Title: “Quasi at the Quackadero”
Year released: 1975
Character(s): Quasi, Anita and Rollo
Story by: Sally Cruikshank
Animation by: Sally Cruikshank
Directed by: Sally Cruikshank
Studio: None; financed independently
The first in many ways. First cartoon on the list to come from the second half of the twentieth century, first to be an independent production, first by a female animator, first to (apparently) be written, animated and directed by the one person. Right, well the intro music is cool, sort of like bluegrass with ducks quacking, but I must admit when we’re introduced to Quasi, who’s supposed to be a duck, he looks more like a frog. His girlfriend (?) Anita has an annoying lisp but the literal looking daggers - where daggers spring from her eyes and shoot at Quasi - is clever. For some reason I don’t understand there’s also a dancing armchair and a rat of some kind in the room. Also a dinosaur rocking horse, which Quasi has a brief ride on. As they wait for him to arrive in a sort of Jetsons-style flying saucer deal, Anita confides to Rollo the robot that she’ll be glad to see the back of him, so is she planning to do away with Quasi, or just break up with him?
Whatever is the case, off they go (across a pale pink sky) to the Quackadero, which appears to be some sort of carnival or fairground. The animation puts me in mind a little of Mr. Benn, quite limited for 1975, though I do accept this is an independent venture and Ms. Cruikshank would not have had access to the kind of financial backing larger studios would. This is very ****ing strange and trippy. A barker calls out that he can bring anyone back to a specific moment in their past, and witters on about some vegetable conference, the “victim” saying, as he comes back from the trip, “That never happened to me!” Then there’s “See yourself at every age” in the Hall of Time Mirrors, where Quasi seems to see himself as a series of skeletons, and others for some reason turn into food, “Roll back time”, which the robot uses to watch cities disappear and return to nature, and “Think Blinx - Paints Pictures of* Your Thoughts” which for some reason shows Quasi wanting to eat his two friends.
Then there’s “See last night’s dreams'', which goes pretty psychedelic, and I could do without the constant sighs of “Oh!” every few ****ing seconds! Then a guy who looks very much like our Mister Tayto (a mascot for Ireland’s favourite manufacturer of crisps, or as you Americans would say, potato chips) offers Quasi the chance to see how he has been reincarnated over time. Never trust a guy whose head looks like Neil Armstrong has walked there! Of course it’s all a scam - pointless, so far as I can see - and then they’re off to the Time Holes, whatever they may be. This cartoon is giving me a migraine! Well thank Christ it’s nearly over. Anita, true to her word, is about to get rid of Quasi, and with the help of the robot pushes him over the edge, where he falls into the time hole and ends up in the age of dinosaurs. And may he stay there.
Comments: I certainly hated that. The animation was okay but the story was impossible to follow, so now I need to read about it to see what those who know about it, well, know about it. Yeah, not much really. Most of it was hand-drawn, so you have to give credit for that, and apparently the reason Anita wanted to get rid of Quasi was that he was rude, but that’s not made in any way clear during the cartoon, unless I suppose you take into account his dream of eating his friends, which they would not have known before going to this odd place. It won awards, but I couldn’t really follow it and I didn’t enjoy it. For an independent production I suppose it’s good, but it’s not for me.
My own personal rating: 3/10