Les escargots (1966)
aka The Snails
Article 5593 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-6-2018
Directed by Rene Laloux
No cast
Country: France
What it is: Animated short

A farmer discovers the only way his crop will flourish is to water them with human tears. He does so, but the crop attracts snails, who eat them and grow to tremendous size…

There are comic touches in the other works of Rene Laloux, but they tend to be muted by the general tone of darkness that pervades his works. This one is the reverse; the darkness is here, but the comic sense predominates, especially in its final twist. But then, I’d expect it to be a bit comic; it is, after all, a marauding giant monster movie, though it is less concerned with how humanity defeats the monsters than with what happens once the snails have laid waste to the world. At any rate, this is easily the most enjoyable of the three Laloux shorts I’ve seen recently.