Watch Devil's Ball 6c5y1a

This excerpt from Ladislas Starevitch's complete twenty-six minute FETICHE (aka THE MASCOT), released in its truncated form as a stand-alone short in the U.S., is a stop-motion delight. Its Hieronymus Bosch-like vision of Hades finds the eternal underworld in a partying mood. Animated vegetables, a hellacious dance band, a snippy beauty who refuses a cocktail from a monster and a classically louche jeune homme (slouching against a post with cigarette dangling from his insolent mouth) are among those making the scene. This being Satan's territory, excess revelry can result in violent premature deaths even for the already-dead. Starewicz was a Moscow native of Polish descent who relocated to Paris after the Russian Revolution, eventually creating one of the first animated features in 1937, LE ROMAN DE RENARD (THE TALE OF THE FOX), which was released the same year as Walt Disney's more famous SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. - Dennis Harvey 36o41