This is another cult Tim Burton short – although at 29 minutes, live-action, and featuring the likes of Shelley Duvall, Daniel Stern and child actor Barret Oliver (from the same year's THE NEVER ENDING STORY), it is a considerably more ambitious effort.
Again, it draws inspiration from classic horror cinema and, in fact, its variation on the Frankenstein theme made for a belated addition to my James Whale retrospective of some months back! Here we have an adorable dog (that is even made-up by its child owner to star in amateurish monster movies!) being run over by a car and killed. The boy cannot get over its loss but, suddenly, during chemistry class at school (presided over by an uncredited Paul Bartel!), he learns how dead things can be literally reanimated via electricity.
So he goes to work in the family basement – while his oblivious parents think he is acting strangely as a way of coping with the dog's death – and creates a makeshift Frankenstein (incidentally, that is the boy's very surname and he is, of course, called Victor) lab, complete with mounting slab! Unearthing the dead pet from the nearby graveyard, the funeral set-piece is a veritable homage to the opening sequence from Whale's FRANKENSTEIN (1931), as is the fiery climax at the mill!
Immediately after being revived, the dog (appropriately stitched-up, which however makes one wonder just how bad the afore-mentioned accident had been!) runs out into the streets again (the boy having fallen asleep from exhaustion) and, causing no end of havoc, terrifies the neighbors. These in turn, present themselves before the parents to give them a piece of their mind; the latter, naturally, are completely unaware of what has been going on but, even when Stern sees Oliver feeding the dog, he claims the neighbors were mistaken as he clearly needs time to process this astonishing fact!
Eventually, the family decides to have the other people in the street meet the dog and verify for themselves that it is its old self. Predictably, however, their plans goes awry as the dog panics and, once more, goes on the lam, heading towards its resting-place (as if it did not want to keep on living unnaturally)! With the boy running after it and the whole neighborhood following in an uproar, we assist to the inevitable near-tragedy as the mill by the cemetery is accidentally set on fire with Oliver still inside. However, the dog springs into action to save its owner and dies again in the attempt; suddenly seen as a hero by the neighbors, the latter put their heads together to revitalize it once more through the combined electrical currents from their car batteries!
Unlike his previous effort, VINCENT (1982), then, this comes with a happy ending; still, this was no cop-out as, in spite of the morbid subject matter, it is essentially an uplifting yarn about puppy love. Being a lifelong animal lover myself, I know exactly how the boy felt about the loss of a beloved pet: my large but quiet and friendly 11-year old dalmation called "Renoir" passed away only last year – right on the day that the World Cup final was held! Besides, a few years before it was lost to us for 3 whole weeks when someone inadvertently left a couple of doors in the house open and, until we found it again in the company of other stray dogs, we had already gotten ourselves another dog – easily the loveliest and liveliest we ever had but also needful of constant medical attention at first – so we dubbed it "Bresson"!
Again, it draws inspiration from classic horror cinema and, in fact, its variation on the Frankenstein theme made for a belated addition to my James Whale retrospective of some months back! Here we have an adorable dog (that is even made-up by its child owner to star in amateurish monster movies!) being run over by a car and killed. The boy cannot get over its loss but, suddenly, during chemistry class at school (presided over by an uncredited Paul Bartel!), he learns how dead things can be literally reanimated via electricity.
So he goes to work in the family basement – while his oblivious parents think he is acting strangely as a way of coping with the dog's death – and creates a makeshift Frankenstein (incidentally, that is the boy's very surname and he is, of course, called Victor) lab, complete with mounting slab! Unearthing the dead pet from the nearby graveyard, the funeral set-piece is a veritable homage to the opening sequence from Whale's FRANKENSTEIN (1931), as is the fiery climax at the mill!
Immediately after being revived, the dog (appropriately stitched-up, which however makes one wonder just how bad the afore-mentioned accident had been!) runs out into the streets again (the boy having fallen asleep from exhaustion) and, causing no end of havoc, terrifies the neighbors. These in turn, present themselves before the parents to give them a piece of their mind; the latter, naturally, are completely unaware of what has been going on but, even when Stern sees Oliver feeding the dog, he claims the neighbors were mistaken as he clearly needs time to process this astonishing fact!
Eventually, the family decides to have the other people in the street meet the dog and verify for themselves that it is its old self. Predictably, however, their plans goes awry as the dog panics and, once more, goes on the lam, heading towards its resting-place (as if it did not want to keep on living unnaturally)! With the boy running after it and the whole neighborhood following in an uproar, we assist to the inevitable near-tragedy as the mill by the cemetery is accidentally set on fire with Oliver still inside. However, the dog springs into action to save its owner and dies again in the attempt; suddenly seen as a hero by the neighbors, the latter put their heads together to revitalize it once more through the combined electrical currents from their car batteries!
Unlike his previous effort, VINCENT (1982), then, this comes with a happy ending; still, this was no cop-out as, in spite of the morbid subject matter, it is essentially an uplifting yarn about puppy love. Being a lifelong animal lover myself, I know exactly how the boy felt about the loss of a beloved pet: my large but quiet and friendly 11-year old dalmation called "Renoir" passed away only last year – right on the day that the World Cup final was held! Besides, a few years before it was lost to us for 3 whole weeks when someone inadvertently left a couple of doors in the house open and, until we found it again in the company of other stray dogs, we had already gotten ourselves another dog – easily the loveliest and liveliest we ever had but also needful of constant medical attention at first – so we dubbed it "Bresson"!