Balloon Land

The glorious early cartoons of Ub Iwerks (he's the man who made Mickey Mouse move) make up for their lack of Disneyesque fluidity with a determined, and often startling, inventiveness. The story is quite conventional, and can be found in different guises in the medieval folk and fairy tales from which the film takes its visual cue. A young boy disregards his elders' advice about the safety of society, and goes into the woods with his girlfriend, clearly a metaphor for sexual pleasure. However, nature proves a rapacious shelter, and the couple are chased by a murderer who manages to invade their village and go on a killing rampage.

What makes this cartoon strange and different is that the characters and settings are made entirely, as the title suggests, of balloons. Iwerks' introduction of this fantasy world is masterly and brightly coloured, replete with balloon Laurel and Hardy, and Chaplin. It's not quite fantasy, however. The hero and his girl are created and given breath by an inventor and his machine; he warns them that they are mere air, and easily destroyed. On the one hand, this is a conservative message about the dangers of transgressing family and society, a danger which is chillingly realised.

On the other, the story is a fantastic dramatisation of what used to be called the human condition - we are just as vulnerable as balloons to the vagaries of chance and inhospitable nature; we too have been breathed into life by a creator who has left us so vulnerable, and whom we cannot satisfy whether we obey or disobey him. The Pin-killer is all destructive demon, though, gleefully revelling in his homicidal spirits, free, but sadly vulnerable too.

In a film of such wit and visual imagination, it would be difficult to select an enduring image, but there is one scene where the hero sounds the alarm, a cot of four babies whose bottles he swipes - the resulting din would wake the dead, and, as if following this idea, Iwerks zooms into one of the infants' bawling mouth, a terrifying glimpse of the abyss in a new-born child, a perfect encapsulation of the film's theme.

Ub Iwerks is a highly under appreciated legend in animation, for he was the real artist behind Mickey Mouse and most of Disney's biggest technical innovations. For a brief period of time however, he owned his own studio after falling out with Walt over the famed mouse's ownership, creating obscure forgotten characters like Flip the Frog and Wille Whopper. While his studio's filmography tended to come out hit or miss, perhaps one of his better triumphs would be the 1935 Technicolor surreal-scape, Balloon Land. In addition to a surreal concept utilized through a straightforward plot, it's a remarkably frightening short.

Set in a world where everything is formed from balloons, the village of Balloon Land lives in peace & harmony until the nasty pincushion man wreaks havoc among the town. As a short fairy tale, it works well enough to its advantage, though that could only be because the plot doesn't waste much time getting to the point. While the lead characters have no real development and are mainly excuses just to trigger the pincushion man to attack their land, they're not that different from the remaining cast that range from victims of the needles or defenders against the antagonist. Fortunately enough, the pincushion man himself does save the short from being ultimately forgettable thanks to Billy Bletcher's terrifying demeanor and the overall design of said character. Being an anthropomorphized pincushion with a collection of needles just waiting to strike the next victim, his presence alone makes him frightening just from whoever he'll attack without warning. Even his downfall is quite shocking as far as villains deaths go, giving the short a dreamlike aesthetic beyond anyone's mere perception.

In addition to all that, the music score by Carl Stalling helps establish the upbeat environments all around Balloon Land in contrast to the more intense tempo once the pincushion man arrives. Although more known for his famous work at Warner Bros, Stalling always knew how to raise the stakes in dramatized fairy tales whenever needed. The art direction of Balloon Land is perhaps the true visual highlight of all, next to the comical character animation and pristine Cinecolor palettes. Since the village is entirely composed of balloons, not only do the characters move around as if they were lifelike inflatable objects, but the backgrounds present the world with a lot of homemade imagination to the point of feeling like heaven. It also helps that a good chunk of the set pieces such as trees and buildings are composed in a flatter almost paper cutout manner to make the characters pop out in the foreground. Outside of a lot of conservative staging, there are several heightened shots aided with close ups and perspective tricks, not unlike many other Iwerks studio shorts.

So despite its storyline and characters feeling fairly routine, Balloon Land still remains a fascinating nightmare experiment thanks to an intimidating villain, imaginative production design, memorable music and many surreal outcomes. For its creative imagination alone, the short is worth viewing at least once both to get into Ub Iwerks' filmography and to see what originated in the minds of cartoonists from long ago. Perhaps some day, this short could potentially be revitalized into a children's book or TV series, because as an unintentional pilot, there could be more to Balloon Land than meets the eye.

When people are balloons, those who control the pins will rule. Balloon land isn't just characters; it's structures and clouds and trees. But, of course, there is a villain: Pin Cushion Man. He has no motivation but to make life miserable for the balloon people. This is very colorful and quite well done in 1935.

Balloon Land (1935)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

The title refers to a land where everything from the houses to the people are made out of balloons. The people are trained to fear the Pincushion Man because he can obviously kill them. Two newly formed kids decide to test that theory by going into the woods where the Pincushion Man follows them home and starts to terrorize the community. This two-strip Technicolor short from U.B. Iwerks is actually an incredibly dark little picture considering that the entire subject deals with the possible death of these people and there's a sequence where the Pincushion Man goes on a murdering rampage through the city. This was certainly a highly entertaining film thanks in large part to the characters who were either lovable (the balloon people) or downright hated (Pincushion Man). Another very big positive was the wonderful colors used for everyone. I watched this with my son and he said they looked like ICEE colors and he was pretty much correct.

Just watched this restored Ub Iwerks ComiColor cartoon on the DVD collection "Saved from the Flames". It is inhabited by creatures entirely made of balloons which includes three looking like Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin. Well, actually, there is a villain called the Pincushion Man who's what his name is and he likes popping anyone that comes near him so watch out! As with many of these '30s cartoons, there's plenty of music and the main characters are a boy and girl in love who persevere against all odds. The sound and colors are excellent and this was quite an entertaining cartoon from this period but I urge discretion if you want to expose your kids to this. So on that note, Balloon Land comes highly recommended.