Johnny the Giant Killer

(aka INTREPID JOHNNY, JEANNOT L'INTREPIDE,
JOHNNY IN THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS,
JOHNNY LITTLE AND THE GIANT)
(1950, France) Technicolor 80 miutes
Jean Image Film Productions / Pathel Productions
Ciné Sélection / Les Films Sirius
Story: Eraine
Screenplay: Paul Colline
Music René Cloërec
Songs: Paul Colline
Chief Animator: Albert Champeaux
Animators: Denis Boutin, O'Klein (also listed as "O. Klein"), Marcel Breuil
Background Artists: Pierre Baudin, Saint-Joyerie, Amidie Tardivon (as "Amedee Tardivon"), Serge Tessarech
Cinematography: Kostia Tchkine
Sound: René Sarazin (as "Sarazin")
Produced by Jean Image
Directed by Jean Image

English-Language Versions:
(1953) 62 minutes
Lippert Pictures (original US release)
Jack Alexander (rerelease)
Patnel Productions (1984 video release)
Screenplay: Charles Frank, Nesta Macdonald
Directed by Charles Frank

***

Synopsis (from pressbook): Young Johnny and a group of boys visit a castle where they are captured by a formidable giant, who puts them through a machine reducing them to tiny size, and prepares to devour them. A bird helps Johnny escape and he is befriended by a swarm of bees whose Queen presents him with a "Silver Sting." A vindictive guard challenges Johnny but the Queen stops their duel and the guard is banished. During a gala carnival in Johnny's honor, the renegade guard incites enemies to attack and loot the bees' home. Fearlessly swinging his Silver Sting, Johnny saves the Queen and the hive. The bees and allied insects fly and march on the castle in such numbers that the giant is overwhelmed and reduced to miniature, while Johnny and his friends regain their normal size.\

***

JOHNNY THE GIANT KILLER is a beautiful cartoon feature, full of fluid animation and bizarre and wonderful characters. It is a shame Jean Image did not produce more films like this; only his MOON MADNESS and ALADDIN AND THE MAGIC LAMP made it to the US, at least. Here is a bit of history on Image, taken from "Full-Length Animated Feature Films" by Bruno Edera (New York: Hastings House, 1977): "It is Jean Image who takes the honours for having directed and produced the first French full-length animated cartoon in 1950. Jean image had been living in Paris for some years, and had directed a number of commercial and sponsored films. Up to the present time he has finished three full-length films, and this puts him among the more prolific producer-directors, in this field. Adapting to local conditions, Jean Image managed to complete his first feature film in 18 months with a relatively small team, varying between 12 to 40 members, at a modest cost of £5,000. During production in 1950 the only laboratory in Europe equipped to develop Technicolour negative was in London: By clever planning and strict attention to time limits Jean Image, supported ably by his wife who wrote the script, managed to make the film Jeannot L'Intrepie without too much difficulty. Although using the same characters from Perrault's Tom Thumb, the style was deliberately different from Disney. At Venice in 1951, it won the Gand Prix for children's films."

JOHNNY essentially updates Perrault's story of Tom Thumb, with some remarkable post-modern twists. The English-Language version features dubbed voices with British accents, which may have alienated US small fry. In addition to that fabulous animation, there is wonderful use of matte painting, especially depciting the ogre's mountaintop castle fortress. The ogre's castle is a phantasmagoric place, very influenced by the Fleischer cartoon universe. The ogre is a monstrous, evil grotesque. His convulsive bellowing is alternately comical and spine-tingling.

It is surely not accidental that the ogre is a scientist/inventor. His ultra-modern machines of death, albeit surprisingly patchwork in construction, exist strictly to capture, maim and kill innocents and function flawlessly in their mission of death, a nice postwar message. Johnny and his crew are submitted to all sorts of cruel mechanical death traps, the ogre's house being in essence a torture chamber for unwary visitors.

The shocking scene where the ogre prepares to eat a lion sandwich is cut from extant US prints - one wonders how grisly the original French version was. After all, twenty minutes were cut for US release. Thankfully, Johnny gives other caged animals their freedom.

Johnny ends up tumbling into the natural world, presided over by industrious insects, running an advanced a society far superiour to ours. Indeed, the majority of JOHNNY takes place in "Insectland," where Johnny ends up after being shrunk to bug-size by the bad ogre.

Especially enjoyable is the introductory scene in which a sexy female worm hastily finishes her makeup in order to run to catch the morning bus (a centipede), a delightful scene accompanied by a groovy modern jazz score. A better animated depiction of a flawless utopian society is difficult to imagine.

Johnny gets a look at the radically shifting changes in gender roles and organizational structure via his visit to the bee colony, an indelible and accessible metpahor for children to the mammoth, faceless "corporation" which was just the starting to engulf the postwar world via the ascendency of the dreaded multi-national."

The Sargeant of Bees speaks in riddles, even if in rhyme. He gleefully narrates as Johnny watches the production of honey combs to create their perfect metropolis. Johnny gladly suffers this long-winded explanataion of mass production by the Sargeant, who is obviously proud as punch of his Queen's factory system.

The guard even laments the recent addition of "air conditioning," a luxury which was added in order to protect both the workers and the product from extremes of temperature, but one which has sadly prompted the workers to become lazy! Apparantly, only a swift corporal response gets the lazy workers to resume work, in effect a subtly brutal assault on modernism by traditionalism. This pleasant and curious "tour of the factory" sequence also serves as a sly, not uncritical treatise on modern capitalism, with a decidedly anti-Marxist, anti-worker leaning.

This sequence is at its most ecstatic when it is gushingly extolling the story of the mass production of goods, and indeed, this is when capitalism as a political force rose to prominence, when the production of goods could be orchestrated on a mass scale. This was the beginning of industrialism as a political movement, a movement which has panned out so successfully, and a movement which, though repressive, puts forth a compelling, fatal charisma to the average citizen through its products and manufactured dreams, i.e. the media. Capitalism re: Industrialism hypnotizes its individual citizens into becoming a willing mass of slave laborers.

Honey is the end product of the bee colony, of course, and the Guard admits it is their "liquid gold," thus their greatest product and most precious commodity, and by definition political. Thus, mass production is presented here as entirely political. Elsewhere, Johnny is shown the bees' mass breeding program (shades of Brave New World!), where bee nurses attend to legions of cocooned bee babies. Bee children are seen in their first flying lessons and first pollinations, leading to an exciting fertility dance.

Johnny finally meets the Queen, whom he calls "Queenie," and the two get along famously. Queenie is a flirt, with a voice somewhat reminiscent of Mae West. Upon first meeting, Queenie gives Johnny a brazen smack on the lips (perhaps even a "French" kiss?). Queenie is highly solicitious of the little boy, and it soons becomes apparant that she wants to mate with Johnny! An insect concert follows, which is a visual highlight, reprising the film's theme music to a fantastic montage of visuals. Even better is the incredible carnival sequence, full of colorful stylized designs and sequences, including earthworm acrobatic troupe and a spooky "fun house," ending in an orgiastic fireworks display.

This time of bliss and celebration is interupted by a rebel attack (by Yellowjackets!). Johnny and his comrades manage to drown their enemies in honey, in a drippy sort of of poetic justice. The rebel leader is finally vanquished, and sent to a spider's web - the scene fades out as the spider approaches to eat him, another slightly creepy and grisly reminder of the natural order of things in this curiously frank look at the cruel law of the jungle.

Queenie mounts an all-out insect attack on the ogre on Johnny's behalf, and all ends well. In the coda, Johnny and his "troop" return safely home, with the ogre trapped in his own cage. The boys have harnassed the energy of industrialism-gone-wild, and will hopefully be able to use it to better ends.This scene features a very strange song, hard to decipher due to the bad lyrics and foreign-sounding chorus, but something along the lines of "always, on hill or dale, have a pebble up your sleeve."

A fascinating and wonderful animation treat from Europe, well worth seeking out, JOHNNY appears to be in the public domain, witness the numerous VHS and DVD copies floating about, most of them with a "Patnel Productions, 1984" copyright slapped over a replaced main title. Some prints state the main title as JOHNNY IN THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS, "a Jack Alexander release," which was likely one of several theatrical rereleases of the film.

Stay tuned for our review of Jean Image's MOON MADNESS!

(10-05-06) Kevin S. Butler add this fascinating addenda regarding JOHNNY THE GIANT KILLER: JOHNNY THE GIANT KILLER was shown in serialized form on WOR-TV, Channel 9 in New York City, on the popular children's program "Merrytoon Circus." The cartoon anthology program aired chapters of JOHNNY on weeknights during the early 1960's. Claude Kirchner, the program's host, and his wise-cracking puppet pal "Clownie" would update the story for the viewers." (Kirchner, who was ubiquitous in children's TV programming, appeared in ABC's SUPER CIRCUS, NBC's MARX MAGIC MIDWAY, and for many years was the spokesman for Marx Toys. - ED)

Video/DVD availability: various on both formats