A painter who can temporarily talk to the creatures of an enchanted forest, must help them stop the evil Cactus King, who's building an army of magical living weapons and machines to turn the forest into a wasteland perfect for the cacti.
Directors: Milan Blazekovic, Doro Vlado Hreljanovic
Watched online, ok print, able to have auto-generated captions.
Available in its original language here; print is sharper.
5 songs in the Soundtracks, with 4 Written by Dennis Leogrande and Fred P. Sharkey.
I don't know the history of Yugoslavia/Croatia at all. The name Tito is familiar; apparently he had a falling out with Stalin in '48, and Yugoslavia was expelled from the Soviet Union. Tito died in '80, and then Yugoslavia had a President of the Presidency for 1 year each until '92 when the country broke apart. I raise all this, because I can't help interpreting this cartoon politically: the Cactus King wants to raze the forest to make it suitable for only Cacti, and hates particularly Beavers because they build. This could be parallel to a leader who wants to abolish all artists (or Jews or freedom seekers, etc.) to ensure the flourishing of an oligarchy or whatever non-Beaver populace.
Don't get me wrong. This totally works as a children's film. Many commenters/reviewers speak about it very fondly from their childhoods. And the problem of the King's intentions is solved with a magic potion. But the problem itself seems more political than the usual children's fable. Or maybe I'm just borrowing trouble because of the country of origin.
I got a bit confused about the spikey blue guy you see at the bottom of the poster, and the white-bearded green guy just above him. The bearded one is Thistle, the court magician, but helped the forest creatures led by the human artist. And the blue one is soothsayer Barron Burr, who tells both sides the future. They appear together with the King at about 13min. Lots of good images of most all the characters on google, BTW.
The film has 2 voice casts; 1 for English, 1 for ...? I don't know if they were speaking Croatian in the original film; I recognized some Russian words in the bit that I watched. Perhaps that was the official language of Yugoslavia at the time? Perhaps Croatian shares some words with Russian.
The character names listed in IMDb do not translate to anything like the American names J. Edgar Beaver and Barron Burr, but this is a joint US/Yugoslav production, so I don't think that's something imposed much later by a separate translation team.
I don't have the patience today to run through the Croatian version. I recommend that to myself for another time. Maybe look for a copy with English subtitles. It was released on dvd by Image Entertainment in '99. I found a copy of the back of the case, but I couldn't find any mention of language/subtitles, but it wasn't a great photo.
Only recommended for my political interpretation. Otherwise this is for the very young.
Croatia Films, dir. Blazekovic+; 7
