Bill Plympton
A unique and distinctive animator whose award-winning works were made famous by MTV, Saturday Night Live, and various animation festivals. His trademarks include hand-drawn cartoons with faces, body parts and objects constantly morphing into grotesque and surreal exaggerations and absurdities, and a twisted, creative and zany sense of humor. Little things like a hug can turn into a rubbery, slimy orgy of intertwining limbs, and a little daydreaming imagination turns into a surreal and twisted fantasy. Gradually shifted over the years from creative twists of madness and snippets of surrealism, to more conventional narrative and an emphasis on gore and sex. Like Svankmajer, his output is at its best in the form of shorts, of which he has dozens. Full-lengths are listed here.
A strange, passive man discovers he has super-powers where he can change reality to suit his imagination. His wife and in-laws are horrified; Powerful corporations and the military become greedy and violent. Probably Plympton's best full-length feature, combining the insane comedy of his early years and the sex and gore of his later years. The first half features outrageously funny scenes involving sex, and twisted games with the annoying and resentful in-laws, but the weaker second half gets lost in cartoonish endless violence as the military try to get their hands on his powers with violent, gory and imaginative results. Entertaining and creative.
An over-the-top twisted homage to movies about 50s high-schools, pompadour hairstyles, jerk jocks, abused nerds and whiny spoiled girls, skeleton ghosts, and love. The plot revolves around Spud who is forced to become the prom queen's slave but the spoiled girl starts falling for him. By far Plymptons weakest full-length movie and the most conventional, resembling a normal cartoon, only with Plympton's entertaining exaggerated visual style, absurdities, and occasional surprising twisted scenes like when the biology teacher coughs up his intestines, or the sidekick goon goes berserk and humps everything in sight while in a chicken costume.
What's this, Plympton growing a conscience from his animated fingers like some Plymptonesque grotesquerie? A jerk of a man who is constantly angry at alarm clocks, birds, drivers and barmaids starts growing angelic wings thanks to a caterpillar, and the wings force him to perform good deeds as the man is haunted by hallucinations and constantly attempts to get rid of the wings in gory ways. A barman and doctor, however, develop other evil plans when they see the wings. Plympton's dialogue-free animation is fascinating to look at as always, with inventive segues, trademarked exaggerations, mutated body organs, and surreal imagery, and should be seen at least once. This movie is also amongst his best, with a proper plotline and interesting animation. However, the expected Plymptonesque comedy soon gives way to more uncharacteristic, serious-minded gothic horror, romanticisms, and surreal drama, and this would be great if not for the fact that the morality is simplistic and the plot points belabored. If Plympton wants to explore more serious plotlines, he needs to develop more content and subtlety.
Imagine the absorbing, creative magic of a Miyazaki animation only with an emphasis on sex and gore. This is not the typical Plympton of old, boasting a complete story and almost none of the wandering, surreal flights of fancy, but this is not necessarily a good thing. An astronaut and his little daughter are double-crossed by the greedy director of space exploration who leads the astronaut to his death in order to gain sympathy and money for his organization. Years later the astronaut comes back with stories about aliens and plans of revenge, while his daughter and her super-horny boyfriend help. Features, among other things, an extremely bizarre planet where creatures are individual body parts who fight amongst themselves, sex with an alien nose, sex with mutated animals in space, gory massacres by cute and vicious mutant aliens, raunch, twisted humor and insane, violent fun. One of Plympton's best, but also his most insanely dirty, cartoonish silly, and violent.
A musician is trying to write a tune for the mean, commercial Mr. Mega and is in love with Mega's secretary. While on his way to an important meeting with the unfinished tune, he has a series of crazy adventures that teach him how to write a tune with feeling. Adventures include a singing hamburger, the town of Flooby Nooby where, among other things, objects get smaller as you get closer because they aren't afraid, a wise man whose face metamorphoses and mutates while spouting Eastern aphorisms, two men who take turns mutilating each other's heads in creative ways (MTV used these last two a lot), etc. Features a dozen generic genre tunes with visual montages, some funny, some tedious, and the usual miscellaneous Plympton amusing absurdities, surrealities and grotesqueries. Uneven, somewhat juvenile, and contains way too many musical interludes, but entertaining.