Creepy Halloween Animation: The Mascot (1933)

Presented today for your edification, Vladislav Starevich's creepy 1933 classic of stop-motion animation, The Mascot.

Back in the 1980s, cable channel USA used to use Friday + Saturday nights to air Night Flight, a catch-as-catch-can show that combined music videos with bizarre animation + even rock'n'roll feature films like Rude Boy, Breaking Glass, Ladies and Gentlemen... The Fabulous Stains, and more... And hidden in the midst of all of this chaos, The Mascot would pop up from time to time; and usually, since there was no listing of what'd show when, I'd tune in after it'd started + watch til it ended. Never did know what it was called or who was responsible... til I got to college + met ol' Zwolf, whose personal hoard/collection of vids was store-sized then (you don't even wanna know about his stash now, cuz it'll just give you spastic jealousy fits...), who heppt me to the details behind this little chunk of video insanity.

Anyway, this is some seriously old cinema, so the pacing is a little slow by modern standards; even with that, though, the short is an amazing example of stop-motion animation that must be seen to be believed. And, if this is your cup'o'tea, I also recommend the short films of Jan Swankmajer.

And here's more Svankmajer...