A Tale of Three Todds

Lots of other stuff happened today, but I also scratched an itch. I now own DVD copies of Sweeney Todd the 2007 film ($12.99), the 2001 concert ($9.99), and the 1982 stage show ($9.99). It took chasing down the the copies that were on sale, but now I'm fully Todded supplied.

Captain Pugwash & Old Comics

When I was in Sanity (and I'm not "sane" now?) hunting around for the Broadway version of Sweeney Todd, I kept finding volumes of Captain Pugwash.

I used to watch this on the ABC as a child. If you though the original animation to South Park was limited, you haven't seen anything until you see episodes of this! See Youtube clip below (and lots more at this YouTube site):

And yet it had a strange charm all its own. There was, I found out later, supposed to all these double-entendres however it's more likely this is all misunderstanding - for example, "Master Mate" sounds a lot like "Masturbate". You can well see where Captain Jack Sparrow hails from.

Pugwash always reminded me of Harris Tweed, who was a character in The Eagle (which I used to read when they were in bundles of comics that my mother would buy from "white elephant stalls" (this is the 60s, remember). Tweed (a pun on a type of cloth) was a special trouble-shooter for the British Government but most of his cases were solved by his boy sidekick called "Boy".

I might just pop back and get those DVDs sometime.

Moving Lips

Thinking about Captain Pugwash makes me think of another series of cartoons I used to watch as a child. There were three of them, all using the same technique: Clutch Cargo, Space Angel  and Captain Fathom. According to the Wikipedia, what all these had in common was a process called "Syncro-Vox", a form of optical printing that mixed still images with animated ones.

The big thing that I remember about these was the way the lips moved! You can see an example in the Youtube clip below:

As you can see, the lips move, but look like they aren't actually attached to any muscles! My favourite was Captain Fathom in which the technique seemed to reach its zenith. There's an episode of this on Youtube as well, but if you want to avoid the deliberately stupid "cartoon dump" intro, start watching at 4:27.

It's strange - if you wait long enough you can find anything on Youtube.