Here's the 1947 Belgian stop motion film produced by Wilfried Bouchery for Films Claude Misonne that adapts the Herge comic Le Crabe Aux Pinces D'Or. In English it's The Crab With The Golden Claws and it's the first Tintin film adaptation. It follows the comic fairly closely. Sadly, the copy on YouTube is kind of fuzzy and only in French. Mind you the quality of the film making is mixed. The puppets are fairly like their subjects, though their heads a bit rounder than they should be. They wear cloth costumes which mostly work and the sets are ok some of the time. Some sets a bit minimal. The effects are a mixed bag. Some are ok and some, like the plane bursting into flames after crashing, just aren't that good.
From the Wikipedia: There were only two theatrical screenings of the film; the first at the ABC Cinema on 11 January 1947 for a group of special invited guests, while the other one was shown in public on December 21 of that year, before Bouchery declared bankruptcy and fled to Argentina. All of the equipment was seized and a copy of the film is currently stored at Belgium's Cinémathèque Royale. The copy is available to watch for paying members of the Tintin club.
There is a recent French DVD that you can buy from Amazon France for about 11 Euros but it has no English soundtrack or subtitles. With exchange and shipping it might be over 20 bucks US. That's pretty much more than I want to pay, especially after watching the movie on YouTube. It's sort of entertaining but more as a curiosity. If I want to see the TinTin stories animated all I need to do is watch the Nelvania cartoons from the 1990's. I just watched them recently.
YouTube also has a free copy of the recent TinTin movie The Adventures Of TinTin. It's much better made and worth a look.
Tintin and the Temple of the Sun is a 1969 adaptation of The Seven Crystal Balls & Prisoners of the Sun. It's an animated film of the traditional cell type. It was made by Belvision who had made Hergé's Adventures of Tintin in 1957. It's too bad the English soundtrack gets out of sync and someone put a frame around the video. Both are rather annoying but I still managed to get through the thing. Glad I saw it, doubt that I would need to go buy one.
Tintin and the Lake of Sharks is the 1972 film from Belvision. I haven't seen it before but I do have the picture novel from the movie. It uses stills from the movie as cartoon panels. I haven't read it in a while. You can get the two Belvision films and The Calculas Affair story from the 1957 tv series in one set over at Amazon UK. I haven't decided to order it yet or not. You can see a clip or two on YouTube but that's about it.
TinTin And The Mystery Of The Golden Fleece is a 1961 live action film. I had seen it earlier in the year and posted the YouTube link on a post on my blog. I found a DVD on Amazon UK and finally got around to ordering it. It's due next week. The DVD is PAL but I can convert it to something that I can watch in my US DVD player. I thought it was entertaining and kind of fun. Enough to want to buy the dvd and spend the time to convert it.
Tintin and the Blue Oranges is a 1964 live action film. I ordered it from Amazon UK and it arrived yesterday. The DVD has a nice color booklet on the film and the trailer. I've converted it from PAL and watched it this afternoon. It's very cartoon like, pretty good fun and quite loud. There's a lot of slapstick with that yelling. Someone has kidnapped Professor Calculus and TinTin, Snowy and Captain Haddock head after them. There's plenty of running around and the like. There were good sets and locations with lots of nice scenery to look at. The trailer said they filmed in Spain. I was entertained and glad I bought the DVD.
Comments