Vincent (1982)

As I've said in the past few weeks, finding horror animated films has been a real struggle; so when I stumbled upon Tim Burton's short stop-motion horror film, Vincent, I watched it right away. 

The film tells the story of Vincent Malloy, a 7-year-old boy who dreams and pretends to be just like actor Vincent Price. He does experiments on his dog Abercrombie to create a Zombie dog; he is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe's tales and while reading them, he loses touch with reality completely to the point that he believes he's been deprived of the woman he loves and he is afraid of being tortured. He is a very well-mannered boy but his continuous macabre daydreaming really annoys his mother who always finds a way to get in the way and bring him back to his lonely, tedious life. 

It's a very simple and yet compelling story that manages to be humorous and twisted at the same time. It is written in verse and narrated/recited by Vincent Price himself whose delightfully creepy voice fits the tone of the film very well and gives it an Edgar Allan Poe kind of effect that works incredibly well.

It's not the story or the way it's written and told though that makes of Vincent such an interesting and compelling (short) film. It's the fact that this film is actually some sort of love letter from Tim Burton to Vincent Price, his childhood idol, that explores how it feels to be different, and celebrates some of Price's greatest films.

Buena Vista Distribution

Ultimately, Vincent has everything you love about Burton's cinema: the bizarre characters, the macabre and grotesque story, the dark atmosphere and imagery, but most of all, his stunning trademark stop-motion animation. It's still pretty raw --which is totally acceptable considering how low the budget and how small the crew were-- but it's nevertheless brilliant.