Morgan is a stop motion animator, who specialises with specially made puppets and more creepy elements to his films. While we didn't watch his entire filmography, we managed to watch quite a bit of it in the space of 2 hours. The films we watched were The Cat with Hands, The Separation, Bobby Yeah, Invocation, D is for Deloused and Belial's Dream.
THE CAT WITH HANDS
(The Cat with Hands - dir. Robert Morgan)
The story recounts a tale that a man was told, as he recites it to an accomplice. He tells of how "he" appeared at the well, before lowering a bucket down into said well. When the bucket rises, we see a boy. He looks in the bucket, and a cat jumps out, landing using two human hands. The boy tries to stroke the cat, only for the cat to grab his hand and steal his face. The cat wears the boy's face as it's own, as we go back to the old man. He says how the cat continued collecting human parts until it looked just like a person, but before he can say the one part it never took, his accomplice kisses the man, stealing his tongue in the process... the accomplice was the cat all along.
The film was made for £40,000, and utilised life size puppets. Traditionally, stop motion puppets won't be any taller than 30cm; however, the puppets for the titular cat and the boy are both to scale with what they actually should be. An actress would be the placeholder for the human puppet, acting on it's behalf.
Upon watching it, I was immediately uncomfortable. The atmosphere and acting were both superb, especially if it had put me on edge so soon into the film. The puppets, made of a rubber silicon, looked like a disgusting skin texture, which also didn't sit well with me. As it turned out, that would be a continuing trend throughout the short films.
THE SEPARATION
(The Separation - dir. Robert Morgan)
The Separation is a short film directed by Robert Morgan, released in 2003.
The story is of two conjoined twins who, once separated and grow old, find themselves miserable in their jobs at a toy factory. One twin yearns to be conjoined once again to his twin brother, and shows this by taking two of the toys produced and sewing them together, in the same way they were once conjoined. The other twin creates a giant sewing machine-esque device, which implies that's how they'd join back together. Where one sits up on the machine, the other slips, causing the machine to start early and mangles his brother's body. We see that the damaged brother no longer has any limbs, and has lost use of every facial feature but his nose. The healthy brother drags him to the hospital, back to the room they were separated in. They lie down together, presumably to die.
The short was cut down from it's original cut, seeing that there was originally a sequence that showed the brothers growing up, instead of skipping forward by (at a guess) 50 years. The puppets are made with armatures, little metal skeletons designed for stop motion characters to be built around. Like The Cat with Hands, the puppets are made using a rubber silicon, which Morgan moulded and designed himself.
I really didn't like this short film. I really really didn't. It's well made, but the content is so uncomfortable to watch, and paired with the visual style Morgan goes for, I felt somewhat sick while it was playing. Definitely wouldn't watch again if given the choice.
BOBBY YEAH
Bobby Yeah revolves around the titular character, who has a fleshy rabbit head, and a ragdoll body. He steals a pet from a house, and presses a red button he finds on the creature. Once he presses the button, the phrase "all hell breaks loose" wouldn't be inaccurate; weird biomechanical creatures appear, shooting seeds(?) all over the place, which form into an egg. The egg hatches, revealing a giant head creature with bug legs. Bobby presses a button on the head creature, leading him to the house he stole from. Confronted by the baby thing that owned the pet, Bobby finds out there was a witness, and the baby gets their father(?) involved. Both Bobby and the face on the wall witness get buttons on them, and the father tries to press Bobby's. Bobby manages to kill both the father and baby, and escapes back to his house. However, the face calls the police to Bobby's house, who try and behead him. Seeing no alternative, he presses his own button, becoming a worm creature with toenail ears. After everyone perishes, Bobby finds an egg. The egg hatches a small insect-like creature, which rips off Bobby's head and sends it skyward bound.
The short film is the longest of Morgan's filmography, clocking in at nearly 25 minutes. It was independently made for a budget of £3000, but most of that went into materials and transportation. The most unique part of this film is that it was entirely improvised over 3 years; Morgan explained that he made the character and set, and took it from there. He also stated that, despite what the public theorises, there's no kind of hidden meaning of metaphors in this film.
Bobby Yeah was nominated for a total of 13 awards, including the BAFTA for Best Animated Short.
INVOCATION
(Invocation - dir. Robert Morgan)
Invocation is a short film by Robert Morgan, released in 2013.
The plot is simple enough; a stop motion animator animates a teddy bear puppet, with an old 12mm camera. However, inside the camera, we see a disgusting fleshy interior. With every press of the camera trigger, a new chunk of flesh is spawned inside the camera, looking more and more like the skeleton and muscles of the teddy bear. Eventually, enough is there for the teddy bear spawn to escape the camera, and crawls out the room. Noticing something out the corner of his eye, the animator turns around, seeing a lifesize horrific version of the bear, with a wide gaping mouth. The bear violently hits the animator multiple times, and delivers a final killing blow with a piece of the stop motion mise-en-scene. With the animator now lying dead on the set, the flesh bear starts animating with his corpse. Going back into the camera, it now creates a twisted version of the animator, who bears witness to his own corpse being animated.
Invocation was made in response to Bobby Yeah, where Morgan reportedly felt like Bobby's character was more in control of the animation than he was, telling him what to do, instead of the other way around. This short was also made on a £3000 budget, Morgan remarking that bigger budgets doesn't always necessarily mean a bigger or better product at the end.
BELIAL'S DREAM
(Belial's Dream clip - dir. Robert Morgan)
Belial's Dream is a short film by Robert Morgan, commissioned by the team behind the Blu-Ray rerelease of the film Basketcase.
The short revolves around Belial, a character from the original film. He has a very strange dream, in which he meets a creature that tries to seduce him. Once he gets close enough, the creature spins around, revealing a face, with a scalpel on it's nose. Belial screams, and tries to escape. He eventually "wakes up", sitting on their mother's / grandmother's lap. The familial figure tries reading to him, only to be killed by the face. Belial screams once more, before waking up a final time, realising it was all a dream.
This short was probably the strangest, given both the nature of the subject and the visuals of the characters themselves. Belial is essentially a worm with a head that have arms sticking out of it, and he looks the most normal in the whole short.
The short revolves around Belial, a character from the original film. He has a very strange dream, in which he meets a creature that tries to seduce him. Once he gets close enough, the creature spins around, revealing a face, with a scalpel on it's nose. Belial screams, and tries to escape. He eventually "wakes up", sitting on their mother's / grandmother's lap. The familial figure tries reading to him, only to be killed by the face. Belial screams once more, before waking up a final time, realising it was all a dream.
This short was probably the strangest, given both the nature of the subject and the visuals of the characters themselves. Belial is essentially a worm with a head that have arms sticking out of it, and he looks the most normal in the whole short.
D IS FOR DELOUSED
(D is for Deloused - dir. Robert Morgan)
D is for Deloused was made by Robert Morgan for the film ABCs of Death 2, a collaborative film where 26 filmmakers were assigned a letter of the alphabet, and could make a short film based around a way someone could die, beginning with that letter. Morgan's original letter was L, so he went for "Louse(d)". However, after finishing his film, the filmmakers had their letters changed, so Morgan just changed his title from Louse(d) to Deloused, fitting his newly assigned letter D.
The story involves three deformed body snatchers who've tied down a man to an operating table. They inject a pump of sorts into his neck, with a source for the fluid being from a skull. The body snatchers all have nails for noses, and are covered in bugs. One of the men has a louse fall off them, which is then promptly squished. The man dies, and the three men leave. After some time, the louse reemerges as a giant louse, which notices the dead body on the table. As it starts eating the arm of it, a new version of the man spawns from a splat of his blood. However, as the louse eats him, the body part that's gone turns black and shrivels up. He investigates the louse, finding a hatch on it's back side. Looking through, he sees a presumably evil spirit staring back, commanding him to kill. He follows the command, finding and beheading the three men who stole him. He feeds the heads to the spirit, but one gets stuck. He pushes the head in, but gets his own head trapped in the process. He pulls it out just in time, albeit with a now elongated neck. He collapses on the floor, as we see the louse eat his old head. The new head shrivels up and turns black. Finally, the louse returns to normal size, and scurries away.
While Morgan expressed happiness for how his self proclaimed "first attempt at full horror" went, he claims ABCs of Death 2, on the whole, isn't very good.
In conclusion, I found the visit fairly interesting! Stop motion isn't a form of animation I find myself to be particularly invested in, but seeing Morgan's films really pushed forward what I perceived as doable in stop motion. The films themselves, however, were hit and miss for me. Bobby Yeah and Invocation were interesting watches which I wouldn't mind watching again, but The Separation is one I'm going to try and avoid at all costs from now on. The way I'd describe watching his films in as few words as possible is "uncomfortable laughter".
The story involves three deformed body snatchers who've tied down a man to an operating table. They inject a pump of sorts into his neck, with a source for the fluid being from a skull. The body snatchers all have nails for noses, and are covered in bugs. One of the men has a louse fall off them, which is then promptly squished. The man dies, and the three men leave. After some time, the louse reemerges as a giant louse, which notices the dead body on the table. As it starts eating the arm of it, a new version of the man spawns from a splat of his blood. However, as the louse eats him, the body part that's gone turns black and shrivels up. He investigates the louse, finding a hatch on it's back side. Looking through, he sees a presumably evil spirit staring back, commanding him to kill. He follows the command, finding and beheading the three men who stole him. He feeds the heads to the spirit, but one gets stuck. He pushes the head in, but gets his own head trapped in the process. He pulls it out just in time, albeit with a now elongated neck. He collapses on the floor, as we see the louse eat his old head. The new head shrivels up and turns black. Finally, the louse returns to normal size, and scurries away.
While Morgan expressed happiness for how his self proclaimed "first attempt at full horror" went, he claims ABCs of Death 2, on the whole, isn't very good.
In conclusion, I found the visit fairly interesting! Stop motion isn't a form of animation I find myself to be particularly invested in, but seeing Morgan's films really pushed forward what I perceived as doable in stop motion. The films themselves, however, were hit and miss for me. Bobby Yeah and Invocation were interesting watches which I wouldn't mind watching again, but The Separation is one I'm going to try and avoid at all costs from now on. The way I'd describe watching his films in as few words as possible is "uncomfortable laughter".
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