Sunday, October 31, 2010

Halloween TV Countdown #7: "Gumby on the Moon"



Oh, yeah. That little green ball of clay could be plenty scary, especially in this eerie lunar misadventure from 1956 where Gumby finds himself all alone on the Moon. It's disorienting, for us and for Gumby. The short opens on a creepy Moon with a face, then we hear the odd electronic score. Poor Gumby wakes up on the Moon, and there are moon monsters there, too.

This is a completely odd Gumby short -- no wonder it makes an impression! Actually, the original version was twice as long and contains the whole long sequence, equally memorable and even more horrifying, of Gumby being put into an iron lung and revived. This one only has a glimpse of Gumby coming out of his freeze. I haven't been able to find the whole version in one piece, but there are many clips from the iron lung sequence in this excerpt (click to view) from an Art Clokey documentary. Completely scary!


But even the short version is plenty disorienting, especially during the rescue sequence where Gumby's father goes after him with a ladder. Unforgettable!



Boo! And Happy Halloween!

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