Scenes

I'm on a long-term quest to put names to half-remembered media from childhood. I have done pretty well so far this century and have discussed some of it here before. But it is easier to identify something if you can describe the story or whatever overall. It becomes more difficult if all that is left in the memory banks is isolated scenes or pages. Here then I will focus on just those more obscure part-recollections and start with possibly the most elusive. Can anyone who was a kid in the 70s or 80s help with this or any others described here?

A Many Faced Stranger

This memory was likely one of those animated shorts SBS would play between scheduled programs. Most likely from Europe and depicting a fairy tale. Could have been cel or cutout or clay animation. In it a mysterious yet terribly charismatic stranger comes to town and charms everyone in various ways. Someone (a child or youth) however is suspicious of him and one day follows him into the hills to discover his fiendish acts. The scene seared into my memory is of the diabolical stranger taking off his face, as if it is a mask, to reveal another mask, and another, and another. He is masks all the way down!

A friend suggested it could be Krabat (1978) from Czechoslovakia but that is a full-blown movie. I will describe it however, as it has a similar creepy vibe. Krabat adapts the fairy tale of an apprentice sorceror who eventually gets the better of his murderous master. One nifty characteristic of that story was that the master would take different animal guises but all of them would retain a prominent scar from his scalp. It was drawn like a huge crack - gruesome even in animation.

A Musical Paper Plane

The ABC also played shorts between scheduled programs. Many were music videos for instrumental tracks like Toccata by Sky (footage of white water rafting) or Incantations (Excerpt) by Mike Oldfield (footage from the moon landings). One I can describe but still cannot name.

It may well have involved the music of a classical guitarist and starts with live-action footage of a musician sitting in a cottage folding some sheet music into the form of a paper plane. He throws his creation out the window as the video transitions to cel animation of the same paper dart travelling lazily across what looks like English farmland at its most lovely. It even spends some time washing along a babbling brook till it is launched back into the air by a small waterfall. I'm sure the music was nice too but cannot recall a bar of it.

Runaways

I watched a movie on telly one afternoon that involved some kids (presumably siblings) who had run away from whichever adults were initially caring for them and are now travelling across land with another adult (possibly an estranged father or grandfather). This parental figure has promised to take them to his farmhouse, which he describes as some kind of childhood paradise. Towards the end of the film they are getting close to their new home and, at every twist and turn of the road, the kids ask whether the next house in sight is the one. Eventually they come to their house but it is far smaller and more shabby than what they imagined. I think I was as disappointed as the kids in the story, but imagine that the moral was something to do with home being with those you love.

A similar movie is called Flight Of The Doves (1971) but that involves two siblings crossing from England to Ireland (I recommend taking a look at the song-and-dance number You Don't Have To Be Irish To Be Irish). However, the movie I'm wanting the name of was set in North America.

Common Cold

Another random movie I watched (more just because it was on than because I was interested in it) felt like one of those 'Rock Hudson & Doris Day' sitcoms but the thing that distinguishes it in my mind is that a central character is seeking to cure the common cold. He says that it is ridiculous to him that humans can go into space but not do what he intends to do. That is all I can recall except possibly to say that it had an urban coastal setting. I'm okay if I never discover the identity of this one.

Future Satire

I watched some movie with my parents in which one hapless office worker in the future has a rotten day because he left his all-purpose key card at home or something. He cannot access his workplace, cannot operate his car, cannot get money (it was possibly the first depiction of an automatic teller machine I saw). I want to say it was in the European mid-century tradition of Play Time by Jacques Tati in that the story is essentially silent and shows the folly of ultra-modern living. You know the kind of nonsense? You need to replace your plastic card but to be allowed to do that you need to present your plastic card! You find yourself sent round and round in bureaucratic circles. I had that experience a few times recently in virtual form from the comfort of my own room and it is still terribly frustrating.

Cosmic And Colourful

My local library had a particular hardcover book full of lurid science fiction artwork. I suspect they fit the expository fiction format I discuss here in which the works of many artists are unified by the text of just one author (but it could have all been the work of one artist). Scenes I recall include reptilian aliens dressed like ceremonial guards, furry creatures hiding from the automated destruction of lush habitats, and humans in very form-fitting uniforms.

A Pantheon Illustrated

And finally my primary school library had a pocket guidebook to Greek mythology. Its entries were presented alphabetically and were accompanied by some basic but realistically proportioned illustrations. It also had a cool family tree of gods and goddesses, which I have since realized involved some editorializing because that mythology changed over the generations (this state-of-change is, incidentally, why I'm okay with modern bastardizations of mythology, like in Ray Harryhausen's Clash Of The Titans).

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In writing this short selection I was constantly thinking about the many items that I have managed to put names to. Next I shall discuss some of those...