Festival of Bad Animation, Part Zero: Worse than Bad

More, more, we need to know MORE about Paddy the Pelican!

Incredibly, there is a Wikipedia entry for this thing, so it must have existed. One YouTube version said it was shown as part of a bad animation festival at Comic Con (a. k. a. ComiCon, Comimicoon, and Goddamn Commie Bastard). 

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican was an animated television series that debuted in children's local stations in Chicago in 1950s. It is exceedingly rare, but has gained some fame for appearing on Jerry Beck's "Worst Cartoons Ever." On the DVD, he states that he has not found any evidence that this particular animated adaptation was aired on TV, although there is evidence that the Paddy the Pelican character began in 1950 as a local TV puppet show on Chicago's WENR-TV. Paddy's adventures were presented in comic strip drawings done by Sam Singer.This show was scheduled to appear on the ABC network in the fall of 1951; Singer had also started producing a newspaper, Paddy Pelican Junior Journal. The animated episodes currently in existence all have copyright dates of 1954.

The show is notable and infamous for its shoddy pencil-sketch artwork, reused animation, rambling and apparently improvised voiceovers, muffled and poorly synchronized soundtrack, and general low-budget problems. The only music is a few chords played on an organ, although the title card is accompanied by a man making noises apparently intended to sound like a pelican squawking.

Singer, who worked for Disney and other Hollywood animation studios, also produced a television Uncle Mistletoe local children's television show, based on the Marshall Field's character of the same name, as well as other early animated shows.

I thought Marshall Fields was a department store, and I dooooooo not like the sound of Uncle Mistletoe, who reminds me of one of Santa's evil henchmen. As usual, there is the claim that he "worked for Disney": maybe he was his bookie or something, or the go-fer. At any rate, absolutely no animation was used in the production of this cartoon.

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Festival of Bad Animation, Part 1: Don't Eat the Mushrooms in Oz

What a strange labyrinth is YouTube. I often find stuff I haven't seen since I was preverbal. It strikes me very strangely now. Perhaps cartoons were my first language.

This one, though, Jesus Christ, who let this out of the bag? And WHAT is it, anyway - why can't  I find any information on it? It isn't just the bizarre non-animation, it's the disjointedness of it in general, the way songs inexplicably burst forth out of nowhere. And the creepiness, probably unintentional. It gives me the impression of an outline or rough draft, perhaps a trial balloon for some ambitious project involving actual animation. But even that would have to make a modicum of sense. This is just a truncated chunk of story, starting in the middle and ending a little further along in the middle. 

Perhaps this was shown at Masonic retreats, or at Shriners conventions before they brought on the dancing girls covered in whipped cream.

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Festival of Bad Animation, Part 2: The Completely Bizarre Adventures of Hercules

Do you-all remember those godawful Mighty Hercules cartoons ground out by Trans-Lux in the early 1960s? Believe me when I say that they'll look like Fantasia beside this strange thing. I can't figure it out, don't know what the story is supposed to be. The animation appears to be construction-paper shapes moved along by an invisible hand, or maybe there's a magnet on the back. It's all so unexplained. I want to know more, but in a funny sort of a way, I don't.

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Festival of Bad Animation, Part 3: Who the Hell is Paddy the Pelican?

I don't know why this is, but I keep on dredging up stuff on YouTube, animated things that are just inexplicable. They are so primitive that they hardly qualify as animation, and in this case the lines barely stay on the screen but seem in constant danger of falling off. I see lots of plagiarism of Disney's Big Bad Wolf, not to mention a generous dose of Heckle and Jeckle. It seems every animator from these old cartoons "started with Disney", working for slave wages in Uncle Walt's sweat shop as a kind of badge of honour. I don't think this guy ever got out of his basement. Disney, my ass! He should be making those flip books, I mean the ones drawn on pads of paper, not all this computer nonsense. But there IS something outstanding about Paddy the Pelican: the theme song. The words, in particular, have come to haunt me day and night.

(I can't seem to get rid of the dud video at the top of this, and don't want to make a new post - lazy - so watch this one - or don't. Ha, ha, ha, ha-ha HA hah haaaaa.)

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