Review for The Adventures Of Mark Twain

It's amazing what you can do with a bit of plasticine and a stop-frame camera. Anyone who has seen and admired Aardman's output in the past (like Nick Park's 'Wallace and Grommitt' ) will know what to expect here. Standing on the shoulders of giants in the 'claymation' field like Rankin-Bass (Mad Monster Party etc), the art-form took a British twist with the advent of 'morph' on Vision-On - and has really never looked back.


This particular outing was originally released at the height of VHS home tape fever (1986) under the title 'Comet Quest'. It was directed by Will Vinton who had pretty much made a career out of animating the world-famous 'California Raisins'. Despite having a short and limited theatrical run, without a great deal of success, did reasonable business on the home tape market, particularly in the US where there is a deep-seated affection for Mark Twain and his literary works.


It's actually a series of vignettes from several of Mark Twain's works, tenuously spun out of a plot that sees Twain attempt to "appointment" with Halley's Comet. "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" Twain died one day after Halley's Comet reached perihelion in 1910.


In this outing, Twain and three children, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher, travel on an airship and this lins from one story to the next, often starting with Mr. Twain as the storyteller. 'Why I remember the time…'


Included are sketches taken from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Mysterious Stranger, "The Diaries of Adam and Eve (Letters from the Earth)", "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" and a rendering of Twain's first story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". Although compendium films often seem disjointed or rather clumsily linked, that is not the case here. It works a treat as all are imbued with the dry wit and wisdom of Mark Twain and, despite the clay renditions, that voice remains true throughout.


The film actually enjoyed a certain amount of notoriety at the time of its release, apparently scaring its young audience witless during a sequence taken from Twain's 'A Mysterious Stranger' when the children meet an angel who introduces himself as Satan, bringing the children's own clay figures to life. Yes - it's spooky. Yes - it's a bit sad. But viewed through the eyes of an adult it's certainly difficult to see why it should be so disturbing to children. However, best kept in mind if you are considering this for younger children.

Picture quality is excellent on the DVD so I would expect even better things of the Blu-Ray release though cannot confirm that.


A really nice aspect to the disc is that the extras are really first class and arguably every bit as good as the feature and especially valuable to fans of stop-frame and/or 'clay-mation' animation techniques. Vinton's commentary track is technically detailed (not much fun for the ids, but they don't listen to audio commentaries, right?) and he also takes the time to really dig deep and analyse Twain's stories. The Music featurette allows you to listen to the whole score complete. The 'Making of' interviews are fascinating and clock in at nearly an hour. My favourite extra though was a 15 minute film briefly tracing the history of 'claymation'.


All in all, a great example of the Claymation genre and a thoroughly engaging 90 minutes or so. The package is especially attractive to those interested in the technical aspects of production with a veritable master-class of features included too.