Mark Twain And An Angel Named Satan
Posted by Ross Rosenberg
Released in 1985, The Adventures of Mark Twain is the creation of Will Vinton, best known for The California Raisins. The movie is a series of vignettes based on Twain’s stories and his life. The overarching plot of the film is that Twain, disgusted with people and society, boards a riverboat-airship in order to collide with Haley’s Comet and end his own life. He is joined on his terminal adventure by Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher, who are attempting to convince Twain that life is worth living.
This particular vignette is based on Twain’s short story The Mysterious Stranger, which he rewrote several times as The Chronicles of Young Satan, Schoolhouse Hill, and No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger and which remained unpublished until after his death. Schoolhouse Hill is the only one that features Tom and Huck but all prominently feature the character of Satan, or No. 44.
Satan does our three diminutive counselors no favors, as it pontificates on the greed and pettiness of man’s existence while putting on a lilliputian play on its floating island in the middle of an expansive sea of nothing. The mood is appropriately dark and malevolent -despite Satan’s assurance that it can “do no wrong, for I do not know what it is”- and the pacing of Satan’s simmering disgust is perfect. The final frames of its monologue, as its mask becomes a glint in Twain’s eye, are quite haunting. Some truly superb claymation.
very creepy, disturbing children’s cartoon, banned from TV [Youtube]
Categories: Animation, Film, Literature, Religion
Posted at 12:42 pm on October 29, 2007
11 Comments -
Eh, it’s Vinton. And Claymation™ used to be a registered trademark, fiercely defended by his company, but don’t know how that changed since he left it, back in 2003.
Comment by optical — October 29, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
Fixed the name. I’ve always heard stop motion clay animation referred to as claymation. I had no idea that someone actually trademarked it. I suppose it’s sort of like Band-Aids/adhesive strips.
Comment by Ross Rosenberg — October 29, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
I found this clip a while back and wanted to post it so bad, but the quality of the audio was so poor on all the copies I found that I got frustrated and gave up.
Comment by Giania — October 29, 2007 @ 4:57 pm
YAY!!!
One of my all-time favorites – I have the whole thing on DVD – It brings me joi.
Comment by Jezcabelle — October 29, 2007 @ 7:39 pm
[...] Ectoplasmosis Released in 1985, The Adventures of Mark Twain is the creation of Will Vinton, best known for The [...]
Pingback by The Voice of A » The Adventures of Mark Twain — October 30, 2007 @ 5:15 am
OH! I remember this! Great stuff.
Comment by Washington — October 30, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
Oh yeah I saw this posted a little while back on coilhouse.net. Great animation. Too bad this isnt on DVD.
Comment by ein Doppelganger — October 30, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
Actually, it’s available in Region 1:
The Adventures of Mark Twain
Comment by Ross Rosenberg — October 30, 2007 @ 8:12 pm
Anyone can make the devil a horned, cloven-foot, fire breathing monster. As a result, that particular form has lost all sense of menace. I rather like the headless-mask style; it has a theatrical touch to it that recaptures a symbolic sense of what Satan really is. It’s not scary, in the traditional “I WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL!” sense, but much more effective in creating an air of foreboding. That mask is wonderfully expressive, and his apparent friendliness is scarier then any fire-breathing threats of eternal suffering. His calm reaction to screams of “you murdered ‘em!” really takes the cake. “We could make more some time, if we need them.” Further points go to Satan introducing himself as “an angel,” not something like “Satan, destroyer of worlds and lord of Hell” or some such. It’s about calm understatement combined with cold-blooded murder and amused disgust.
Comment by Robert — October 30, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
Can anyone tell me WHY this was banned? I saw it on the youtube site. But thats it. I can not find any evidence to state that it was actully banned. If you could send me a message on myspace which i’ve provided above I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
Jessy
Comment by Jessy — August 4, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
woops it didn’t post myspace sorry. http://www.myspace.com/jlynnstites
Comment by Jessy — August 4, 2008 @ 7:48 pm