ROAD HOGS IN TOYLAND (1911)
Article 4791 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-2-2015
Directed by Arthur Melbourne Cooper
No cast
Country: UK
What it is: Early stop-motion animation

Several racing cars wreak havoc in a small town.

I’ve seen a couple of other works by this stop-motion pioneer, and I’m beginning to see a pattern. The actual stop-motion animation is rather crude (but then, so were some of Willis O’Brien’s early efforts), but they’re fascinating to watch nevertheless because he usually has several planes of action going on at once. There’s not much in the way of a plot; various characters interact in the scene, and then the racing cars show up, destroy things and run over people, which gives a rather dark and slightly disturbing edge to what is supposed to be comic. All in all, this is an interesting curio from a past time.