Creepy Claymation Animation...

[TedShatner10]

Here is an infamous clip from The Adventures of Mark Twain, a old 1980s children's movie that should be re-classified with a 12 age rating due to the rather macabre tone, nihilistic subject matter and the brutal genocide of the poor little clay people.

"I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is."

 

[Joy]

LOL. I grew up watching that movie, but it was a recording from Disney Channel, so it didn't have that scene in it. I finally got the DVD last year, and am so happy to have the movie in its full glory.

The unfortunate thing about that scene is that it comes from a novella compiled by Twain's biographer Albert Paine that melded transcripts from two or three different novels that Twain had been working on; the novella was called simply The Mysterious Stranger (though it actually used manuscripts from that story, The Chronicle of Young Satan, and Schoolhouse Hill) and can often be found compiled with a few of Twain's other shorter stories.

However, the University of California Press managed to find all of Twain's notes and manuscript pages for ONLY No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger and published it in its entirety in the '80s. I managed to find the book at my library, and I must say that it's FAR better than the mutilated story compiled by Paine.

Wikipedia has a great article about the history of these stories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger

Joy

 

[M'Sharak]

Someone else posted that clip recently and, though I hadn't seen the movie before, I immediately recognized that much of the content had been taken from "The Mysterious Stranger", a version of which (possibly the Paine construction to which Joy refers) I first read many years ago and still consider outstanding.

One other thing which struck me on seeing the clip was the familiarity of the animation style. Turns out that the movie was made by Will Vinton, who also did the "California Raisins" spots and is credited with inventing the term "Claymation" to describe what he did.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

I just recently went and read "The Mysterious Stranger." Almost all of the dialogue in that clip is taken strait from the book -- even the part about asking for their favorite fruits. There were three boys -- or maybe four -- so they didn't have to stretch to far to put Huck, Tom, and what's her name in there. The scene the clip is based on is only a small portion of "The Mysterious Stranger". The main kid asks Satan to help out people and Satan usually does, but does something terrible and cold-hearted to someone else in the process. (Satan gives money to a poor man, but the money was magically taken out of another man's house and so the poor but suddenly rich man is thought to be a theif.)

The ending of that clip is also pretty much the basic jist of the ending of the story, too. It pops up out of nowhere and pretty much throws away everything in the story and ends in an odd philosophical discussion.

I actually wish they could have made a full Claymation movie out of that story...If they could give that much loving detail to that one scene, with the little guys walking around, it would have been awesome.

 

[Joy]

The ending is one reason why I liked the true version of Mysterious Stranger the best... As the book goes on, reality becomes more and more blurred until the end when everything has fallen away. The ending flows much better coupled with the story that it actually belongs to.

And also, in the No. 44 The Mysterious Stranger novel, there is no Satan; just No. 44. The Satan part of the Mysterious Stranger novella actually comes from a mix of the Chronicle of Young Satan and Schoolhouse Hill. And actually, Schoolhouse Hill, according to Wikipedia, also had Tom and Huck in it, which of course then makes sense in context with the movie.

The story has a fascinating history, and I hope to one day soon get around to reading the Chronicle of Young Satan and Schoolhouse Hill. Then I'll have read all four stories that are tied to each other.

Joy

 

[Worf412]

I've only seen the clip, is the rest of the movie as creepy?

 

[Joy]

No, that's pretty much the only creepy thing in it, at least from my own POV. The movie was released the year I was born, and I'd say that my mom taped it when I was about 3. So I'd say I've been watching it since around that age.

I'd love for it to become a tool for introducing Mark Twain to younger generations. Nowadays you don't even read Huck Finn 'til you're in high school, and where I went, you only read it if you chose American Lit & Comp instead of English III in your junior year. I think it's horrible that so few kids these days know about one of the greatest American novelists of all time.

Joy

 

[Holoaddict]

I still remember watcning the "Diary of Adam and Eve" segment. I practically wet myself watching Adam go over the waterfall in various containers. It really is too bad Disney does not show stuff like this anymore.

 

[Joy]

The Diaries of Adam and Eve is probably the best book of Twain's I've ever read. Sure, I like Huck Finn, and Tom Sawyer, and No. 44 The Mysterious Stranger, but growing up, it was the story of Adam and Eve in the movie that left the most impression on me. Back in '06 I finally got around to reading the book, and LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it.

Speaking of... When I went on my Twain binge in '06, I also read the last book Twain ever wrote about Tom and Huck, called "Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer Among the Indians". Twain wrote the beginning but never finished the book. Lee Nelson took the manuscript and wrote the majority of the book and finished it; there are indicators showing where Twain's work stopped and Nelson's begins. I don't want to sound like I'm quoting the reviews, but it really is rather difficult to tell Nelson's writing from Twain's. There are a few tells, but all in all it's a very satisfactory novel.

Another novel I'm quite fond of is Tom Sawyer Abroad. That novel was the base inspiration for the plotline of The Adventures of Mark Twain, featuring Huck and Tom on an adventure in a big hot-air balloon, including a visit to the Sphinx. Silver Dollar City even has a RIDE based off the novel.

Joy

 

[TedShatner10]

Why did Satan decide to make a collection of sweet little clay people then viciously killed them all when they started bickering and grieving?! What kind of psychopath is he?