And so, I guess the point was that, what with me being the Movie Hooligan and all, had to strike out on his own to find his own ode to Mankind... Humankind's greatest voyage into space. A lot of exploded rockets and dead astronauts to get there, you know! Whelp, for some reason, I found myself going to the local library, if only on the computer here, and reserving almost all of the Gumby DVDs they got. The beloved green Art Clokey clay figure, not any other, especially the Monty Python character. Incidentally, this review is brought to you by the Architect Sketch. The Architect Sketch! Up there!!! UP THERE!!!! THE ARCHITECT SKETCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, back to Gumby. Before the great remastering of 2013, they had them on DVD, and I found myself checking them out from the greatest video store on the West Coast, during my ill-spent pre-middle ages, and I stumbled upon an episode called "Moon Trip, Part One." Now, I know what you're going to say, because that's what we all do now, now that we're all jacked-up SmartPhone users, never a centimeter away from a computer keyboard anymore. You're going to ask, but Movie Hooligan! What about Part Two? Well, I'll spare you the agony this time and report to you now that, well... you know, there just doesn't seem to be one beyond this Part One we've got. I checked the '50s series, the '60s series Part One, not on Gumby's Arctic Antics or Gumby Essentials. And worse than that, as of this writing, there seems to be little to no info on either Wikipedia or the IMDb! We'll just have to hope someday that a Premavision Inc. representative will come forward with more complete cast and crew information, episode air dates and what not, etc. etc. etc.
...oh, right! The episode itself. Well, it's about a 15 minute affair, the music is sufficiently dreamy, or dreamy-creepy, as one would expect from a space-faring cinematic adventure. That transition from C-Sharp to A-Flat was clearly the filmmaker's favourite. Think Forbidden Planet, but not as theremin-y. Not a lot of dialogue either, and sometimes the characters turn away from the camera when they're talking, but not each time! The clay artists involved did the hard work at times! Of course, if you've ever at all attempted such a feat of stop-motion animation with clay figurines, you'll immediately understand why Gumby has the power to skate anywhere on one foot... exactly. Well, that's what good screenwriting's all about right there. And so, like any good surveyor, Gumby uses an optical instrument to size up his mission. There's a weird-ass toy telescope that you won't be able to find on Ebay, and Gumby has to stretch up to the viewfinder. There it is! A smiling moon. Gumby has to slightly adjust the focus of the telescope, thereby fulfilling an age-old cinematic tradition.
Now it's time to pick the appropriate spaceship. Somehow the pink rocketship doesn't seem to have the, um... readiness for a round trip to the moon. Fine for something like Dancing on the Moon, but not for Gumby. No, as you can tell from the soundtrack, the orange multi-chambered number will just have to do. And so, like Chuck Yeager before him, Gumby takes the old bird out for a spin. Fans of animation drawn directly onto the film will love this part, as Gumby has a little bit of trouble breaking out of orbit. We see two new characters emerge, who are apparently supposed to be Mom and Dad Gumby. And Gumby, being such an eager yet novice pilot, very nearly incinerates his parents with the rambling spaceship, but Mom and Dad have dealt with Gumby's rogue antics before, and they know to turn themselves into puddles as the ship flies over their flat, bepuddled heads. Again, because of the computer-centric age we live in, Gumby obviously takes after Mom a little more than orange-skinned Dad. But he's got Dad's hairline; I mean, what a bad toupée! Am I right? YEESH!!!!
Shortcut to space: amateur and professional astronomers alike will, of course, scoff at this part: on his way to the moon, Gumby gets a warning over the telecom about asteroids. And sure enough, soon enough, there one is in the spaceship window. Bear in mind, of course, that these Gumby cartoons are from a more politically incorrect era, and even though this portrayal of asteroids is almost completely racist and offensive, they were seen more as enemies back then, and that to simply edit the sequence out entirely would be to effectively ignore this sad chapter of our collective past. Okay, on to the moon. Gumby makes his final approach, eventually finding a smooth landing site amongst the moon's many sharp peaks. To be fair, there is one sequence where we fly past some decent looking craters! I guess by 1956, when this was made, there was probably already a trove of bad sci-fi films about a prospective moon voyage, and certainly some decent shots captured by our most powerful telescopes.
Okay, now the fun begins. Gumby's on the moon, and doesn't need a space suit, of course. Soon, explosions fill the air. The last one destroys the ship to bits. Oh no! Stranded on the moon forever! Gumby has to lean up against a "rock" for a second. See, it's more of a narrow, pink pyramid-type deal. I guess people thought the moon had a bunch of rose quartz on its surface or something. Oh, but this is no ordinary pink pyramid. Soon, it's sprouting a pair of eyes! Thereby fulfilling another great cinematic tradition... things that look like other things? Bio-mimicry, if you will, with an emphasis on the menacing. They try to surround Gumby first, but Gumby's nothing if not imaginative, and the way he gets out of their impending grip is kinda neat. After that, the chase is on, as you can tell from the sound of the alien's march. Thereby leading to another old cliché: the alien mob followed closely behind by one teeny alien. I think some of the Looney Tunes surely used this one, but you know what? All this was at least two decades before Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which uses that one near the beginning, if memory serves. And I believe it does.
I probably should've pointed out that the film does get one thing right in terms of science: there's a handy sign on the Moon that tells us that the Moon's gravity is one-sixth that of the Earth... but who put it there? Still too many unanswered questions. Plus, Gumby bounces around like Charlie Sheen on a rocket-powered pogo stick, so we're not sticking to the textbook too well here. After Gumby stops bouncing, at about 4:32 he scratches his ass to dull the pain of the Moon. Let's just contemplate that for a second... okay, the second's over. Only in a child's cartoon at the time could parents expose their children to such filth. But I did want to point out the sequence at 6:54 where Gumby quickly runs up this one lunar hillside. This must be when Clokey had a little bit of ambition! A sense of scale! These were some pretty big sets he was working with on this one! Nothing to sneeze at. Pretty cool!
Anyway, at some point, Dad looks through the telescope at the moon and sees what's going on. Thank goodness he's got an order of magnification better than what Gumby had. Yes, let's face it, folks: Gumby's just spinning his wheels up there. No sense of mission, no collection of samples to return to earth, just this endless chase, this flaring of diplomatic tensions. Dad gets his toy fire truck and it's off to the rescue. Thank goodness the moon's within ladder distance! There's not many, but a few sequences where we see Dad on the ladder, and it's... oh. They're just moving the ladder and not animating anything... does that make sense? Dad uses a can of anti-asteroid spray on the asteroid, and I dunno... somehow it looks like an effect that was fixed in post. Don't know exactly when, but believe it or not they apparently did have a little bit of a budget on this thing.
I forgot to mention that a weird circular apparition lands on the moon at the bottom of a crater while Gumby's running around like the Wizard of Speed and Time up there on the moon, and it makes a really big Norman McLaren-esque explosion directly onto the film. Okay, back to the big chase. Gumby stalls the aliens a little, but eventually the moon proves to be too much for the little green bugger. "So COLD!" he exclaims. Thankfully, Dad and his ladder get close enough to save Gumby. Dad sprays a few of the aliens, and gets his boy back to Earth.
Now it's Shock Corridor time, as Gumby gets taken to "Doll Hospital," as the building says. You know, there was a similar shot of a similar model building in Tim Burton's 1989 classic, Batman. I couldn't help but think to myself, sheesh! That doesn't look good! Come to think of it, there seemed to be a lot of corner-cutting in that show, but enough about the DVD transfer. They load X-eyed Gumby into the iron lung-type situation and get to work. And... is that Nurse Mom about to give Gumby a dose of ether? Oh, I guess not. Still, the bottle and the rag, I couldn't help but try and put two and two together. More drawing directly onto the film with those spherical electrodes; we've gone full Frankenstein mode in this hospital. Arguably, Mom and Dad are a little bit calmer than Dr. Frankenstein was. Anyway, to cut to the chase... I know, decades too late for that, right? To cut to the chase, Gumby dies on the operating table, thereby making all other Gumby episodes some kind of twisted dream... I mean, he survives! You can tell from one of the medical devices they use to monitor Gumby's health. He goes from "Cold" to "Cool" to "Perfect"... what is that, a meat thermometer over here? A thumbs up from Nurse Mom, another knowing nod from Dad, and Gumby joins the conscious once again!
***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan
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