Attention alien creatures: Raising the dead and using them as muscle to conquer the earth is not, has never been, and will never be a good idea. It's time for Plan 10.
But speaking of controlling the earth:
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| Max Fleischer with Koko the Clown |
Koko's Earth Control (1928), produced by those lunatic pioneers of animation Max and Dave Fleischer, is a cartoon that both captivated me and freaked me the hell out when I was a little kid. All these years later, it's still quite a bizarre piece of work. A clown (Koko) and his dog (Fitz) bring about catastrophic weather and other surreal calamities on Earth by pressing some buttons and pulling levers in a mysterious temple ominously labelled Control of Earth.
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| What could possibly go wrong? |
The cartoon's lengthy list of IMDb keywords is intriguing, containing such disparate elements as "lightning," "fear," "apocalypse," and the ever-popular "character melts."
But even more intriguing is the cartoon itself. So here's that:
The cartoon gets even crazier as it goes along, incorporating live action, stop motion, and even what looks like cut-out animation 40 years before Terry Gilliam. And look, ma, no happy ending! It ends in total chaos and despair. This was, of course, only a year before the Great Depression. I wonder if the brothers Fleischer saw stormy times ahead for the country or if this was just a coincidence. Either way, this cartoon certainly anticipates the "Space Madness" episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, specifically the infamous "History Eraser Button" scene.