Animated openings in movies seems to strictly be an '80's trend.
You know what I'm talking about.
The opening credits are introduced with a cartoon.
Two that spring to mind are "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" & "Mannequin"
Can you think of any other films that begin with an animated opening?
(Please! No laundry lists! 1 or 2 per response!)
Post Edited (12-12-03 04:15)
I remember another!
Didn't "Who's That Girl?" start with one?
Doesn't flash gordon have animation...no, wait they are just clips from a comic.
The movie Tom Cats (2001?2002?) opened up with a fairly amusing and well animated sequence as the credits rolled. The tie-in is that the main character - played by the geek from Sliders - was a cartoonist and his cartoons in the movie resembled the cartoon at the beginning. Overall, a bad and very unfunny movie, but damn if it didn't have one powerhouse lineup of actresses.
NOT SO!!!!!!
There were lots of 70's and 60's films with animated opening titles as well. Baba Yaga and Blacula spring to mind, as well as Catalina Caper.
Here's one: Watership Down - an animated movie - had an opening sequence that was a completely different KIND of animation (much more simplistic and stylistic compared to the "realist" type animation of the rest of the movie).
All the Pink Panther movies had animated openings too - which led to a Saturday morning cartoon.
City Slickers! All or most of the Pink Panther moviies!
ElectroSunDog wrote:
> NOT SO!!!!!!
>
> There were lots of 70's and 60's films with animated opening
> titles as well.
Very true. THE DUNWICH HORROR has a very bizarre and creative animated opening and that came out in 1970.
no but i can think of movies with animated scenes in them. Like "One crazy summer" or "better off dead". Even "Xanadu"..heh
Don't forget the animated "pre-credits" sequence from the original US theatrical cut of "The Fearless Vampire Killers." Does that count?
There was also an old Shaw Brothers kung fu flick called "Two Champions of Shaolin" (aka: Two Champions of Death) that had a neat little animated credit sequence, the only kung fu movie I can think of with such an opening.
Oh...and there's also "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." It has a cartoon Santa frolicking amid the credits, while that "song" "Hooray for Santa Claus" plays over the proceedings. Believe it or not, I actually heard that tune being played over a KB toy store's sound system last week. It was a surreal experience, to say the least.
Darkautumn wrote:
> Don't forget the animated "pre-credits" sequence from the
> original US theatrical cut of "The Fearless Vampire Killers."
> Does that count?
Definitely! Funny stuff too.
And who could forget the classic opening to IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD!
Speaking of Mad, didn't Mad House have animation in the begining?
Didn't Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (a great forgotten comedy from the halcyon 60s) have an animated opening?
mr. magoo with leslie neilson?
Did Flubber start out animated? (the original)
Cry of the Banshee, the Vincent Price flick, has an opening animated by Terry Gilliam before he made a name for himself as a Python.
I seem to recall that How to Beat the High Cost of Living had an animated opening.
I remembered another one....
"Loverboy" starring Patrick Dempsey had an animated opening.
who could forget the classic "Honey I shrunk the kids" animated opening. I loved that opening when I was a kid. Did the others start off like that as well? I can't remember.
Four Rooms, the Tarantino collaboration also had an animated opening....with extremely annoying music.
The only film that comes to my mind right now is Frogs, but the only animation was at the end of the film and it was like 2 seconds long! Sitting through that piece with a hangover was the biggest waste of 2 big ones in my life.
"There is no whole
there is a hole in the world." -Thursday
To answer some questions:
Bernie, yes, as far as I can remember "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" had an animated opening.
Susan, yes, to "The Absent Minded Professor," as well, which I think is the film you mean.
Darkautumn has mentioned the animated opening to "The Fearless Vamprie Killers." What some people may not know, is that the film did not originally start that way. Only when the film was taken out of the hands of the director and cut for American distribution, was the animated opening added. Now that the film has been re-cut, more to the tastes of the director, the animated opening has been dropped from the film. Which is one way of telling the difference between the versions.
And let us not forget Disney's "True Life Adventures." Most of which opened with an animated paintbrush painting an animated world.
Didn't The Rocky Horror Picture Show open with some sort of animation, after the lips, I mean?