Ward 13

The titular Ward is either the psycho ward where our hapless hero believes he is beset by an army of sadistic doctors and orderlies, or it's the worst hospital since Roger Rabbit checked into St. Nowhere in Tummy Trouble. It's an impressive effort with some very nice staging of the endless succession of fight sequences, and some flashes of brilliance, but they don't overcome the repetitiveness of the film.

For some reason The Internet Movie Database requires 10 lines of text, and I pride myself on my brevity. I like to keep my comments brief and to the point and I would think that would be a positive thing for the readers of The Internet Movie Database. So, either this will be posted as is, or somebody at The Internet Movie Database will read it and perhaps consider my plea. After all, I am probably not the first reviewer to post too short a comment.

This really geeky animated short simply manages to crawl in a most unpleasant way under your skin. After an accident, a rather sinister looking patient wakes up in a rather sinister looking hospital with a load of weird and creepy nurses/doctors. So, once he discovers the cable to the big red "I need you nurse" button has been cut, our friend and patient starts wandering the long and confusing corridors of the hospital. On his way to freedom he faces not only the terrible doctors, but also the monstrosities resulting from some seemingly inhumane experiments. And let me tell you, the road to freedom has never seemed so long.

All the characters look really spooky and the "things" our patient encounters - both objects as well as...beings - were humor-fully thought of and brilliantly implemented. It's a "parodical" and yet scary short, which keeps clinging onto you like some slimy liquid you wish not to have stepped in. Totally awesome!

The qualities of this little animated gem obviously remind me of Aardvark Studio's work : the same efficient use of plasticine for round-shaped and exquisitely expressive characters, the sense of humour and irony within a specific genre, and the constant cinematographic references. Here, it is the horror film that is spoofed, with an inclination toward the "hospital horror" sub-genre. But it is never done to the detriment of the rhythm or of a strong story line : the humour within the fear is always sharp and witty, and the director even winks at Nick Park's specific work with a chase in the hospital hallways that is clearly an hommage to the chase between Gromit and the penguin in The Wrong Trousers. With such impressive skills, I don't really worry about Peter Cornwell's future : it looks bright.

This is one of the animated shorts from THE ANIMATION SHOW: VOLUME 2. Most of the shorts in this DVD collection are rather poor because very few are funny and the emphasis is much more or art than entertainment in this second installment. For better films overall, see VOLUME 1.

Of all the shorts on this film, this is probably my second favorite (after Plympton's hilarious short). While the quality of the stop-motion animation was good, what I really liked about the short was its very sick and twisted sense of humor--something that was abundant in VOLUME 1 but sadly lacking on this DVD.

A guy is in an accident. When he wakes up, he's in a hospital that is appears to have been created by Dr. Frankenstein and the Marquis de Sade! As this poor bandaged guy walks around the hospital hallways trying not to be seen, he comes upon horrific experiments and evidence of even more diabolical and useless work by the hospital staff. So, not wanting to be the victim of their next experiment, he spends most of the film trying to escape. It's all very sick and dark, but also rather funny at the same time. You'd really have to see it to understand--but trust me, it is worth seeing.

This film excels in so many areas.It has won awards or jury mentions for almost every facet of movie making including the script writing, film editing, "for amazing timing and extreme imagination in animation,""action sequences (which) are in no way inferior to those of live action thrillers", fast paced editing, and numerous audience awards. Audiences connect really well with WARD 13, and a full theatre, in hysterics during the screening, was quite an experience. I have seen this film several times, and it continues to amaze, with the fine attention to detail, and the hilarious wheel chair chase at the finish, said to "out-Ben Hur, Ben Hur". The only surprise was that it was not nominated for an Oscar.