Welcome back to Dark Corners Streaming.
New to Shudder is Phil Tippett’s stop motion passion project, Mad God.
I first ran across Phil Tippett in Thomas G. Smith’s book Industrial Light and Magic- The Art of Special Effects,
and realised that I had been a fan of his work for years without knowing it.
The most obvious successor to the stop motion crown of Ray Harryhausen,
Tippett animated alien chess pieces,
misguided police robots
and dragons before digital effects forced a change in his day job.
'Jurrasic Park was actually the shot in the head that killed stop motion.'
'It was a very big deal for me that the tide had totally gone out of my department.'
The animator began work on Mad God in the early 90s with no real idea of what he was doing,
it then lay fallow for a long while before he returned to it about twelve years ago,
urged by people in his studio who were keen to help
and to do some old school model work.
Though not exclusively stop motion
the bulk of Mad God is model animated and it’s that aesthetic that defines the movie,
more than any narrative you might be able to pick out
as we follow the Assassin through bizarre subterranean worlds.
There are a few in-references if you keep your eyes peeled Robbie the robot in the foreground,
Ed 209 behind and even Harryhausen’s cyclops if you look closely,
but overwhelmingly this is straight out of Tippett’s mind,
a world of strange characters and creatures
of disturbing images and apocalyptic landscapes
according to Tippett, this one set took 6 people 3 years to create.
At times it is a bloody vision,
at times an eerie one,
but most often it has a post-apocalyptic melancholia
where even the brightest places have their dark side
punctuated by occasional flashes of black humour,
like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis designed by Hieronymous Bosch.
What is it about? Well, Tippett has described the film as experimental which suggests an openness to interpretation.
The Assassin provides a through line but you wouldn’t say it has a clear story.
But its consistent aesthetic certainly seems to say something about a society that – without wanting to get into some of the more graphic imagery –
exists on its own waste.
But to be honest, I don’t think you have to understand it, interpret it or do anything to it to enjoy it.
It is an extraordinary watch, unlike virtually anything else out there,
but I did also find myself engaging with it and with the characters doomed to exist in this hellish world.
When he first saw the digital effects for Jurassic Park, Phil Tippett supposedly proclaimed himself extinct,
'We're out of a job.'
'Don't yu mean extinct?'
Mad God, funded by Kickstarter and made with a small army of volunteers,
proves that he is anything but.
Both he and his chosen medium are very much alive.
Since we started doing these streaming reviews we’ve looked at kids’ film Shaun the Sheep
the surprisingly mainstream The House,
art film Blood Tea and Red String and now Mad God.
Stop motion is versatile, vibrant and long may it continue.
Thanks for watching. Have you seen Mad God yet and if so, what did you think?
Let us know in the comments below.