Strangely enough, there’s plenty of children’s films that tend to go a little overboard with their content. These movies have left their marks on all of our childhood memories, but one flick in particular has stood out. The Adventures of Mark Twain is a 1985 stop-motion animated fantasy film inspired by the works of author Mark Twain – and one scene makes it a very disturbing cartoon, especially for children!
The plot follows Twain as he attempts to keep his appointment with Halley’s comment. He’s accompanied by his iconic characters Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher.
Eventually the film takes an excerpt from the story The Mysterious Stranger, which sees Satan interaction with the trio of kids. The devil begins by showing the children how to create their own little world, and how it can be destroyed by the awful violence of mankind.
It’s a rather disturbing moral for kids in its own right. When you execute it with disturbing stop-motion animation, it becomes a thousand times more haunting.
You can see the video below, in all of its horrific and artistic beauty.
In this claymation film, celebrated author Mark Twain (James Whitmore), displeased with the state of humanity, sets off in a hot-air balloon to meet his celestial destiny: Halley’s Comet. Stowed away on the craft are beloved characters from Twain’s stories — Tom Sawyer (Chris Ritchie), Becky Thatcher (Michele Mariana) and Huckleberry Finn (Gary Krug). As Twain’s balloon ascends ever higher to its ultimate goal, his literary creations try to persuade him of the essential goodness of man.
The Adventures of Mark Twain was directed by Will Vinton, who was the claymation director for the equally dark children’s film Return to Oz.