Corpse Bride 4K (2005)

"Stop Motion With Devilishly Excellent 4K Detail"

Warner Bros. are releasing Tim Burton's animated movie CORPSE BRIDE on 4K UHD in standard, steelbook, and a posh collectors' edition that has the steelbook, two double-sided posters, eight characters sketch cards, four storyboard sketches stickers, and a 'Corpse Bridge' zine.

Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) is due to be married to Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) in the chapel of Pastor Galswells (Christopher Lee). But Victor fluffs his marriage vows and goes off to the nearby creepy Tim Burton forest to practice. Unfortunately when he does get them right the corpse of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) rises from the dead, considers herself married to him, and drags him down to the underworld.

Meanwhile, as Victor has disappeared, the slimy Barkis Bitten (Richard E Grant) offers to marry Victoria himself, and of course he has a hidden agenda. Will Victor get back topside, possibly with aid of a skeleton with a Michael Gough voice? Are there plenty of songs? Does Victor get reunited with his deceased pet dog Sparky?

You can probably guess the answers. While CORPSE BRIDE isn't perhaps quite as good as NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS it's still a delightful, charming piece of Burton-style Gothic. Warners' new 4K transfer allows you to see a lot more detail on the puppets (and indeed their costumes) and the voice roles include, as well as the above, Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse, Joanna Lumley and Jane Horrocks, with Danny Elfman  providing an excellent score and some memorable songs. 

The UHD disc comes with two new extras - The Minds Behind Corpse Bride (9 minutes) and Corpse Bride Reflections (6 minutes), both of which have screenwriter John August, producer Allison Abbate and co-director Mike Johnson discussing the film 20 years on. The rest of the extras are a bundle of ported over little featurettes from 2005 includingInside the Two Worlds of Corpse Bride (4 minutes), Making Puppets Tick (7 minutes), The Animators (7 minutes), Pre-Production Galleries (14 minutes and fascinating if you're into how the puppets went from metal frames to film), Tim Burton: Dark Vs Light (4 minutes) Danny Elfman Interprets the Two World (6 minutes) and two good pieces on the voice cast: Voices from the Underworld (6 minutes) and The Voices Behind the Voice (8 minutes).

Tim Burton's CORPSE BRIDE is out on 4K UHD and Digital from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in standard, steelbook and collectors' editions on Monday 22nd September 2025

 

Watership Down (1978)

At last! Martin Rosen's stunning, touching and above all faithful adaptation of Richard Adams' novel gets the 4K treatment from the BFI.

You probably know the story by now - a bunch of rabbits leave their warren after one has a premonition of it being destroyed (which turns out to be true). They have a number of adventures in their quest to find a new home - the Watership Down of the title - and then have to defend it against the marvellous villain that is General Woundwort.

Richard Adams' novel made a huge splash when it was published in the mid 1970s. Nobody could decide on the target audience, though, and so Penguin published it in both adult and children (through their Puffin imprint) editions. Consequently for a lot of nine and ten year olds (myself and my friends included) it was our first taste of more adult-orientated fiction and we loved it. Kids went rabbit mad and when the film came out there was no question of us going to see it. 

In the excellent booklet that accompanies the extras Martin Rosen says he would have preferred the film to have not be awarded a 'U' certificate. Interestingly it's only recently that I've learned that a few people (and parents) felt traumatised by it. Certainly there was no outcry back in the day - we just all left the cinema with tears in our eyes because of how lovely that ending is, and, I suspect now watching it through older eyes, because of Angela Morley's score, rather than because of any 'scary violence'. In fact it was a relief to a lots of us kids at the time to see an animated film that that didn't portray animals in the 'Disney cute' style.

The BFI's 4K transfer is a wonder, and will be especially of interest to animation fans because it really allows you to see a level of detail in the compositions that was previously impossible. Extras include some ported over from previous releases - a 2005 commentary track from Martin Rosen (with Chris Gore), a 17 minute conversation with Rosen and editor Terry Rawlings, and 12 minutes of discussion with the animators ('Defining a Style'). There's a new commentary from academic animation scholars Catherine Lester and Sam Summers, 14 minutes of storyboard comparisons, a 28 minute Super 8 digest version, and, most fascinating of all, 3 minutes of home super 8mm footage from Arthur Humberstone of the animators at work. 

There's also a bunch of interesting 'odds and ends' short films including 'Bolly in a Space Adventure', a five minute cartoon from the psychedelic era. Do not watch unless you want the brief theme tune stuck in your head forever. There's also the creaky 'Once We Were Four' (nine minutes), Rabbits for Profit (15 minutes) and another creaky one -Cartoonland, Make Believer (17 minutes).

Finally, the set comes with a double-sided poster, four postcards, and an 80 page book that offers more fascinating insights into the making of the film and its release and reception. 

    Hey! I got to the end of this and didn't mention Bright Eyes. It wasn't quite the Brian Adams 'Everything I do' of 1978 but it was a song you couldn't move for for weeks back then. 

Martin Rosen's WATERSHIP DOWN is released by the BFI on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on Monday 25th November 2024 

9 (2009)

"Rather Marvellous, Actually"

Shane Acker's feature length version of his Oscar-nominated animated short gets a Blu-ray and DVD release from Fabulous Films.

We're in a post-apocalyptic future where humankind has been wiped out by the machines they created. Before he died, a scientist created nine small creatures of cloth and metal, and tasked them with saving the earth's future. To do so they have to overcome their differences and take on giant metal creatures far more powerful than they.

With a plot that sounds like average kiddie matinee animated fare (or maybe I've just made it sound like that) regular readers will be pleased to learn that the animated classic 9 reminded me of most was Martin Rosen's classic 1978 version of WATERSHIP DOWN. Here we have another movie where all the lead characters are not human, where not all of them survive, and where there are plenty of bits to terrify the average five year old and shock the average older kid into sitting up and paying attention. 

The CGI animation is well-rendered, giving a delicious Phil Tippett-style stop motion feel to the mechanical monstrosities, and was that a Kurt Vonnegut reference I spotted about halfway through? 

Voice talents include Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connolly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau and Crispin Glover in the role you'd most expect Glover to take in this. It's all very good, very creative stuff and I'm actually quite surprised this passed me by back in the day.

Extras on Fabulous Films' disc include a commentary track with co-writer and director Acker plus animation director Joe Ksander, Head of Story Ryan O'Loughlin and editor Nick Kenway. All of them turn up again on the making of featurettes. You also get the original ten minute short which is well worth a look after the main feature, and there's a commentary track for that as well. There are seven minutes of deleted scenes (as animatics and storyboards with dialogue) and you even get a tour of the Starz animation studios by an enthusiastic Acker. All good stuff.

Shane Acker's 9 is out on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 10th July 2023

Son of the White Mare (1979-1981)

There currently seems to be a resurgence of interest in animated fantasy features not intended for children, with THE SPINE OF NIGHT enjoying a recent festival run followed by streaming and Blu-ray releases, and the ultra-violent UNICORN WARS still currently receiving deservedly rave reviews on the festival circuit. 

       So it makes sense that older movies are being brought out of the vaults, dusted off, and given Blu-ray releases. One such example is Hungarian film-maker Marcell Jankovics' SON OF THE WHITE MARE, a feature-length animated film that took three years to make and which is now getting a Blu-ray release from Eureka.

The story is based on mythic folk tales, some of them Hungarian, and tells the story of Treeshaker, a man born of a horse, who has to defeat evil dragons that have taken over the world. He enlists the aid of his two brothers, Stonecrumbler and Ironrubber, and together they set off for the underworld. During their quest they encounter princesses to be rescued, an evil gnome, a griffin, and other mythical creatures.

The style of animation employed in SON OF THE WHITE MARE is possibly best described as 'trippy', as the stills used to illustrate this review hopefully demonstrate. Some may find the whole 86 minutes of its bright colours and swirling animation to be really quite the brain-frying experience. One imagines a unique film-maker like Panos Cosmatos (BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, MANDY) being inspired by it, and if you love his films you'll definitely want to check this out. 

Extras include Jankovics' first feature Johnny Corncob (which runs 78 minutes and there's also a three minute making of on the disc), Sisyphus (2 mins), The Struggle (2 mins), and Dreams on Wings (an 8 minute ad for Air India). You also get a 33 minutes interview with Jankovics from 2020, and a 10 minute featurette on the director by the Hungarian Film Archive.

Marcell Jankovics' SON OF THE WHITE MARE is out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 14th November 2022

The Spine of Night (2021)

After a successful festival run (including Nottingham's Mayhem Film Festival last year) and a release on Shudder's streaming service, Acorn Media International are releasing Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King's ambitious old-school animated fantasy THE SPINE OF NIGHT on Blu-ray.

Tzod (voiced by Lucy Lawless), a swamp witch, needs to find out more about a mysterious blue flower and its magical properties, and so she embarks on a journey, seeking out The Guardian (Richard E Grant). When she finds him, he has a number of tales to tell of the flower. They range from ultraviolent to weird to thought-provoking and we get to see them all via the stylised rotoscoped animation the film employs. Guest voices also include Joe Manganiello, Patton Oswalt and Larry Fessenden (as - what else? - the Prophet of Doom). 

It's always good to see animated epic fantasy aimed at grown-ups and THE SPINE OF NIGHT definitely isn't for kids or the overly sensitive. There's buckets of violence, lots of nudity (Tzod wears next to nothing for the entire film) and some of the terrifically trippy imagery is designed to give you nightmares. The animation style has been compared to that of Ralph Bakshi but THE SPINE OF NIGHT is actually quite a bit better and more interesting than fantasy efforts like WIZARDS or his version of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Its plot is that of a lengthy fantasy book sequence (or perhaps even a 1970s concept album) and gets the whole thing done and dusted in 94 minutes.

Shudder's Blu-ray comes with an excellent thirty minute Making of which includes a lot of the filmed footage that was then rotoscoped, as well as interviews with the writers-directors, composer and assorted 'cast' members (but not voice artists) and which concludes with an excellent further recommend reading / watching list from those involved. You also get the two animated shorts that preceded the movie, EXORDIUM (8 minutes) and MONGREL (3 minutes) as well as trailers for PSYCHO GOREMAN, MANDY and ARCHENEMY. 

THE SPINE OF NIGHT is out on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from Acorn Media International now

Wizards (1977)

Ralph Bakshi’s 1977 animated fantasy gets a DVD and Blu-ray re-release from Fabulous Films.

The future. Way, way into the future. So far into the future the world has been destroyed by a nuclear apocalypse and evolved into the kind of place a sleep-deprived, caffeine and acid-fuelled J R R Tolkien might have dreamed up if he’d been an animator at the Filmation studios in the mid-1970s. 

A listless narration (from an uncredited Susan Tyrell) establishes, over what look like storyboards, a rather convoluted backstory that eventually gets us to the rather basic-looking animation that's going to tell a reasonable amount of our tale. I say reasonable because quite often it’s back to the storyboards and the spaced-out voiceover from Ms Tyrell who sounds as if she had to be poked with a stick at regular intervals to keep her going. 

          When it’s not that it’s rotoscoped stock footage of World War II, Cy Enfield’s ZULU (yes really) and I’m guessing other war movies, all rendered in such a way that it would work well as the Ludovico treatment in Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Who knows? Perhaps in the future that’s what this film will be used for.

The plot involves our team of heroes - bumbling “likeable” wizard Avatar, large-breasted skimpy costume-wearing fairy princess Elinore, heroic elf-like Weehawk and warrior villain Peace - travelling to defeat Avatar’s evil brother Blackwolf, who wants to enslave the world. Along the way they encounter various fairies, creatures, get into and out of scrapes, and you can probably guess the ending if you don’t want to sit through all the sanity-threatening rotoscope stuff. 

It’s not that WIZARDS is terrible, but it does all feel terribly amateur. If you cut out the storyboard and rotoscope stuff there’s not much actual animation. Probably the biggest problem, aside from the appallingly unfunny ‘comic relief’ is that (Weehawk being a noteable exception) all the voiceover artists perform as if they couldn’t care the slightest about what’s going on. Honestly, people react with more vigour when they receive their gas bill than the characters threatened with the extinction of their entire planet here. That, combined with the lacklustre visuals (some of the backgrounds are a few listless swipes of a pencil that haven’t even been coloured in) means that unless you have fond memories of this one, WIZARDS is strictly for students of the history of movie animation. 

Extras include a half-hour-plus interview with Bakshi, and he also supplies a feature-length commentary if you want to learn more about how the film ended up the way it is. 

Ralph Bakshi's WIZARDS is out from Fabulous Films on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 4th July 2016

Roobarb and Custard (1974 & 2005)

The memory of 5.35pm on a weekday night will likely evoke oceans of nostalgia in a certain age group while leaving anyone younger wondering what on earth the fuss might be about. So for those of you who need it explaining: back in the days of only three channels, BBC1 ran programming for children weekdays between 3.55pm (starting with PLAY SCHOOL) and finishing at 5.35pm (either with something more challenging for older children like an Alan Garner adaptation or Peter Dickinson’s THE CHANGES, but it could equally be employment for panto rejects desperate to appear on the likes of RENTAGHOST or EMU’S BROADCASTING COMPANY).

The news came on at 5.40pm. To bridge this gap between the kids stuff and the latest IRA bombings, the three day week and so on, someone had the bright idea of slipping in five minutes of something that might appeal to both children and adults. But not in a Disney-type, life-affirming way. Oh no. This was Britain in the 1970s and we wanted none of that sort of stuff on drizzling teatimes with the threat of another power cut ever looming. We wanted brightly coloured animated sheer eccentricity. Well, it’s what we got whether we wanted it or not.

It’s no secret that the tapes for THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT used to come over from France with no English track, and so narrator Eric Thompson just made up anything to try and rationalise what the hell was going on. Other shows, like THE CLANGERS, were made by British eccentrics working in their garage with bits of foam and wire and a Swanee whistle.

The original ROOBARB was directed by the mighty Bob Godfrey, a man who had given us, only a few years previously, KAMA SUTRA RIDES AGAIN - possibly the only short animated film about a couple whose exotic sex lives ultimately end in disaster to be nominated for an Oscar. 

There’s no sex on ROOBARB. There is, however, a green dog, a pink cat, and numerous birds, all of whom leer at the screen frequently during the onscreen madness to the point that you’re advised not to watch too many of these in a row or you’ll end up in your own brightly coloured room. The wobbling marker-pen animation probably isn’t recommended for anyone who suffers from sea-sickness either. And as for the theme tune...

All of this does NOT mean I didn’t like ROOBARB. In fact it’s charmingly eccentric and a lot of fun. The in your face sense of lunacy is sometimes reminiscent of The Beatles film YELLOW SUBMARINE, but you really can’t watch too many of them in one go or you may go blind, or mad, or both. 

             Simply Media’s disc give you all 30 episodes of the original ROOBARB (on disc one) paired with all 39 episodes of 2005’s reboot ROOBARB & CUSTARD TOO (on discs two and three). The sequel series admirably recaptures the lunacy of the original, and once again features Richard Briers (hooray!) as narrator. The three disc set contains no extras. 

ROOBARB & CUSTARD: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION is out on DVD from Simply Media on 16th May 2016