Slick Sleuths

Elephants Dream is the story of two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine. The elder, Proog, acts as a tour-guide and protector, happily showing off the sights and dangers of the machine to his initially curious but increasingly skeptical protege Emo. As their journey unfolds we discover signs that the machine is not all Proog thinks it is, and his guiding takes on a more desperate aspect. Elephants Dream is a story about communication and fiction, made purposefully open-ended as the world’s first 3D animated “Open movie”. The film itself is released under the Creative Commons license, along with the entirety of the production files used to make it (roughly 7 Gigabytes of data). The software used to make the movie is the free/open source animation suite Blender along with other open source software, thus allowing the movie to be remade, remixed and re-purposed with only a computer and the data on the DVD or download.

The teenage Tobe Hooper’s first film was a slapstick comedy. This farcical low-budget short is about three thieves who are wanted dead or alive. A bit Three Stooges, a bit Chaplin and a bit Keaton!

A mockumentary about a man who survives exclusively on TV shopping, but always returning every product before the 15-day free trial period expires.

A short animated film by Tadanaro Okamoto.

Mathematics teacher Bernd comes to the conclusion that the youth's morals, values and thoughts (sexuality) are quite different than he thought they were.

Dog Rover, from Rescued by Rover fame, chases a kidnapper's car and while he is in a pub, drives it safely home and thus saves the baby.

Max has a toothache, and it's up to The Clown and a bespectacled rabbit to pull out the aching tooth.

A very good as a faithful husband, whose wife is looking for proof that more than his eyes have been roving. She hires a private detective to provide it.

In this silent Mutt and Jeff cartoon, Jeff puts some pep liquid instead of the usual syrup in the sodas that Mutt serves to the customers in the malt shop.

In this one, Max has run low on ink, so Ko-Ko finishes drawing himself and then heads over to the camera room, where he creates his own characters, a mechanical dancing Dresden doll with whom he falls in love and a couple of automaton musicians. He gets rid of the musicians, but, alas, the projectionist gets oil onto Ko-Ko's soon-to-be bride, melting her.

Krazy is at his house reading a magazine. Ignatz comes in and goes inside a jar of jam. Krazy is aware of this, and tries to get the rodent out of the jar. After getting bitten in the paws, he decides to discard the container, along with Ignatz.

Rather than telling his parents, who have another girl picked out for him, Bob brings home his new wife disguised as his friend "Steve."

A man attempts to shave with a blunt razor.

This is the story about a boy not like the others that dreams about finding his place in the world.

Cartoon rabbit Oswald puts on a live-action puppet show.

And here is an early success as he puts the viewer in the mood of a little boy, playing with his toys, running them through the paces of his little circus.

A policeman has an amazing arm--one that stretches up to at least 10-12 feet. At times, he uses it to be very helpful to the local citizens, and at others he uses it to enforce the law.

Bambi is nibbling the grass, unaware of the upcoming encounter with Godzilla. Who will win when they finally meet? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

A pawnbroker's assistant deals with his grumpy boss, his annoying co-worker and some eccentric customers as he flirts with the pawnbroker's daughter, until a perfidious crook with bad intentions arrives at the pawnshop.

A tailor's apprentice burns Count Broko's clothes while ironing them and the tailor fires him. Later, the tailor discovers a note explaining that the count cannot attend a dance party, so he dresses as such to take his place; but the apprentice has also gone to the mansion where the party is celebrated and bumps into the tailor in disguise…