Filmation's Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987).

[EmmanuelZorg]

Who remembers this overlooked animated gem? it's from Filmation (The dudes who made animated Star Trek, He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestarr, Fat Albert, Superman 60's, Batman 60's, Ghost Busters, Bravestarr) and New World Pictures. It's a very odd, dark but fun animated fantasy adventure that is a sequel to the famed Collodi fairy tale. It stars the voices of James Earl Jones, Ed Asner, Tom Bosley, Scott Grimes, Ricke Lee Jones and Don Knotts with Jonathan Harris.

It's set a year after Pinocchio became human and a creepy mysterious carnival comes to town. He just celebrated his first birthday as a human and does an errand for his father to deliver a jewelbox to the mayor. Unfortunately he makes an idiot of himself by selling the jewelbox to an anthro raccoon and his monkey companion for a fake ruby that pisses his dad off, he feels so ashamed that he runs away to join the carnival. But during a night performance of the carnival where a beautiful blonde girl puppet is peforming, Pinocchio is seduced and tricked by an evil puppeteer who is the title villain's minion as he turns him back into a puppet slowly and tortures him. However later he becomes human again thanks to his fairy godmother and escapes the carnival so he can look for the scumbags that swindled him earlier. They sold the jewelbox to the carnival as they go after it but end up in the hellish nightmarish realm of the empire of the night conducted by the evil Emperor who wants Pinocchio's soul.

I stumbled on this movie on youtube after not seeing it in a long time, i saw this movie when i was 6 in a theater back in Christmas 1987 when i lived in St. Louis and it scared the shit out of me. It's also very dark with bizarre moments like that horrific scene i mentioned and it's suprisingly well animated for a big budget Filmation movie ( No stock animation or reusing poses/walk-movements like Filmation's other stuff including Star Trek animated) as it did something different.

It's one worth check out for fans of animation including for nostalgic reasons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9MtQgR4lk

It's also still as creepy as ever, it's sort of like Disney's Pinocchio meets Rock and Rule.

 

[Christopher]

^Filmation's feature work didn't employ the limited animation style of their television work. Limited animation was a style created specifically for television budgets and schedules. If you check out Filmation's other movies, including Journey Back to Oz, The Legend of Bravestarr, and the '79 Flash Gordon TV movie which unfortunately has never been released on video (but is on YouTube), you'll see they don't have much, if any, recycled animation -- although a lot of the animation from the Flash and Bravestarr movies was reused in the respective TV series.

I never caught Filmation's later "fairy tale sequel" features like this one, though.

 

[EmmanuelZorg]

Well Chris, i've seen those including He-Man: Secret of the Sword and Starchaser: Legend of Orin which were made by Filmation as well.

But check out Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night on the link Chris, it's their finest work of art ever and took them 5 years to make as a labor of love. Now They had a plan to do a series of fairy tale sequels that began with Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night to Snow White's Happily Ever After then they wanted to do sequels to other famous fairytales Red Riding Hood, Jack and The Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty and more including one for Frankenstein. But then in 1989 the Filmation studios shut down due to being bought by L'Oreal and those ideal sequels never came to fruitation but they could have been interesting ideas don't you think?

The only ones made were Pinocchio and Happily Ever After. Now Happily Ever After wasn't too bad but felt a bit rushed and made for 2 years and kind of for money. The best things about it is that Snow White was a hottie in that movie and Malcom Mcdowell was the voice of bad guy. Definitely check out Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night on youtube Chris and tell me what did you think of it if it's worthy of being Filmation's best thing ever? and it's a ton of fun but very dark and prepare to take a shower over it's controversial scene in part 5.

 

[Christopher]

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin was not a Filmation production. The only production company IMDb lists for it is Young Sung Production Co., a Korean animation studio, and it was distributed theatrically by Atlantic Releasing. Its full credits list a lot of American animators, so it seems to have been a US/Korean joint effort, but there's no mention of Filmation, Lou Scheimer, or the like.

It's weird -- Filmation seems to have a way of getting credit for things it had nothing to do with. There's a pervasive myth that Filmation made the Return to the Planet of the Apes animated series, which was actually from DePatie-Freleng.

 

[Dick Whitman]

A recent article about Roy E Disney passing mentioned Filmation's Pinocchio. When he became the head of Disney animation in the mid 80s he was very angry about it. Saying that he planned to fight any attempt by Filmation to evoke his uncle's classic in their advertising.

 

[Checkmate]

A recent article about Roy E Disney passing mentioned Filmation's Pinocchio. When he became the head of Disney animation in the mid 80s he was very angry about it. Saying that he planned to fight any attempt by Filmation to evoke his uncle's classic in their advertising.

Damn Filmation for (loosely) basing an animated film on a character from public domain stories and tales stretching back hundreds of years! Damn them to Hell!

 

[Dick Whitman]

I knew someone was going to ignorantly say that!

I have never seen Filmations's film, for the record. But it was apparently heavily criticize upon release for copying Disney's film as much as possible. Things that were not in the original book. As just one example, this Pinocchio also had an insect acting as his conscious. This one called "Gee Willikers". Same as how "Jiminy Cricket" had been a slang term.

 

[HappyDayRiot]

I still have the old, old VHS of this lying around somewhere. I used to love it, possibly more than the Disney, but damn it was scary. I don't remember any particular details about the plot other than Pinocchio losing something he bought his father and then ending up in a nightmarish circus though. Oh, and he had a red hat.

 

[Checkmate]

I knew someone was going to ignorantly say that!

You should be a bit more careful about being a hypocrite when tossing the word "ignorant" around.

First, Filmation's take of the character looks only vaguely like Disney's take of the character. The only real similarity is that they're both young boys dressed in period-y clothing. Filmation's vs. Disney's.

Second, if you sit back and rip off old stories and try to pass them off as original creations, then you deserve a big ol' "fuck you" if you even so much as try to complain about someone else doing it, too.

Or what, is Disney the only ones allowed to borrow ideas from old stories to tell a new tale?

 

[Agenda]

I seem to remember a cool poster for this movie, but I can't find a picture of it anywhere now.

 

[EmmanuelZorg]

Well i did research on the movie and Back in 1985 during production of the film, Disney sued them over the rights of the character. But they defended their film and stated that Pinocchio with Snow White and many fairy tale characters come from public domain books thus Filmation won the case.

I think Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night is a stand-alone movie much like 2008's "The Incredible Hulk" was to Ang Lee's or Batman Begins/Dark Knight were to Burton's movies. But who else thought this movie was dark as hell including the horrific transformation scene i mentioned? rare in a family movie these days but in the 80's you had some that scared kids shitless including me.

 

[HappyDayRiot]

^ The intro sequence of the carnival coming out of nowhere with the materialising ropes and tents followed by the appearance of the puppetmaster and the booming voice of the Emperor was enough for me as a 4 year old! That said, I loved scary things like and the first Land Before Time movie.

 

[EmmanuelZorg]

AwesomeHappyDayRiot, that's awesome you remember it and seeing it on youtube.com was a trip down memory lane.

Here's the absolutely horrifying scene where Puppetino tortures and slowly turns Pinocchio back into a puppet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCLhGj-DQ_o

Disturbing, wasn't it?

One of the reasons why this movei haunted me forever.