Reviews for Balloon Land

A great cartoon from my childhood, because I remember having this cartoon on VHS as a kid along time ago; but alas it's been lost over the years, and I couldn't find it ever since; but it has been my favorite cartoon from UB Iwerks : The Father of Mickey Mouse (my favorite Disney character). At first I didn't know that UB created Mickey (until now that is). I also would like to point the excellent voice characterization of Billy Bletcher as The Pin Cushion Man; who also was The Big Bad Wolf and Pegleg Pete from Disney.

I love the concept of using babies for an alarm; You know take their bottles away and WAHHHHH!!!

A nice friendly world made of inflated gum-tree blood (AKA rubber) is everything you might expect from the designer of Mickey Mouse. It is what follows with the arrival of the Pincushion Man that makes it decidedly less friendly and more dark than a lot of theatrical shorts.

In fact, the nearest thing I can readily compare this to is the Silly Symphony “Lullaby Land.” Which is really very similar, apart from the fact that there no real villain in that and certainly no murdering.

*** Spoiler ***

Getting back to my first sentence, the way the villagers drive the Pincushion Man back is by bombarding him with latex, literally using the same material they themselves are made of; essentially they are using their potential future children as ammo, morbid thought huh?

***End Spoiler***

I've no idea what people would have thought of it back in the mid-thirties, my best guess is that they’d be scare to death and fearful on the effect that this would have on their children. Certainly the Hayes code wasn’t quite in force yet and I doubt that murdering innocent balloon people would get pass their censors.

An interesting, well made, but quite disturbing piece of work.

Although Walt Disney once called Ub Iwerks 'the greatest animator in the world', I'm not a fan of his solo productions, made mainly in the 30's between periods with Disney. With this one I had to make an exception though, and give it a mention, simply because it is one of the most genuinely disturbing cartoons I've ever seen.

Despite the gay, colourful beginning, complete with balloon versions of Laurel and Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin, and the presence of plenty of gags, this film would give Tim Burton nightmares. In this world, people are manufactured out of latex, inflated with air and come to life. Two children disregard the warnings of one of the adults about how they're just air, and one little prick could destroy them, and they go outside into the forest. Here they meet the evil Pincushion Man, a macabre, sadistic figure whose waist area is composed of a pincushion filled with needles, which he uses to basically murder the balloon inhabitants of the forest, and eventually the town, once he finds hs way inside.

You know how fairy tales used to be actually scary? People being baked in ovens and things like that? This is the real deal, made 70 years ago. It was probably considered light entertainment in 1935. To me in 2005 it's up there with 'Evil Dead', despite the fact that all ends well.

Several others of Iwerks' 'ComiColor' cartoons have a similar unsettling effect on me, but this one takes the cake. I keep this DVD in the spare room. I don't want to think about it too much. As a piece of macabre surrealism this thing deserves three stars. Iwerks, BTW, is the guy who was mainly responsible for the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Three stars. An 'enjoyable romp'. Maybe for Hannibal Lector.