Synopsis
The story is essentially “The Tell-Tale Heart”: our protagonist, obsessed by an old man’sugly eye, kills him, buries him under the floorboards, but then loses it when he thinks he stillhears the beating heart. The short feature has a lot of affection for Poe (despite misspelling hismiddle name) and actually uses much of the actual prose from the original story, before divertinginto slapstick silliness. Not all of the jokes work, but the care and imagination that went into the…production are impressive.
Audio
The nature of the mix isn’t indicated, which leads me to guess at 2.0. The sound is very good,with full surround fun from both the music and the sound effects (well-placed, humorous left-right separation is the order of the day). The dialogue occasionally distorts very slightly.
Video
Wow. What a gorgeous transfer. The colours and contrasts are beyond brilliant. The shiftfrom the deliberate grain and damage of the opening to the mind-blowing colours of the mainstory is startling. Deep blacks, beautifully crimson blood — it’s all fabulous.
Special Features
”Carving the Truth out of Puphedz” is a documentary that packs a heck of a lot ofinformation into 15 minutes, and makes regular featurettes look even more pathetic bycomparison. “The Tattle-Tale Heart” itself comes in two versions: a 34-minute cut and a 27-minute one (which removes the asylum digressions). Also on offer: a still gallery presented as ascored slide show (complete with slide projector sound effects), “biographies” of the puppets, theUS and European trailers, and the teaser. The menu is basic.
Closing Thoughts
An original, and quite impressive, piece of work, whose stunning creativity more thanoutweighs what script shortcomings there are. Think of it as a Rankin Bass special gone to hell.Recommended.
Special Features List
- “Carving the Truth out of Puphedz” Documentary
- Slide Show
- Short and Long Versions of Feature
- Puppet Bios
- Trailers and Teaser
