A Gathering of the Spirits


“I’d swear you had your colors done.”

Will Vinton’s Claymation Comedy of Horrors (1991) has only garnered five reviews on IMDb, so it’s probably safe to say it isn’t on many Halloween must-watch lists. That’s a pity, because animated holiday specials are rarely as funny as this.

I stumbled on Horrors just a few years ago while browsing the kid vid in the local library. It shares a dvd with Claymation Christmas Celebration (1987) and Claymation Easter (1992), both very funny as well. “Claymation” is Vinton’s trademarked brand of stop-motion animation, which entered the zeitgeist in the 1980s via TV spots featuring R&B quartet The California Raisins. The Raisins perform on the Christmas special. Personally, I don’t think they’ve aged well, but that may be because seeing them makes me feel old.

Horrors defies easy summary. “A wise-guy pig-inventor and his snail assistant crash a convention of, um, non-mortals at Dr. Frankenswine’s castle ....” Honestly, there’s so much happening on screen at any moment, getting the gags can be like playing Whac-a-mole. To give one example, in the castle men’s room (“lavatory”—the characters are in fact looking for the lab) graffiti can be seen on the stall doors in the background—not just seen but, if you stop the disc, read. Does Dracula know people are saying he “sucks”? No phone number. One suspects the Black-Lagoonish creature, pictured above, who emerges from one of the stalls might be the fellow to dial it. Get a load of that pose.


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