Images from the absolutely amazing Movie Title Stills Collection. Only click if you like typography and have several hours free.

And the final animation:

There are many sexy sort-of animal ladies to go around.

The setting changes inexplicably (I use the word loosely here) from Magic Jazzercize Ritual to Renaissance Faire in an English Garden as the hero attempts to capture his lost lady love.

Here’s an excellent example of my favorite 80s video shot composition – Confused Hero in the foreground looking about wildly, Other Person running away, yet pausing dramatically to look at them, in the background. Also seen in : ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’, ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, and many more.

They managed to cram in a tribute to ‘Altered States’…

…AND ‘The Man Who Laughs‘! Now THAT is impressive.

The best part of this music video is its protagonist – presented without irony, Our Hero is a slightly pudgy, intense man sporting a 70s mustache and wearing a tank top as he fever dreams his way through a nightmare relationship. And wishes on stars.

IT’S SO BEAUUUUTIFUL!

(Thanks to Nate Doyle for bringing this video’s existence to my attention.)

Here’s one from the classic ‘Are You Popular?’, featuring The Bad Girl. She is not popular because of/despite ‘parking’ with the boys. THE BOYS! PLURAL!

No wonder everyone at this table shuns her and talks about her behind her back! Unlike The Good Girl, who’s not wearing jewelry or makeup and instantly gets asked out by every guy.

Compared to today’s message of…actually I don’t even know what they’re foisting upon the youths of today- superabstinence? Fear and mystery of the Other? In any case, it’s refreshing to see dating a wide variety of people was considered not only normal but necessary to develop good social skills and learn what sort of person you liked to be with. It did NOT make you a tramp, though apparently it did if you ‘parked’.

The following are from what I consider the gem of the Prelinger collection, ‘Live And Learn’, aka ‘You’ll Poke Your Eye Out: The Movie’. Every scenario shows the horrifying results of…well, pretty much doing anything at all.

The staginess of him ‘pausing’ and checking the canister KILLS me. Also it eventually kills him.

ACTING!

Not a gif but it nicely captures the tone of the film.

This is what I imagine when someone suggests I watch their kids:

I could watch this for years:

His ‘fall’! The dummy! I cut it out, but the part where he gets up just fine and THEN remembers he ‘broke’ his wrist! GENIUS!

Go Santa, go Santa, go Santa…

Someone watched this classic and decided, no, KNEW, it needed some serious zazz.

Were you aware there is an adorable stop-motion show on BBC featuring Rastafarian crime-solving mice? It’s called Rastamouse, and you can check out music video clips from their band here. Did I mention they were in a reggae band? No? Well, they are. They also skateboard and rollerskate. If this is what got on the air, I would very, very much like to see what pilots were turned down. Not because this show is unworthy of air- it’s delightfully charming with excellent animation combining a flat 2-D feel with stop-motion puppetry, a bright and pleasingly summery color palette, and a redemptive message where ‘villains’ often become helpful community figures by the end.

No, what boggles my mind is several executives gave the green light to a children’s show steeped in a culture where weed smokage is not only prominent but part of the religion, and manage to tiptoe around this basic fact every 3 seconds. Numerous plots center, as seems normal for a mouse-city, on cheese. But the fact character Zoomer keeps calling it ‘sweet, sweet cheese’, numerous varieties and types are touted, and everyone in the city loves it so seems…slightly suspect. Again though, they’re mice. What else would they be obsessed over?

Here’s a short preview of the show, which alas focuses less on fantastic cheese than it does on the show’s message of ‘making a bad ting good’:

I cannot get over the charm of this show- I know it’s made for wee’uns but every clip I watch I get sucked into their brightly colored, Jamaican-patois mousy world. It’s not released in the US yet and clips are sparse on YouTube, but hopefully this show will make it stateside soon. It may even help convince a generation to legalize dat sweet, sweet cheese.