(1982)
Dir - Georges Schwizgebel
Overall: GOOD
The debut from Swiss animator/filmmaker George Schwizgebel was Le revissement de Frank N. Stein, (The Ravishing of Frank N. Stein), an experimental combination of primitive animation and electronic music courtesy of Michael Horowitz and Rainer Boesch. Essentially one continuous, nine minute shot, Schwizgebel sets in hypnotic motion an evolution of the emotional state of Frankenstein's creation, (which could stand in for the emotional evolution of any human being), beginning with an elementary interpretation of its surroundings and eventually morphing into a longing for love and acceptance. Also because Frankenstein, things naturally do not work out. Picking but one of the themes of Mary Shelley's original novel and then rotoscoping over actual footage from Universal's The Bride of Frankenstein, it is a simple yet interesting and trance-like look into one of the more moving aspects of the famous story.
(1983)
Dir - Jan Švankmajer
Overall: GREAT
One of the many adaptations of Edgar Alan Poe's famed The Pit and the Pendulum, Czechoslovakian filmmaker Jan Švankmajer also merges it here with Auguste Villiers de L'lsle-Adam's A Torture By Hope for Kyvadlo, jáma a nadeje, (The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope). Though many movies have been made based around Poe's source material, there may not be another more visceral than this. Shot in grainy black and white, combining live action with stop-motion animation, and featuring POV camera work almost exclusively with no dialog or music, it presents a harrowing yet primitively stylized examination of mounting fear. There are three set pieces in just under fifteen minute and each one portrays a combination of certain doom,yet as the title would suggest, also hope. The set design is superb, particularly a mechanical fire and brimstone device that seems hellbent, (har, har), on sealing our protagonist's fate, a protagonist whose face is never shown to us and whose heavy breathing is the only sound we hear exiting their body.
(1987)
Dir - Guillermo del Toro
Overall: GOOD
The tenth and to date last short film by Guillermo del Toro that has actually been released, Geometria, (Geometry), showcases the filmmaker's more comical side while simultaneously being as gruesome and macabre as ever. Based somewhat off of the short story Naturally by Fredric Brown and borrowing the classic, often used Monkey's Paw logic to hilarious effect, two versions of the movie exist with the director's cut actually being the shorter one that features a different score by Christopher Drake who would go on to do numerous animated film's including the two del Toro produced in the Hellboy series. In either edit, it is a solid pre-curser to del Toro's first full-length Cronos that would appear several years later, though again, much more on the funny side. The color schemes are straight out of Italian horror, (particularly and intentionally the likes of Mario Bava), and though it is more than competently shot, the low-budget make-up effects and gore still help give it a delightful, amateurish charm.
(1988)
Dir - Ruth Lingford
Overall: GOOD
This very sombre and chilling wood-etching animated short was the debut from British animator Ruth Lingford. It is a fairly close re-telling of the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Story of the Mother which was originally published in 1847, here titled Death and the Mother. The film as well as the original source material itself can be looked at in a number of different lights. An allegory for the sacrificial nature that any mother has to go through as well as the inevitability of death itself, (Death being personified both as a hidden, sudden presence as well as one that is wholly part of nature), it is an impressive feat for a mere ten minute, dialog-less movie to raise so many stimulating questions. Lingford's primitive animation style contributes rather ideally, flowing in a continuous fashion and bringing in yet another layer of how life and eventually death both move in such a linear, inescapable paths.
(1989)
Dir - Alison Maclean
Overall: GOOD
Another black and white, part avant-garde short film with a number of themes to dissect, it is a fair comparison to see Kitchen Sink as sort of a feminist answer to David Lynch's seminal Eraserhead, be it one that is not so much concerned with the fears of being a parent but more the fears and desires of being in a relationship to begin with. Though she was operating and living in New Zealand at the time, Canadian Alison Maclean, (who would go on to direct Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" video which we all saw several thousand times on VH1 back in the late 90s), concocts a strange examination of female sexuality, boredom, loneliness and the way that men can be looked at as being horrifying, intriguing, and tantalizing from such a perspective. The ending can further emphasize how these toxic qualities can be reoccurring as curiosity and human nature ultimately get the better out of our two, unnamed characters who are frightened, turned-on, afraid of, and nurturing to each other throughout the minuscule running time.
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