All posts by slappyhead

Bizarre animated? film of a street scene in silouhette? with crumbling/erecting buildings, people…

…walking, dying and being stretchered away while the camera tracks out

Possibly BBC TV but could have been ITV1 or Channel 4. This was almost definitely 1995 but could have been 1994, a creepy animated? film has haunted me from age 6/7 and I can still picture it in my visual memory now 20 years later…

I know I couldn’t have made it up or dreamt it as my sister was there who also cannot shake the memory of this fascinating unknown. It will probably haunt me for the rest of my life until I know what it was.

I am also sure it was repeated not long after the first viewing and we both watched it for a second time.

It was a short animated? film with a tracking camera coming towards the foreground within a street level scene, possibly drawn pencil art or in silhouette.

People are seen crossing the street (in hurried fashion and a busy population) some falling down on the ground and dying, while others come in and stretcher them away. Meanwhile buildings and structures crumble into the background and erect in the foreground either side of the completely fixed straight street that the camera is tracking.

The solid background colour I’m unsure but loosely recall was tinted yellow sort of vintage film style.

I can’t recall the audio, might have been mute (or we had the tv mute) but I almost want to say it had a creepy holding note or something given its sinister feeling.

Having since studied animation and film, now it would seem to have been something quite vintage or then again just someone’s modern experimental film. I read that the BBC used to show short animated films around that time?

Massively obscure I know, my sister isn’t all too bothered but I need to put an end to this haunting memory in my life and know what the heck it was!

Lonely girl befriends and falls in love with bullied / abused guy who ultimately commits suicide by…

… jumping in front of a train

This possibly could have been a television movie and most likely shown on Channel 4, sometime between 2001 – 2004 (otherwise BBC or ITV1). It was English language and colour, however I can’t recall the aspect ratio or much else.

My only memories of the plot consist of a bullied teenage guy who is in a poor relationship with his father (possibly abused by him but I cannot remember exactly). I think he climbs out of a side window to escape the house on a regular basis so his father doesn’t know he’s going out.

Early on we see the interaction between the guy and local thugs who tease and bully him on a daily basis.

We are then introduced to a blond? girl who possibly saves him from the thugs or shooed them off etc.

Whatever happens between then and scenes where the guy shows the girl his secret hide/camp, that he has built and furnished I can’t recall.

Eventually between further scenes (shown only through windows from the outside of the house with audio) of the scraps/abuse between the guy and his father mixed with the guy continually meeting the girl again, they inevitably fall in love and share their bodies with another on the ground within the hide/camp.

However the ending is not a happy one with increased tensions between the guy and his father. I seem to recall the guy possibly intending to murder his father but it didn’t happen or something else happened, again conflicting memories. The guy climbs a tall brick wall fronting a railway line and we see him jump from the top of the wall into an oncoming train.

The girl not knowing what has become of her lover, while I believe she waited for him within the hide, visits the father and learns of the suicide, which is where I recall the film ended.

Any ideas? It was certainly an interesting time as a teenager with just 4 analogue terrestrial channels available. Channel 4 was a disturbingly adult resource staying up late nights with your own bedroom tv, albeit a 14 inch CRT! There were some really messed up films I came upon, often midway through or just catching the tail end and it never made sense at the time to look in the tv guide, teletext etc to know what it actually was… There was Larry Clark’s Kids for instance… then again also TV specials / films like the “Adult at 14 season” film Pleasureland in 2003. I’ll probably never shake off that memory of a sickening short film based on Red Riding Hood from around that time either. Good times Channel 4, good times.