says: “but in a good way…” Jodorowsky’s mind, it really is  brilliant, I hope that when I am 84 I can be as cool and as sharp as he is. This documentary is a testament to his genius.  It lets us see once again how afraid Hollywood is of anything different, or anything with the desire to “change the world!” This documentary is a fascinating peek into Jodorowsky’s mind, anyone who appreciates art, Frank Herbert’s Dune novels and filmmaking in general will have an amazing time watching this, highly recommend it.

Rating: 5 out of 5  

     

Santa Sangre (1989)

Title: Santa Sangre (1989)

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Writers: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Claudio Argento, Roberto Leoni

Cast: Axel Jodorowsky, Adan Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison, Teo Jodorowsky

Review:

Horror films are made by many different kinds of filmmakers, sometimes a horror film is made by an unknown director whom we’ll never here from again. Sometimes, they are made by a director who has chosen to make horror films his specialty. Guys like John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper come to mind. But sometimes, horror films are made by directors who don’t normally make horror films. Sometimes they make that one horror movie and never revisit the genre ever again, but hey, they took at stab at horro, and they did it well. Sometimes these directors who never make horror films end up making the most interesting horror movies because they shy away from horror film clichés, and more then likely infuse the horror film they are making with their own unique style and flavor.

For example Stanley Kubrick, made The Shinning (1980), an amazing horror film; yet Kubrick never made another horror film again. And it is a film that is very distinctively Kubrickian. It contains many of the elements that make a Kubrick film great. Scorcese is another good example, he normally makes Gangster movies, or period pieces, yet he made two horror films in his life Cape Fear (1991) and Shutter Island (2010), both great horror films in my book. Alejandro Jodorowsky -the director I’ll be talking about in this review- usually makes surrealistic films filled with symbolisms and visual poetry. He is not the kind of director you’d imagine making a horror film. Yet here we are discussing Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky’s first and only horror film to date. How did Jodorowsky end up making a horror film?

When a director like Jodorowsky wants to make a film, it is never an easy thing. He is the kind of director that most producers will probably run away from because his films aren’t easy sells. His films are always a strong departure from what we call a commercial film. In other words, if you are a producer, making back the money you invested in producing a Jodorowsky film, is never a sure thing. The same can be said of some American directors like David Lynch for example. Lynch is respected and admired by many a film buff, but trust me, producers are not knocking at his door dying to produce his next feature, which is probably the reason why we haven’t seen a Lynch movie in a while. Right now, the only way Lynch can make a film is if it’s a very low budget independent affair like Inland Empire (2006). But directors like Lynch and Jodorowsky love working with little money because it means they will have more creative control over whatever film they will be making. These type of directors are artists, surrealists and visual poets, they’d rather make a film with little money, but more creative control.

Sometimes, artistic directors like Jodorowsky haven’t made a film in a while, and when the itch to make a film comes, they sometimes make compromises. In the case of Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky was offered the chance to make a horror film. Dario Argento’s brother, Claudio Argento offered to produce a film for Jodorowsky, but the conditions were set: it has to be a horror film. Jodorowsky agreed, but if you know Jodorowsky, then you know he was going to make a horror film, sure, but he was going to make a horror film that was very much his own. This is exactly what happened with Santa Sangre.

Santa Sangre is a film about a young boy named Fenix. His father (an American named Orgo) runs a circus in Mexico, the circus is called “The Circus of the Gringo”. Fenix’s mother, named Concha, is the religious leader in a church that worships an armless saint. One day, Concha catches Orgo when he is about to be unfaithful to her with a tattooed woman who has just joined the circus. In a fit of jealousy, Concha poors acid on Orgo’s genitals! This angers Orgo so much that he takes two knives and proceeds to cut Concha’s arms off with one swoop! Concha falls to the floor, apparently bleeding to death! Fenix, their son, watches this whole event taking place. It affects him so much that he ends up institutionalized for the rest of his childhood and adolescence. Once he is a grown man, he decides to break out of the mental institution to reunite with his armless mother, who has apparently survived Orgo’s vengeful attack. Now, Fenix is under his mother’s command once again! And his mother wants revenge!

What makes this film a very Jodorowsky horror film is all the surreal moments that it has spread through out. If you’ve seen a Jodorowsky film before (El Topo, Fando and Lis, The Holy Mountain) then you know that Jodorowsky is fond of speaking in visual metaphors. Often times his films won’t have that much dialog because his visuals do most of the talking. Jodorowsky’s style of filmmaking feels as if a mute had suddenly decided to make a film, communicating only through moments, actions, and situations. This is an interesting contradiction about Jodorowsky’s films; dialogue is scarce, yet his films say a whole lot. Whole sequences may be silent, but the images speak none the less, they say everything they have to say through symbolism. This, in my opinion is the best way to watch a Jodorowsky film. You can try and watch it like any other film, but to me, the best way to watch them is by trying to decipher what he is trying to say with his visual metaphors, which are constant.

Santa Sangre may appear to be another crazy Jodorowsky flick, filled with freaks and oddities and symbolisms (and it is) but strange as it may sound, it is also a film that has its roots in real life events. You see, Santa Sangre is loosely based on the life of Mexico’s most famous serial killer; one Gregorio Cardenas Hernandez also known as ‘The Tacuba Strangler’. Gregorio a.k.a. “Goyo” was a serial killer who managed to strangle four prostitutes before he was caught. Now, I know what most of you are thinking, killing four people is not exactly enough to make him so famous, at least not when compared to other serial killers in history. But actually, what makes Goyo’s story interesting is not that he had strangled four women. What makes his case interesting is what happened after that. He became a writer, a painter, he studied psychology, chemistry. His paintings became famous and where sold for high prices! The guy even got married while in jail! After many years in a mental institution, he was released and considered completely rehabilitated! Stage plays, documentaries and films were made based on his life story. Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre is one of them. It is a film that’s loosely based on Goyo’s life. I say loosely because it’s a film that takes Goyo’s story as a starting point and then goes its own crazy, surreal, Jodorowsky way with it. It’s an artistic interpretation of what happened to Goyo rather then a film that is strictly based on his story.

Goyo was a child that was very repressed by his mother, who was very domineering. In the film, Feni’x mother gets her arms cut off by her husband Orgo. So when Fenix reunites with his mother, she is armless. She ends up controlling Fenix’s arms and hands to do her bidding. She does everything through his hands, to the point where he can no longer control them himself! Santa Sangre reminded me of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) in this sense. The mother doesn’t let the child be, she makes him murder women whenever they try to make a connection with him. It is a story about a mother who is jealous of her own son. This is where the horror element of the film kicks in because the mother wants to kill any woman who wants to get close to her son on an emotional or physical level. The question arises: Will Fenix ever regain control of his life? The element of circus life adds a Felliniesque air to the proceedings as well. Finally, I’d say that Santa Sangre isn’t a horror film in the strictest since of the word. It’s more of a surreal film, with horror elements in it. It’s dreamlike, it’s symbolic, it’s trippy, it’s disturbing, it’s a Jodorowsky film every step of the way. Santa Sangre is a unique experience you wont soon forget.

Rating: 5 out of 5

 

#4 of the Top Five Bizarro Films Countdown!

The Celluloid Highway's # 4 Bizarro Film: EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mexico, 1970)

No list of weird cinema would be complete without the presence of experimental Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. The question for me was whether my choice for this Top 5 would be El Topo or The Holy Mountain (1973). El Topo won out mostly because of the way in which Jodorowsky fuses his weird existential vision of human nature within the iconography and form of the spaghetti western. This might be a bizarre film, but it is still a genre film, and Jodorowsky ably ticks all the boxes when it comes to the grandiose, highly stylised and operatic violence one associates with Italian westerns. The Holy Mountain right from the off is more difficult to grasp, but El Topo benefits from the signifiers of genre which act as a familiar conduit into what turns out to be a very unfamiliar narrative world. Jodorowsky’s personality is so dominant in this film it almost feels like a vanity piece - in addition to directing his credits also include writing, acting (he plays the lead character), music (the haunting main theme is superb), production design and costume design. He gets a great deal of visual mileage out of the sun bleached desolation of Mexican desert landscapes, into which he thrusts downright surreal imagery. After eliminating a ruthless gang of bandits (the leader of which is castrated) El Topo begins his quest to defeat a series of legendary masters who all represent a different facet of human understanding. The strangest of which is one who is surrounded by hundreds of rabbits, who die at the same time he does. Jodorowsky pulls out his first major plot twist by having his expert gunslinger gunned down half way through. But this ‘death’ only leads El Topo on to greater things. Clean shaven and bald El Topo awakes in a mountain cave where he is surrounded by deformed outcasts, and is immediately acclaimed as a messianic character by the assembled group of disabled people. Things take an even greater turn for the weird when El Topo visit’s the town from which the cripples have been banished. A perverted town in which the local peasantry are treated as slaves and murdered for the pleasure of the wealthy few, and in which the local religion involves games of Russian roulette. Somewhere within the surrealism and savagery (because this is an incredibly violent film) is a three pronged allegory. The treatment of the Mexican peasants is surely a reference to the civil unrest in the country, the religious overtones and symbolism offer a critique of the blindness of religious orthodoxy, and thirdly this is an allegory about acceptance and tolerance, and self sacrifice. Does it work? - not at all, this is an incoherent mess of movie that leaves anyone searching for a linear plot tearing their hair out. But is it fun? - oh yes it certainly is, but it is only fun if you enjoy the images for what they and don’t take the whole thing too seriously.

The Film Connoisseur's #4 Bizarro Film: Fantastic Planet (Rene Laloux, France/Czechoslovakia, 1973)

This animated film has a couple of interesting things going for it. Number one, it was a film that had many production woes because it was such a subversive film, because of this, the film ended its production in a different country than where its production began. The film actually took five years to complete! It speaks about a race of aliens on another planet who rebel against their masters and want to break free from their hold. The Omms are little creatures that look like miniature humans. The Draags are their would be masters. This movie touches upon many interesting themes like politics, religion, and personal freedom. Should men rule over other less educated less fortunate humans? Cant we all just learn to get along? Should the less fortunate revolt? Yes they should if you ask me! But aside from these heavy themes, the film also has something really great going for it. Its visual flare! On this movie you will see some really strange and bizarre imagery. The Draags for example are gigantic blue beings with these bulging red hypnotic eyes! They go into a trance where they change shape and form and become something else altogether! The planet they inhabit is filled with strange and interesting creatures, including one giant predator which actually sniffs its victims through its nose, devours them and spits them out! This movie is a masterpiece of old school animation and should be seen for that alone, but if you like heavy thematic elements with your animation, look no further than this awesome piece of French animation. It will prove to be a unique experience even without the use of hallucinogenic drugs. The film won the Grand Jury Prize that year at the Cannes Film Festival, and was later distributed in the U.S. by Roger Corman.

For part 5 of the Top Five Bizarro Films Countdown CLICK HERE!