The lack of people around the town actually appealed to me as a kid. Being naturally shy and socially awkward, the lack of activity and people is comforting in a weird way. I especially remember the scene where Gromit was in the cafe. When I was little, I assumed no one was there and Gromit just walked in, and I was thinking how cool would it be to have a cafe all to yourself.
@@jacoboc2244 lol haha, totally forgot I even posted a comment here. Just to clarify, I was mainly talking about my kid self being shy and awkward. But now as an adult, I do enjoy going out and socializing. Soo all is good xD
Disney’s “Pinocchio” is another pretty good example of it. We get the occasional glimpse of the other villagers and the throng of kids visiting Pleasure Island, but aside from them, most of the movie’s scenes take place in empty streets, deserted countryside roads, or in a spot where the locals are all off-screen (like in Stromboli’s puppet show). It definitely adds to the film’s rather dreamy atmosphere.
@@sketchalater4656 What geoffrey and you said is a rather good external explanation. Not every story has to be crowded with millions of people. Sure, there's "Curse of the Were-Rabbit", but that's to give internal validation on there being a living society.
I was scared of a grand day out just because of the outdated models they had back then. Wallace just looked weirder. The scene where he's drawing blueprints for the rocket was always uneasy. Just the quietness and the dark basement. The scariest part of that short was when the robot was trying to break into the rocket to get off the moon. All that being said, none of the shorts that came after that one frightened me too much.
You're absolutely right about the robot breaking into the rocket being scary. It always frightened me how he just starts tearing shit up left and right in a panic.
I know what you mean. Only as I've gotten older, do I feel more sympathetic towards the Robot. I mean he had every right to be raging at first cos Wallace recklessly litters his planet ( although that magazine did get him fantasing about Skiing ) & even leaks rocket fuel onto it so it's fairly understandable as he reaches for the Trudgeon in his draw. At first.
This may seem pretty obvious, but I think the biggest redeeming factor of these movies is the slightly absent, but still very meaningful relationship between Wallace and Gromit. The scariest and most gut wrenching point in all of the shorts I think was when a defeated Gromit left Wallace in The Wrong Trousers.
During the last scene of 'A grand day out' the rocket can be seen flying back to Earth, but what always bothered me is that there are little to no city lights shining on the dark side of the planet, which makes it seem as if Earth isn't populated.
@@dennigalla I see what you mean, but earlier in the film when the Robot looks at the planet through the telescope, it’s clearly visible that it in fact is Earth with Europe, Africa and a part of Asia clearly visible
Creepiness is always more effective in non-horror because you don't expect it. Whenever you watch anything horror, you know it's trying to scare you and the scenery just screams "spooky", but when something innocent has a bizarre moment of surrealism or uncanniness, it's like seeing a giant spider staring at you in the corner of your eye, that you never expected to see on a summer's day.
The spider never scared me really but if you watch Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban back to back youll notice the complete change of mood due to the change in directors and I think thats what made the werewolf so scary as a kid to me. Its almost like a grotesque climax to the end of a movie where the whole time youre going “where did all the cheeriness of hogwarts go”
@@kevinmaurer3562 I actually ran out of the cinema when I was a little kid in the early 2000s when Voldemort shows up at the end of the first one. Me the whole movie: 🐶 Voldemort's back head: 😭
If a non-horror work tries too hard it can also have an adverse effect bc the audience knows that nothing _too_ scary will happen, but the juxtaposition is still pretty damn effective.
I really love the original shorts because they’re so goddamn creepy. The lighting always looks like it’s straight from a horror movie and I remember being particularly spooked by the penguin as a kid. I think it’s because he’s got those soulless beady little eyes that contain no human emotion. Also Preston the robot dog is just a full on Terminator-style nightmare.
I always had that weird, unnerving feeling from Wallace and gromit too. It's the dark fuzziness and warm yet slightly washed out colour pallette. The "where is everyone", liminal vibe like the duo existed in a vacuum. I think half the point of were-rabbit was to address those things, showing more of the world and making it feel more alive. I've still always adored them, from the moment I first saw them and I think for me its slightly uncomfortable feeling is part of the charm.
I never really talked about use of colour but that's a good point too. Very drab. And I see what you mean with Were-Rabbit but I'm pretty sure they scarred another generation with the transformation sequence.
I Never Really Paid attention to the blankness of the city that wallace and gromit live in. I Always Found the short films very amusing (how the robot on the moon needs to have a coin inserted to hit wallace on the head). I honestly don’t think your crazy when you describe your feelings about the series. When i was younger only the curse of the were rabbit would either make me scared or feel sorry for one of the characters (especially wallace at the end)
@@dennigalla They did. I went over to tend to some younger cub scouts at a camp. One was a 9 yo who had ADHD, who was generally annoying, but for some reason, he always screamed whenever I said the words "rabbit", "bunny", or "Wallace and Grommit". When me and the older kids asked him why, he said it was because of something called the Were-Rabbit. We didn't know what it was, but one of us looked it up later, and we burst out laughing discovering it was a Wallace and Grommit cartoon. We spent half of that camp trying to show him the transformation sequence and getting him to get over his fear. Probably a waste of our time 😅
:O Almost as if, completely on purpose! Which just goes to show you that there's actually nothing to this guy's theory whatsoever. In fact it actually counters the argument brilliantly by showing how much humanity/expression is captured in Aardman's work.
@@every2464 That's not what this video is saying at all.... Like I'm not sure to what extent I personally agree with this video or not, but "Aardman characters lack expression" is categorically not what's being argued here
"Wallace may just be a lovable old guy who only wants to make inventions, eat cheese and crackers, and hang out with his dog... but he's also hideous."
Theory: Wallace used to work in a factory and had a degree in engineering he lost his job as a result of Margaret Thatcher's policies he tries selling small inventions to the slowing depopulating town. As the years go by the town is nearly abandoned and only a few businesses have survived and now he is a depressed inventor trying to replicate the town in his mind he once loved and knew so he moved out to a more populated town (wear rabbit)
Worse version: Wallace lost his mind long ago, and Gromit is just a normal dog that Wallace projects his schizophrenic delusions onto. And the cheese is an allegory for heroin.
Fr all those kids tv shows and films that were light hearted but had one or two scary scenes just became a whole lot scarier, I vividly remember being scared out of my socks In the scene where the trousers are in the wrapping paper and they surprise gromit, because I wasn’t expecting it, if you put it into the context of an actual horror movie it seems less scary
That's how I feel about Hunter The Cheetah in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage. It's innocent, but those bulging eyes and wide mouth are so unsettling. Several years ago, I had a dream that I was being chased by it on an empty highway and all the humans had disappeared. Kind of like Nextbots In Backrooms. I also had a dream in 2003 at the age of 7 where I was chased by a frozen image of Tommy Pickles in a school parking lot.
“A Matter of Loaf and Death” is probably one of the most terrifying ones. This focuses on actual murder, death and conspiracy…on a franchise where our main characters go to the moon for cheese.
"This focuses on actual murder, death and conspiracy" This right here impressed me when I watched that short recently. A short, meant primarily for young audiences (right?), delves into things and concepts like actual, premeditated murder and death. Oh, and don't forget romance and love too. What with Wallace, despite being somewhat autistic and eccentric, falling in love in "A Close Shave" and even his canine friend, Gromit, getting a love interest of his own in the form of the poodle Fluffles, in "A matter of Loaf and Death"! Speaking of Fluffles, physical abuse. Another heavy theme that isn't shown on-screen but most certainly implied in that short! All of them, themes and concepts usually meant for more adult audiences! Can't wait for the new short coming on Netflix in 2024! Hope they keep Fluffles around though!
I feel the opposite way. I always thought these two had such charismatic personalities and timeless rustic designs. Watching this show feels like visiting my grandmother’s house, if that makes sense.
I've watched quite a bit of their stuff and it never bothered me either, and I was the kid who could barely get halfway through luigi's mansion cause it was to scary. It's fascinating how certain things make people feel certain ways, like, I've heard one guy feels sick when they watch claymation, perhaps due to them watching that while ill as a child.
I was always creeped out by the many silent scenes in A Grand Day Out, and as for the other shorts, the whole plot was just disturbing without being deliberately scary. If you watch all of the shorts and think about the events that occurred for even a second, you realise that they hold many similarities to the genre of psychological horror. A homicidal robot on the moon, a killer robot dog, unpredictable robot trousers, a crazy mass murderer girlfriend and a narcissistic penguin. They're all horrific and "off" but are meant to be funny. Unpredictability sets me on edge without fail. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit comforted me with more characters but the Rabbit itself was absolute nightmare fuel to look at, rendering the human characters futile. Most of this never occurred to me as a child, but some did. Great video!
I was so terrified of the were rabbit as a kid, to the point I couldn't even get to the point when it appears. Just the way they suggested it was too much for me
Honestly the "theres no people around" thing is something you can get used to if you watch low budget media because hiring extras or animating background characters is a lot of work for little benefit, so people either use to make it seem like people are in the background or situations which wouldn't have people in the background or just have the background empty, which is the only real option for small claymation projects
Even the movie, which did have extras, only had about 30 of them. I don't think anyone really complained, especially since the writers and animators did a lot to give the townspeople distinct characteristics and personalities.
I have realized this as a kid for watching movies. the lower the budget the less people in the background the higher the budget the more people in the background. but there cases even if some movies have a low budget they would still be lazy to add any people in the background.
I was never overly scared of Wallace and Gromit, mostly because Wallace was so bumptious and affable, and Gromit so level headed and serious, which always grounded the duo as the central focus enough for me not to be overly concerned with the smaller details gnawing at my subconscious. But what did eventually break me from this was the Techno-Trousers movie. When Gromit is going for a walk with the trousers, he goes to a park. It immediately struck me how fuckin' weird it was for there to a park with no one at all there. Then I noticed the town, which previously I'd managed to subconsciously rationalise as simply being the wrong time of day. But it was that otherwise emptiness that became the thing I could no longer unsee. Where were the security guards in the museum Feathers McGraw steals the jewel from? Where are the people in the town when Gromit ran away from home? Where were the police in the station? Where were the zoo employees or the patrons? Where were the kids and parents in the park?
One of the things that always spooked me about the shorts were the mid 20th century look of the machines and inventions, yes half of them for mundane, whimsical purposes but the earthy colour palletes, mechanical arms, pistons etc. make them feel like WW2 machines that can kill you in the wrong hands. The techno trousers are hacked and controlled to abduct Wallace and the knitting machine's design is re-used to skin sheep for meat processing. Not to mention Preston and The Oven are two robots that go rogue, makes me wonder what a robot uprising would look like in this universe.
You’re so right actually! The funny thing is my parents watched these and so did I when I was a child and I usually really loved them, even chicken run. But parts of the show creeped me out (like the machines, same for chicken run) and I was terrified of the were rabbit movie as well
The film coming in 2024 is supposed to be about an out of control AI gnome that Wallace built (or something along those lines), so you might just get your wish. Will it have the quietly menacing quality that the penguin and Preston had though? That's why those villains work so well, they don't speak and that's what makes them so interesting. After A Close Shave, Aardman and Nick Park seem to be more focus on faster paced story. I'd love to see a return to form with the slow moving narrative, that's W&G to me. Don't give the gnome a voice, just eyes that light up and it'll be creepy for all the right reasons.
I LOVE Wallace & Gromit, I've seen the short films probably 10 times each, and yet somehow I've never noticed the lack of people! I think it's a credit to how engrossing their stories and characters are (I'm adamant the penguin is one of the best villains in any media) but it's very creepy now I think about it.
I always felt that creepy vibe, but i loved it for that. Honestly i felt sympathetic towards the robot in a grand day out, all he wanted was to get back to earth and ski. What terrified the shit out of me was the penguin.
nothing is more disconcerting than the shot of Wallace walking down the basement stairs in a grand day out. Incredible video putting voice to a perspective many of us have had to live with in our nightmares for years. 🙏
Another thing as well is the food that they eat too! It always made me feel really weird, especially when they go to the moon and literally eat the moon. Also, in 'A Grand Day Out' there a fair few scenes without music which is unintentionally unsettling. My last thought would be that, in all the shorts I feel like we're meant to sympathise with Gromit, who has to put up with literally everything. It's really disquieting watching Wallace be completely oblivious to their own actions and easily manipulated. I think the intention was for it to be funny but actually it just comes across as this fear and realisation that usually those that have power cannot see the consequences of their actions & there's little we can do to change that. It's actually a feeling of hopelessness and sadness, watching Gromit endlessly clean up after Wallace and never truly being seen. ALSO: the penguin having literally no facial expression at all haunts me still.
There's definitely a purgatorial vibe to it, yeah. Gromit has no mouth, but wants to scream sometimes when Wallace is inches from death. Speaking of music, the upbeat yet muffled music that Feathers McGraw plays when he takes over Gromit's room always, always freaked me out. The distant hum of voices.
The penguin was supposed to be emotionless and unsettling. The music in the show is always 40's and 50's traditional English music you'd dance to in a "dance hall".
> always made me feel really weird, especially when they go to the moon and literally eat the moon. That's literally a play on the gag that the moon is made out of cheese, there's nothing weird about it.
@Khaled Shanshal I feel the same, man. I watched them all when I was a kid but going back to them when I was older and able to properly appreciate all the work and vision it takes to put them together really put it in a new perspective. To this day I think The Wrong Trousers model train chase scene is a top 10 movie setpiece of all time. Thanks for watching, mate.
I always felt a deep, strong uneasiness and loneliness in "The Wrong Trousers" when Gromit is reading the newspaper in that empty Cafe; I think your video explained perfectly why that is.
It might’ve been intentional on the creatives’ part. The scene is meant to be unnerving since Gromit is secretly following a suspected criminal and trying to keep a low profile. Filling the scene with background characters would’ve kinda lessened the suspense.
Another kind of creepy but sad thought, the robot on the moon in A Grand Day Out (canonically known as “The Cooker” because it resembles an oven) would shortly run out of coin power after the end, meaning it would be just an inert machine sitting on the moon with skis
My grandparents showed me these shorts when I was a kid, and my first question was if the robot would run out of time soon and become inert again. My grandfather said, "Best not to worry about it."
it appears to be sentient or at least intelligent. Creepy to think it goes in and out of living, with small moments of life between longer moments of nonlife? Sleeping? Death?
@@Big-Chungus21 You run out of coin power. Everything goes dark. Then you wake up again. You don't know how long it's been. Maybe an hour. Maybe hundreds of thousands of years. You have little time before your coin power runs out again, and no idea whether you will ever wake up again once it does run out.
Say what you like, it's still incredibly genius and inspiring that the first two short films were done with only one voice actor and still got two Oscar awards. Praise to Nick Park!
@@averagejoe8358 im more of the OG before they went digitalised in all fairness. Ive not really watched much of the digital things as it didnt captivate me as much.
3:02 I remember noticing this as a kid, always found the town kinda empty and quiet. A Grand Day Out was creepy due to atmosphere and Wrong Trousers had such emptyness. The movie and the latter two shorts never had that vibe as the world is a lot more populated
2:58 Actually I noticed this too. When I was watching, I was wondering why do we don't see very much people. Honeslty Wallace, especially in the wrong trousers, seems like the only human in this world. They correct this problem later with having more extras, but as with the original shorts, the town seems like a wastleland with no living soul in sight.
@@dennigalla I mean, there's a practical reason for that- that they didn't have thebudget to create and animate more characters. In claymation, it can be very, very hard to have too many things moving at once, and Aardman in their earlier works have very focused shots with one or two things moving. I also think the stories themselves are so self contained to Wallace and Gromit that making more characters unnecesarily wouldn't have been worth it. That being said, I do think this is to the show's credit- the very charming, cozy, personal feeling is one side of that coin, and the strangely quiet, mysterious, empty feel is the other side. I have loved Wallace and Gromit formany years, and I do think it's a great example of limitations on a work of art working to its credit.
"the town seems like a wastleland with no living soul in sight." That's the north of England for you, mate. Thatcher really did a number on this country.
I've always been terrified of Wallace and Gromit. When I was little my parents made me watch it, and while my brother was amused and relaxed, I was on constant alert. You managed to explain and finally make me rationalize why I felt this way.
I loved the show when I was little I remember getting home and asking for my daily cheese and crackers while watching Wallace and Gromit! Def seems more scary now that I’ve seen this video but I just remember always wanting cheese and crackers bc of this show 😂
I have this recurring nightmare -- I've had it ever since I was a kid, maybe around 5 or 6 -- it's just wallace and gromit driving around in their little car in this town with no people, no one except me. And they kidnap me. It is TERRIFYING. And I've never been able to articulate why it was so terrifying until I saw this. Wow.
I never had a feeling of loneliness when it came to Wallice and Gromit. It was actually sort of comforting, I don't know why but something about there only being two main characters and hardly seeing any others had me kind of relaxed, like I was in my element. I was a very lonely child, friends weren't easy to make and my mother restricted where I could go for a long time leaving me confined to the house most of the time. In that sense I suppose the lack of other people in the shorts never really bothered me because being alone although not something I nessisarily enjoy is something I am very much used to and have grown accustomed to. The only negative emotion that I have gotten from Wallace and Gromit if any is the feeling of sadness in a grand day out. The oven on the moon was and still is a character that makes me shed a tear for and it being for a few reasons. One reason being the fact that I could relate with him, he was all alone. But really the thing that made me the most upset was that when we see him Skiing over the hills of the moon at the end I always had a feeling of dread and sadness that he would shut down again. As we see in the film the oven is only operational for so long until he just suddenly stops working because of his built in clock. Each penny that is put into him only kept him on for so long and as A kid the idea of him suddenly stopping again upset me as the oven wasn't evil and it was clear it had dreams and ambitions like a human so the sad idea of him enjoying what little time he had before suddenly shutting down again even has me feeling a little sad now. I always tried to make myself feel better and head cannoned the idea that maybe the penny got stuck and messed with his clock so he wouldn't turn off again so he could keep enjoying himself on the moon. If that were true I would feel a lot better in that case but something always told me that he stopped shortly after Wallace and Gromit left.
That moment when the spaceship handles come off in the robot's hands and it realises it is being left behind on the moon is, to me, the most gut-wrenching moment in cinema. It just wanted to be happy!!! 😭
wow...i can't say i ever had any negative associations with wallace and gromit growing up, but this video has definitely convinced me to see it from your perspective. love your voiceover as well, very expressive. please make more videos - you've earned a sub and i'm eagerly awaiting more from you!!
Cheers very much, I'm fully planning to make more videos soon. I was worried my voiceover sounded a little robotic since it's my first attempt, so it's nice to hear that you liked it.
I never noticed it before, I can say though that the dog endo skeleton was extremely frightening. Not just its looks, but also how it was introduced to the viewer. I only vaguely remember, but I think it was that lady telling them that the dog wasn't a real dog and that it must have a malfuction or something and then it drops into that machine and I believe gets canned, but then that scene you showed with the robot hand just shooting out. It's pretty scary in my opinion.
I don’t think it would work because you’d already know it’s meant to be scary where as with the uncanny feeling Dennis talks about can only be felt when you don’t expect it or when the stuff you’re watching isn’t meant to be scary
I completely understand this. You laid out pretty well how i've always felt; the eyes and the lack of people are a huge part of it. I'd also add the lighting is also sort of terrifying.
The biggest thing with claymation, and especially the W/G shorts that lend themselves to being scary, is the lighting. *Real* (and often very harsh, bright, shadowy) lighting on "fake" characters that move lends a very uncanny noir feeling that enhances whatever is on screen. Look at the behind the scenes of A Close Shave and you'll see some of the rigs they set up with the main and backlight plus scene lights and it starts to make more sense.
oml you're right. The only 2 scenes across all their films that gave me bad dreams was 1. Wallace walking down the basement steps in A Grand Day Out and 2. when Gromit spies on the penguin in The Wrong Trousers, especially the shots of Gromit hiding behind that wall with only light casted on his fixed, almost soulless eyes and ears fully extended upwards. the lighting in both scenes was always so disturbing and I never noticed it as a child
I used to be TERRIFIED of the Aardman intro where the half of the face drops into the frame. I never really was scared of the show itself although I do remember being creeped out at the bit where the wrong trousers were jumping around and running, probably so scary because it was sped up.
This comes to show just how subjective art is. I was also an easily scared kid, I couldn't even watch TV around Halloween season because I was genuinely terrified of the commercials. I also remember being creeped out by some CGI, like in this short film by Blue Sky Studios called "Bunny" (it played after the Ice Age credits in the VHS). However, I remember this warm feeling watching Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, it even inspired me to attempt claymation at home. Never picked up on the liminal space thing until now and I kind of see where you're coming from but I just don't feel it (except on A Grand Day Out, that one does look kinda creepy lol).
I never liked Wallace and grommet as a kid and I never realised why, like they creeped me out, but I always put it down to the art style. I wasn't really an easily scared kid I read scary books and watched some of the more kid friendly scary movies like gremlins, so I never understood why I was creeped out by wallace and grommet. This makes so much sense to me though! It kinda makes me want to rewatch them actually and see if I feel the same still.
I was terrified of Wallace and Gromit the first time I watched it as a child, although I've never looked at it from your point of view before. Cool video and a great insight :)
Thanks a bunch, man. It was fun trying to logically lay out what scared me about it, because especially as a kid it's hard to explain where the fear really comes from.
Just watched this 3 times it was that good! It’s so rare that I find a video that confirms exactly the way I feel about something - I think I realised in the back of my mind that it was the lack of people that made me so unsettled by Wallace and Gromit growing up, but I was never able to put my finger on it until I saw your video! I just thought YES when you gave your punchline of ‘where is everyone’! Every analogy was spot on, especially the one about being in a city on New Years Day - I went for a drive around the financial area of London this New Years Day and got exactly the same feeling. I’m fascinated by liminal spaces too. Something else that affected me especially in A Grand Day Out was how sad and distant it felt - just this lonely, slightly angry, uncanny robot on its own thousands of miles away…so unsettling! I haven’t watched any Wallace and Gromit for at least 5 years as I know just how spooked it will make me for a while after - no one ever seems to understand why I find it so creepy though! I’ll just show them your video… Brilliant editing, commentary, and music too so well done!
Thanks for the lovely comment, man. It took me a long time to really put how I felt into words but I'm glad I did because the video clearly resonates with people. Cheers.
I never had this reaction when watching Wallace and Gromit, but in looking back I can see how and why others could have felt that way. I actually found the silence more comforting if anything. I always saw it as being peacefull, with nothing else to distract or stress over, except the story of "today's wacky hijinks." It was really cool to see such a different opinion on these stories.
The fear your describing in the second fear is called kenopsia, which is the fear that stuff like the backrooms is based on. Also why source games feel weird.
@@faithpearlgenied-a5517 "which is also why source games feel weird" implying everyone feels this way, he should have used "which is why I feel that source games feel weird" Learn English
I have religiously watched TH-cam for 10 plus years and have probably seen millions of videos over the years but I can definitively say this is my favourite TH-cam video ever. I love your editing, the music you choose, the clips, your arguments. This is simply incredible. THANK YOU!
Glad I'm not the only one who found wallace and gromit really scary when I was a kid. Now that I think about it probably was just all the uncanny stuff that freaked me out. I used to have nightmares where their eyes blankly staring at me where very prevalent. I love watching the animations now though. Thanks for the video.
I always loved Wallace and Gromit growing up, staying at my nan's place and watching "A grand day out" on VHS was one of the best things to do as a kid. The only thing that ever scared me was the opening to Wear-Rabbit and any scene that had to do with Bake-O-Light girl. This video just made me relive those memories, and although I don't find them as scary now as an adult, there is some sort of uncanny feeling when showing them in a different light like this video.
I think the main reason why the Wallace and Gromit episodes and most stop-motion animated projects lack background characters is mainly due to budget related reason. Plus, it would be a right faff for the production team to build all those extra characters.
There was always that vibe that everything was very much held together by string and duct-tape. All those crazy machines and contraptions so whimsically composed in a light element juxtaposed by some quite dark colour pallets at times always created quite a stark and unsettling contrast, especially in the final act of A Close Shave. The jaunty camera-quality of the 80s/90s in the first two never helped either.
I LOVED W&G when I was really young. Then aged 3 or 4 it suddenly freaked me out. Until about aged 9, if I saw a picture of them I’d have nightmares that night. Claymation can just be really creepy. I think it’s often used to create grotesque characters (that Babylon short) but there’s a bit like opposite of uncanny valley, because your brain knows they’re something real. The porridge hitting Wallace’s face was what changed everything for me and freaked me out for some weird reason. Also the frame rate has always been creepy to me. Lends itself to jerky movements and a feeling of panic or lack of control as the audience.
No same!!! I remember loving them when i was really little, then once so watched them again when i was maybe 8 or 9 and I couldn't ever again. Keep in mind that as a small child I thought that animated people were real and just looked different than people people. So maybe because I knew it was fake, it made it much scarier? Idk.
Hello from Southern California! I don’t see Wallace and Gromit as terrifying. I think they are too funny, especially Gromit who is a dog but has a personality of saving the day for Wallace. Or when he rolls his eyes or shakes his head. Gromit is the smart one in that duo. I think the people who created Wallace and Gromit did just make it about them, focus on them because they are the main two characters, it’s not about the other people (if there were any). Plus, I’m sure if they had more claymation characters, can you imagine how much time and effort it would take for each short video they create. Hours and hours in one day just to get each movement just right. Wallace is out there with his ideas and loves cheese too much, not always good for the system! Lol… But I could see Gromit with his own series on t.v., or even continuous short videos on TH-cam. Claymation can be awesome in a different setting. Not all claymation is scary. My brother did a stop and go claymation short video for just about 50 seconds about an Eskimo fishing in a pond, accidentally slipping on the ice, smoothing out his little fur hooded coat, it took him a few hours just for those 50 seconds! That’s just crazy and it definitely teaches you patients. It was so good and funny and my brother was only 10 at the time. That was in the early 80s. He got an A+ for his project and an award ribbon. It’s funny how some people aren’t really afraid to watch scary movies but freak out with even a funny cartoon or characters made of clay. I would say, Wallace and Gromit don’t frighten me but why did the creators of W&G, make Wallace look that way? Lol. No one has a head like that! I’m sure it’s just for character and exaggeration with his features…. btw, I absolutely love how Scottish people sound. I really can’t say, love a Scottish accent because we all have an accent or dialect. My moms best friend was from Edinburgh but her and her family moved to Southern California and they were our neighbors. Her three boys were absolute terrors, loud, noisy, bratty and talked back to their parents. I always wanted to visit Scotland. Someday. 😁❤️
Wasn't there a weird live action Wallace and Gromit short that was put on tv? Wallace may already look a bit odd, but this short goes strait into uncanny valley. As for the official stuff, I've definitely questioned where everyone else is. In The Wrong Troulsers, there's a bit where we hear Wallace bump into somebody and say "sorry," and I just wondered who it was. It never really disturbed me, but I definitely felt off. That's not even mentioning Feathers McGraw, Preston the cyber dog and how the main villain in A Matter of Loaf and Death is quite literally a psychopath. Like, it's goofy and fun, but there's definitely a side of me that feels slightly unnerved
When I was little, I had a DVD which contained all the Wallace and Gromit films. I loved watching those films all the time. And would rewatch them over and over. But in the far corner of the back of my mind, little me found them unnerving at times to watch, especially with the thought that these towns are completely desolate and the claymation just adds a sort of uncanniness. But even then, I would still watch them. Revisiting these films give me a huge amount of nostalgia and joy, but there’s always that lingering feel in that back of my mind.
I actually grew up in a household where my granddad absolutely adores wallace and gromit, so i've never felt fear towards the show at all. We used to watch these movies all the time whenever they played them on the BBC, and we still do if we get the chance. It's really interesting to see other peoples thoughts on the franchise since a lot of people didn't have that sort of upbringing, but i an 100% understand why and how people feel this way. It's very interesting indeed!
So glad to see that someone else felt the same lingering dread as I always have watching W&G, theres just something slightly wrong and it haunted me as a kid. Earned yourself another sub!
Thanks for subbing, hope there's something else on my channel you can enjoy too. I'm glad I finally managed to put it in terms other people can understand.
@@adamfleetwood3980 Cheers Adam, it means a lot. I'm glad to hear that because sometimes I worry that the like randomly changing subjects of my videos will mean people just watch the one video relevant to them and then leave, so I'm very glad you stuck around to check them all out. Cheers, more coming soon!
@@dennigalla ive had a lot of fun with your content so far! You should check out a game called The Forest, I really enjoy your vibe and would like to see some content on that, just a suggestion =)
I always loved how otherworldly it felt as a kid. Compared to other run of the mill kids TV shows Wallace and Gromit was entirely unique. It always felt like stepping into some kind of bizarro dimension where nothing but everything made sense.
im so glad you made this video, i’ve always found this cartoon weirdly creepy and my family always laugh at me when i say i don’t want to watch it. as a child i turned on the tv to see the man (either wallace or gromit i dont know) stomping around his house in those robotic trousers and it creeped me out so much, i had dreams about it for days even though the actual concept of it isn’t ‘scary’, there was just something about it that seemed really uncanny and uneasy. you have put it into words perfectly why i got the uneasy feeling, maybe i will show this to my family and they will take my fears seriously 😂
I got this same feeling from Mario 64 as a tiny child. The noise of trying to open a locked door followed by Bowser's laugh terrified me - it felt like I was being caught trying to go somewhere I wasn't supposed to. Also, you don't think about it much, but you DIE in games a lot. Mario 64 made me scared of that sudden loss of life, not just as a punishment for missing a jump, but that Mario would cease after simply stepping on lava, quicksand or water. Liminal spaces? Mario 64 is full of them. I had dreams where there would be a door I never had seen before in the castle, only to find another endless staircase with Bowser laughing all throughout it.
It also doesn't help that the castle has really weird architecture to begin with. There's no furniture, no windows to look out of, every room just has portraits, the Toads fade out of existence when you're far enough away, the whole building seems to be non euclidean, and it just doesn't look like a place you could actually live in. I mean, there isn't even a throne room for the princess to sit inside, let alone a bedroom for her to sleep in. Even Super Mario RPG had those two rooms.
I think part of the uneasiness of it is also because the game's story is literally you being alone. It's not just a "feeling", that's literally how it starts, Mario and his brothers are locked up in dark rooms, and Peach is God-knows-where. With that being said I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had dreams based on the game lol.
I generally find older games are better at horror than modern games. The lack of NPCs and emptiness of the worlds give it a very lonely feeling. And the early 3D models give off a more scary look.
Maybe it's because I grew up in a small rural town, but it never bothered me that the streets were empty. They're empty where I live all the time. It's very common to walk down the street and not meet any person or see any cars for quite a while. Also, many outdoor scenes took place in the morning, so I just assumed everyone was still at home, having breakfast or whatever.
You're an incredible writer pal, got your point across so clearly with great imagery. I agree with your point about the emptiness of the town and how were-rabbit having so many people made it lack a certain charm. Anyways this gives me an excuse to rewatch all the shorts and be scared shitless now :)
So glad I found this video. I adore Wallace and Gromit as an adult, but as a child I was terrified, especially of characters like preston and feathers. They have an intensely quiet concentrated menace. The commentary on liminal spacing and eye movement for stop motion animation is spot on. I think as well there's not just sadness but deep melancholy in the shorts, plus the later films; wallace and gromit are brimming with beautiful ideas but are inherently lonely, almost shunned by others. Its definitely creepy. Maybe its that middle ground of a quintessentially british setting coupled with that loneliness (both very relateable) that makes it so creepy.
I always felt this way when watching Wallace and gromit always felt like there was something very unsettling, like they were inside an empty void a somewhat of an experiment being watched and followed from the shadows and they were completely unaware of it, to them everything was normal and perfect.
You nailed exactly what I felt about it watching as a kid, but I didn't necessarily think they were scary. I was very introverted and shy as a kid and I loved the feeling of those empty spaces and I felt comfort when I saw it in W&G. Perhaps other children were the same way and maybe that was a small part of the appeal as well?
I felt this way about The Snowman....it always freaked me out, especially the theme song. Wallace & Gromit was always spooky, especially "a grand day out", that basement was freeeeeaky, and the way the robot on the moon chases them? Nah, that's terrifying stuff
wow! I watched them as a kid. Sure I found them creepy in parts and I guess I never understood why but this makes a lot of sense. I just never consciously thought about it at all before. Crazy. I do remember being scared some. But they were always one of my favorites to watch. Shaun the Sheep is way less creepy in this aspect. In fact I was never creeped out by it and always laugh a lot when watching it.
As an Aussie I always found a lot of UK children's drama creepy. It was like visiting your granny's house. Everything was darker, grey. The landscapes always looked bleak and cloudy, with grimy urban decay everywhere, and everyone sounded mean.
When I was a kid, I developed a strange fear of wallace and gromit seemingly out of nowhere. I’m still not quite sure where it came from, since I watched those shorts incessently as a young kid. It got so bad to the point that my sisters could torment me by literally naming wallace and gromit shorts. Even watching a grand day out as an adult gives me a weird, soulless vibe that shakes me to my core. It’s hard to pin down, but I know what you mean.
I used to live near a Welsh industrial estate and I FULLY get your sentiment here about the uncomfortable history of this thatcher stricken area of the country that feels hauntingly abandoned. It should feel welcoming, there's a history here that implied that it was but it's no longer there. Kind of reminds me of Rhyl or Blackpool in that they were popular resort/beaches that were left to decay as the abroad holiday rose in popularity. Great video!
Cheers. I've got family in Northern England so I've been around there a whole lot and that heritage is definitely still present. Wallace and Gromit doesn't exactly go into the socio-political, but little background details sort of cause you to fill in the blanks like this.
Please stop saying "Thatcher-stricken", those towns were on the brink of collapse and were decaying anyway, there was no money there and the country was in crippling debt from WW2.
As someone who lives Norf’, it’s definitely a strange vibe that we _still_ encounter literally everywhere as well. Working class towns have a contrast between fairly busy populations and downright apocalyptic-looking areas. The factories are very creepy at night. I’d best describe the atmosphere as “cheerful depression” 😂💀
3:03 can you imagine animating all those characters at one time, especially if most people wouldn't even care that the extras are there. This is why the struggle of animating lots of characters is saved for scenes like what we see and the Curse of The Ware Rabbit movie, where we require many towns folk and extras in one spot to drive the plot forward.
I thought I was the only one until I stumbled upon this video. Absolutely adore them but they used to scare me so much when I was younger but couldn’t put a finger on why. I think you’ve really captured it. Never noticed the liminal aspect before but that combined with the uncanny valley-ness of Wallace definitely unsettles
i wouldve never thought anyone found wallace and gromit scary! i LOVED it as a kid, still do. i can see how, i mean, claymation has that eeriness to it. but i dont know how, i was a scaredy cat as a kid, but i loved it!
Same! Except for the penguin (I think), the oven in chicken run and the were rabbit movie I can’t remember being scared while watching, and I was scared very easily as a child
You're quite right and this is a problem a lot of children's programming has, actually. At least in Wallace and Gromit they tend to acknowledge that other people exist, even if you can't see them. In other programmes the characters don't acknowledge other people at all, and it's downright disturbing. Pingu used to terrify me because he lived in a vast icy wasteland. In The Clangers, this feeling is also there, but Firmin and Postgate were clever and acknowledged the weirdness in the opening, and had people visit the Clangers every episode.
Children’s programming is nightmarish precisely because adults have lost the ability to communicate honestly with their children. So there is always this feeling that the show is hiding something. The positivity is piled on to absurd amounts. It becomes a parody of the real world. This is way Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared becomes cathartic because it combines the absurd positivity with the actual beliefs of the adults who create it. Let me say it another way: Modern people are nihilists but they want to shield their children from that horrible nihilism so they go overboard attempting to present the world to children as something they don’t believe it is so it all rings very false and sensitive children see through it and it disturbs them. Children’s programming is insane.
Pingu had friends he played with, he was a penguin, not some hispter living in a city. He had more social interactions than the millions of londoners do in their daily 2-3 hour commutes.
@@amjoshuaf Over analysation. There were plenty of kids shows that weren't like this, and Wallace and Gromit is hardly overboard or cathartic. It's literally budget and time constraints. Things get more complex the more money and time that is pumped into it.
@@loolfactorie yeah, I’ve since watched a Wallace and Gromit short and I’ll agree it’s not exactly what I was pointing out. I was referring more to stuff like Sesame Street or Mr Rogers. Although I still believe Wallace and Gromit is unhinged, it just expresses its dysfunction in a different way.
@@amjoshuaf The main writers, or at least Nick Park were from Yorkshire, and were going for a "last of the summer wine" appeal. It's humour was old timey and it was meant to be pleasant and simplistic. There are some interviews about it.
This is probably one of the strongest first videos by any TH-camr I have ever seen. Short, hilarious and makes it's point very very well. Definitely indicitive of the rest of the channel content.
i absolutely loved wallace and gromit as a child but a part of me was always terrified of it. Like you said, I was never scared of the water rabbit film or even a matter of loaf and death, it was just the earlier ones like close shave, wrong trousers and a grand day out. i could never really put a finger on why but man they were so scary, still didn’t stop me watching them all the time though
Wrong Trousers was the first episode I saw, and while I enjoyed it, I always found it unnerving. Decades later, I've finally realised why. The emptiness is just so insanely creepy. I really wanna re-watch all the shorts now, with this in mind.
I came across this video on my recommended page and watched it out of curiosity more than anything. I also remember watching Wallace and Gromit as a child and though I was an easily frightened child who was also scared of things most people would laugh at, I wasn't that frightened of Wallace and Gromit at all. However, listening to what you were saying about the appearance of the clay characters and also the emptiness of the town that the characters live in, it definitely enlightened me to a new perspective that would have otherwise gone straight over my head as a kid. So, to answer your dilemma, I don't think you've been losing your mind at all. It is because of your very interesting analysis that I'll probably never watch an episode of Wallace and Gromit the same way ever again.
Thank god I found this video. For the last 5 years ever since I first saw Wallace and Gromit I have been wondering, am I the only one that finds this shit scary and creepy. The whole experience just puts me on edge, makes me feel uncomfortable and creeps me the hell out. There is always something off with every scene and I just can't seem to shake the creepy feelings I get from this. Even to this day re watching it those feelings are still there, which makes it even more creepy to me as usually when I watch a horror movie the effect has normally rubbed of the second time I watch it, but not with this.
i always had a wierd feeling in the back of my mind when i watched these as a kid... i alsways wondered why i would get creeped out by a childs film, but nlw i know what it is. thanks Dennis!
Is there a way of knowing for sure? Judging by the mature aardman productions, I'd say that's exactly what they did. As professionals, they had to estimate the kind of impression a given scene was going to cause.
I've always loved Wallace and Gromit! I literally would make my parents make me crackers and cheese to eat as a snack as I watched it lol. I never noticed that the town seems empty, but I totally see that now! I definitely think they just lacked the budget to add extra characters but they finally had that for the Curse of the Wererabbit. Very interesting video!
I'm surprised you mentioned the Lion instead of the Bear from the teletubbies. As a child I can recall hiding in places around my house because the Bear use to frighten me so much, up until the end of my teens it still induced fear in me. The Bear from teletubbies travelled fast and created weird sounds as he travelled. Even now it makes me a little uneasy. Good video.
It's crazy to me that for some 20-23 years of my life, this show has somehow lingered as an unsettling terrifying memory. I always remembered the show as extremely scary to me. I even just tried to watch the first episode again and couldn't help but feel the uneasiness from my past well up despite knowing there's really nothing horrifying about it. If it was any other cartoon with the same plot I probably would have never felt that way. But yeah this show is just unsettling to me.
I LITERALLY SEARCHED for this video. I just saw a picture of Wallace and Gromit recently and I suddenly realized that it was my biggest fear when I used to be a child. According to the view number of the original Wallace and Gromit, I think it's not so popular, but according to the view number of this video, I realized it scares A LOT of children seeing it.
Man there’s so much to say. I loved how u made this video. Loved how u talked about the people in the penthouse party. I think when I was a kid, my mind filled in the gaps for cartoons that didn’t have background characters, which added to the ambience, not took away from it. But now, whenever I watch any Netflix movie/show, which never has any extras, maybe for budget reasons, it looks so hollow and empty and fake. And it’s so lonely that I can’t watch a lot of Netflix stuff. It reminds me of this thought I had, that if they remade The Exorcist as a Netflix property, it would only contain the mum and daughter, and the two priests. But watch the original, it had thick overflowing crowds for no reason, scenes of a whole community of workers in the desert, just because. I miss when films were made like that
4:46 you perfectly describe wales, northern england, scotland and some parts of the south i live in the north and when i go to sheffield whch was once the steel capital of the world is now full of homeless people, drug addicts and abandoned warehouses, mills and factories and is honestly depressing
In "the wrong trousers", the scene with the penguin on the side of the building trying to get the diamond, he starts sweating profusely. When I was a kid I didn't realise he was starting and always thought he was crying really hard. Which made the scene even creepier. Other than that, I love grolton and hovris.
I can understand that. I never really found Wallace and Gromit to be scary or anything, but I have seen other claymation shorts and movies that have, including the one you show at 0:51, The Adventures of Mark Twain. One other I found particularly scary, as a child anyway, was a short by Bob Gardiner and Will Vinton called "Closed Mondays." I used to see it on HBO between movies sometimes back in the 80s. Check it out if you haven't already.
The lack of people around the town actually appealed to me as a kid. Being naturally shy and socially awkward, the lack of activity and people is comforting in a weird way. I especially remember the scene where Gromit was in the cafe. When I was little, I assumed no one was there and Gromit just walked in, and I was thinking how cool would it be to have a cafe all to yourself.
It kinda sucks. You can chat with the Barista for like 5 minutes but if you run out of things to talk about it's dead silence from there on
@@jacoboc2244 lol haha, totally forgot I even posted a comment here. Just to clarify, I was mainly talking about my kid self being shy and awkward. But now as an adult, I do enjoy going out and socializing. Soo all is good xD
@@whatdisd isnt the point of having a cafe all to yourself is not talking to anyone? at least thats what it means to me
Disney’s “Pinocchio” is another pretty good example of it. We get the occasional glimpse of the other villagers and the throng of kids visiting Pleasure Island, but aside from them, most of the movie’s scenes take place in empty streets, deserted countryside roads, or in a spot where the locals are all off-screen (like in Stromboli’s puppet show). It definitely adds to the film’s rather dreamy atmosphere.
@@sketchalater4656 What geoffrey and you said is a rather good external explanation. Not every story has to be crowded with millions of people. Sure, there's "Curse of the Were-Rabbit", but that's to give internal validation on there being a living society.
I was scared of a grand day out just because of the outdated models they had back then. Wallace just looked weirder. The scene where he's drawing blueprints for the rocket was always uneasy. Just the quietness and the dark basement. The scariest part of that short was when the robot was trying to break into the rocket to get off the moon. All that being said, none of the shorts that came after that one frightened me too much.
You're absolutely right about the robot breaking into the rocket being scary. It always frightened me how he just starts tearing shit up left and right in a panic.
I know what you mean. Only as I've gotten older, do I feel more sympathetic towards the Robot. I mean he had every right to be raging at first cos Wallace recklessly litters his planet ( although that magazine did get him fantasing about Skiing ) & even leaks rocket fuel onto it so it's fairly understandable as he reaches for the Trudgeon in his draw. At first.
@@dennigalla what’s your accent
That was the one wallace and gromit i ever had a problem with for some reason. The robot was the root of that n i have no clue why now i watch it back
Funny, the sketchboard scene was my favorite part as a kid
This may seem pretty obvious, but I think the biggest redeeming factor of these movies is the slightly absent, but still very meaningful relationship between Wallace and Gromit. The scariest and most gut wrenching point in all of the shorts I think was when a defeated Gromit left Wallace in The Wrong Trousers.
That scene still makes me tear up
During the last scene of 'A grand day out' the rocket can be seen flying back to Earth, but what always bothered me is that there are little to no city lights shining on the dark side of the planet, which makes it seem as if Earth isn't populated.
I didn't have time to put this in the final video but if you look at the planet - that's not even Earth.
@@dennigalla I see what you mean, but earlier in the film when the Robot looks at the planet through the telescope, it’s clearly visible that it in fact is Earth with Europe, Africa and a part of Asia clearly visible
@@spacegamer762 Yeah, you're right. I guess the planet they landed on wasn't the same one they took off from.
@@dennigalla What?
@@dennigalla Its Earth but seen at a different angle. You can see europe in the middle
Creepiness is always more effective in non-horror because you don't expect it. Whenever you watch anything horror, you know it's trying to scare you and the scenery just screams "spooky", but when something innocent has a bizarre moment of surrealism or uncanniness, it's like seeing a giant spider staring at you in the corner of your eye, that you never expected to see on a summer's day.
So like how in Harry potter the werewolf and the spider are scary because they're in essentially innocent movies
The spider never scared me really but if you watch Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban back to back youll notice the complete change of mood due to the change in directors and I think thats what made the werewolf so scary as a kid to me. Its almost like a grotesque climax to the end of a movie where the whole time youre going “where did all the cheeriness of hogwarts go”
The scene in Devil’s Advocate where the lady’s face changes
@@kevinmaurer3562 I actually ran out of the cinema when I was a little kid in the early 2000s when Voldemort shows up at the end of the first one.
Me the whole movie: 🐶
Voldemort's back head: 😭
If a non-horror work tries too hard it can also have an adverse effect bc the audience knows that nothing _too_ scary will happen, but the juxtaposition is still pretty damn effective.
I really love the original shorts because they’re so goddamn creepy. The lighting always looks like it’s straight from a horror movie and I remember being particularly spooked by the penguin as a kid. I think it’s because he’s got those soulless beady little eyes that contain no human emotion. Also Preston the robot dog is just a full on Terminator-style nightmare.
I always had that weird, unnerving feeling from Wallace and gromit too. It's the dark fuzziness and warm yet slightly washed out colour pallette. The "where is everyone", liminal vibe like the duo existed in a vacuum. I think half the point of were-rabbit was to address those things, showing more of the world and making it feel more alive.
I've still always adored them, from the moment I first saw them and I think for me its slightly uncomfortable feeling is part of the charm.
I never really talked about use of colour but that's a good point too. Very drab.
And I see what you mean with Were-Rabbit but I'm pretty sure they scarred another generation with the transformation sequence.
It’s always given me an unsettling vibes
I'm so glad I'm not the only one...
I Never Really Paid attention to the blankness of the city that wallace and gromit live in.
I Always Found the short films very amusing (how the robot on the moon needs to have a coin inserted to hit wallace on the head).
I honestly don’t think your crazy when you describe your feelings about the series.
When i was younger only the curse of the were rabbit would either make me scared or feel sorry for one of the characters (especially wallace at the end)
@@dennigalla They did. I went over to tend to some younger cub scouts at a camp.
One was a 9 yo who had ADHD, who was generally annoying, but for some reason, he always screamed whenever I said the words "rabbit", "bunny", or "Wallace and Grommit". When me and the older kids asked him why, he said it was because of something called the Were-Rabbit. We didn't know what it was, but one of us looked it up later, and we burst out laughing discovering it was a Wallace and Grommit cartoon. We spent half of that camp trying to show him the transformation sequence and getting him to get over his fear.
Probably a waste of our time 😅
4:23 don't know if anyone else has talked about this, but the timing of his words with the clip of gromit is perfectly synced
Absolutely perfect
:O Almost as if, completely on purpose! Which just goes to show you that there's actually nothing to this guy's theory whatsoever. In fact it actually counters the argument brilliantly by showing how much humanity/expression is captured in Aardman's work.
@@every2464 That's not what this video is saying at all.... Like I'm not sure to what extent I personally agree with this video or not, but "Aardman characters lack expression" is categorically not what's being argued here
@@elizakeating8415 it is. Listen to 2:15 and then you got a demonstration of Gromit through the cardboard box completely solidifying my point.
@@every2464 no you did not pass the verbal comprehension test
"Wallace may just be a lovable old guy who only wants to make inventions, eat cheese and crackers, and hang out with his dog... but he's also hideous."
He looks absolutely grotesque idk how anyone could enjoy a show with a protagonist that atrocious.
Ikr that line actually got me hard😢
British people.
@@supersonical8770that's a Irish accent you twat
Wallace isn’t hideous that’s just the way he was born as even without the hair he used to have he still like a fun jolly good person in my opinion
Theory: Wallace used to work in a factory and had a degree in engineering he lost his job as a result of Margaret Thatcher's policies he tries selling small inventions to the slowing depopulating town. As the years go by the town is nearly abandoned and only a few businesses have survived and now he is a depressed inventor trying to replicate the town in his mind he once loved and knew so he moved out to a more populated town (wear rabbit)
Worse version: Wallace lost his mind long ago, and Gromit is just a normal dog that Wallace projects his schizophrenic delusions onto.
And the cheese is an allegory for heroin.
@@yetanotherrandomyoutubecha4382 no he forgot the crack gromit
@@yetanotherrandomyoutubecha4382 and his dealer is called wenslydale
Margret fukin thatcher...
this is some salad fingers shit now
5:28 “the horror that comes from things that aren’t intended to be scary are the strongest” YES I FEEL THE SAME WAY
it's the ambiguity, you can't assess the risk, unlike with visible, obvious threats
Yeeee
that claymation thing that was played in that time made me jump as well
Fr all those kids tv shows and films that were light hearted but had one or two scary scenes just became a whole lot scarier, I vividly remember being scared out of my socks In the scene where the trousers are in the wrapping paper and they surprise gromit, because I wasn’t expecting it, if you put it into the context of an actual horror movie it seems less scary
That's how I feel about Hunter The Cheetah in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage. It's innocent, but those bulging eyes and wide mouth are so unsettling. Several years ago, I had a dream that I was being chased by it on an empty highway and all the humans had disappeared. Kind of like Nextbots In Backrooms.
I also had a dream in 2003 at the age of 7 where I was chased by a frozen image of Tommy Pickles in a school parking lot.
“A Matter of Loaf and Death” is probably one of the most terrifying ones. This focuses on actual murder, death and conspiracy…on a franchise where our main characters go to the moon for cheese.
"This focuses on actual murder, death and conspiracy" This right here impressed me when I watched that short recently. A short, meant primarily for young audiences (right?), delves into things and concepts like actual, premeditated murder and death.
Oh, and don't forget romance and love too. What with Wallace, despite being somewhat autistic and eccentric, falling in love in "A Close Shave" and even his canine friend, Gromit, getting a love interest of his own in the form of the poodle Fluffles, in "A matter of Loaf and Death"! Speaking of Fluffles, physical abuse. Another heavy theme that isn't shown on-screen but most certainly implied in that short!
All of them, themes and concepts usually meant for more adult audiences!
Can't wait for the new short coming on Netflix in 2024! Hope they keep Fluffles around though!
I think that episode was my favourite
That was my favorite episode as a kid!
But the penguin one scared me a bit
But it also has one of the funniest openings in history lol
I feel the opposite way. I always thought these two had such charismatic personalities and timeless rustic designs. Watching this show feels like visiting my grandmother’s house, if that makes sense.
Yeah it never bothered me either
it never really bothered me,I thought it was just oddly wholesome
I actually enjoyed Wallace and Gromit
I've watched quite a bit of their stuff and it never bothered me either, and I was the kid who could barely get halfway through luigi's mansion cause it was to scary. It's fascinating how certain things make people feel certain ways, like, I've heard one guy feels sick when they watch claymation, perhaps due to them watching that while ill as a child.
Yes just my childhood I loved the wear rabbit even more
I was always creeped out by the many silent scenes in A Grand Day Out, and as for the other shorts, the whole plot was just disturbing without being deliberately scary. If you watch all of the shorts and think about the events that occurred for even a second, you realise that they hold many similarities to the genre of psychological horror. A homicidal robot on the moon, a killer robot dog, unpredictable robot trousers, a crazy mass murderer girlfriend and a narcissistic penguin. They're all horrific and "off" but are meant to be funny. Unpredictability sets me on edge without fail. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit comforted me with more characters but the Rabbit itself was absolute nightmare fuel to look at, rendering the human characters futile. Most of this never occurred to me as a child, but some did. Great video!
Cheers for watching. A lot of stuff that's played for surreal laughs ends up horrifying when you think about it in the cold light of day.
Omg yeah that killer robot dog was TERRIFYING
I used to be scared of the curse of the were-rabbit
@@AlasdairH-R me too, it just looks so scary to me
I was so terrified of the were rabbit as a kid, to the point I couldn't even get to the point when it appears. Just the way they suggested it was too much for me
Honestly the "theres no people around" thing is something you can get used to if you watch low budget media because hiring extras or animating background characters is a lot of work for little benefit, so people either use to make it seem like people are in the background or situations which wouldn't have people in the background or just have the background empty, which is the only real option for small claymation projects
Yeah, as someone who pretty much exclusively watched Wallace and Gromit when I was like 5 I probably got used to the lack of extras pretty quick.
Even the movie, which did have extras, only had about 30 of them. I don't think anyone really complained, especially since the writers and animators did a lot to give the townspeople distinct characteristics and personalities.
I have realized this as a kid for watching movies. the lower the budget the less people in the background the higher the budget the more people in the background. but there cases even if some movies have a low budget they would still be lazy to add any people in the background.
I was never overly scared of Wallace and Gromit, mostly because Wallace was so bumptious and affable, and Gromit so level headed and serious, which always grounded the duo as the central focus enough for me not to be overly concerned with the smaller details gnawing at my subconscious.
But what did eventually break me from this was the Techno-Trousers movie. When Gromit is going for a walk with the trousers, he goes to a park. It immediately struck me how fuckin' weird it was for there to a park with no one at all there. Then I noticed the town, which previously I'd managed to subconsciously rationalise as simply being the wrong time of day. But it was that otherwise emptiness that became the thing I could no longer unsee. Where were the security guards in the museum Feathers McGraw steals the jewel from? Where are the people in the town when Gromit ran away from home? Where were the police in the station? Where were the zoo employees or the patrons? Where were the kids and parents in the park?
It's really unsettling when Those Stupid Trousers were walking in the sunset during the end credits
@@LadyEsperanza-f3t I remember that. With the theme song and credits rolling.
One of the things that always spooked me about the shorts were the mid 20th century look of the machines and inventions, yes half of them for mundane, whimsical purposes but the earthy colour palletes, mechanical arms, pistons etc. make them feel like WW2 machines that can kill you in the wrong hands.
The techno trousers are hacked and controlled to abduct Wallace and the knitting machine's design is re-used to skin sheep for meat processing. Not to mention Preston and The Oven are two robots that go rogue, makes me wonder what a robot uprising would look like in this universe.
"makes me wonder what a robot uprising would look like in this universe."
Like the Terminator movies, obviously. Only somehow funnier.
That's a whole movie ides there
You’re so right actually! The funny thing is my parents watched these and so did I when I was a child and I usually really loved them, even chicken run. But parts of the show creeped me out (like the machines, same for chicken run) and I was terrified of the were rabbit movie as well
I'd watch the absolute hell out of a Wallace and Gromit robot uprising.
The film coming in 2024 is supposed to be about an out of control AI gnome that Wallace built (or something along those lines), so you might just get your wish. Will it have the quietly menacing quality that the penguin and Preston had though? That's why those villains work so well, they don't speak and that's what makes them so interesting. After A Close Shave, Aardman and Nick Park seem to be more focus on faster paced story. I'd love to see a return to form with the slow moving narrative, that's W&G to me. Don't give the gnome a voice, just eyes that light up and it'll be creepy for all the right reasons.
I LOVE Wallace & Gromit, I've seen the short films probably 10 times each, and yet somehow I've never noticed the lack of people! I think it's a credit to how engrossing their stories and characters are (I'm adamant the penguin is one of the best villains in any media) but it's very creepy now I think about it.
Facts
Ha! 'Fingers Mc Graw'.
I always felt that creepy vibe, but i loved it for that. Honestly i felt sympathetic towards the robot in a grand day out, all he wanted was to get back to earth and ski. What terrified the shit out of me was the penguin.
Yeah, the robot was alright really.
SAME FOR ME WITH THE PENGUIN
@@mariselagutierrez4684 Down with the Penguin!
The penguin's eyes! And movements! Aaargh!
The penguin and that rabbit
It's comforting to know that you might run into Wallace and Gromit in some undiscovered level of the backrooms.
Would you really want to?
nothing is more disconcerting than the shot of Wallace walking down the basement stairs in a grand day out. Incredible video putting voice to a perspective many of us have had to live with in our nightmares for years. 🙏
Cheers, man.
Another thing as well is the food that they eat too! It always made me feel really weird, especially when they go to the moon and literally eat the moon. Also, in 'A Grand Day Out' there a fair few scenes without music which is unintentionally unsettling. My last thought would be that, in all the shorts I feel like we're meant to sympathise with Gromit, who has to put up with literally everything. It's really disquieting watching Wallace be completely oblivious to their own actions and easily manipulated. I think the intention was for it to be funny but actually it just comes across as this fear and realisation that usually those that have power cannot see the consequences of their actions & there's little we can do to change that. It's actually a feeling of hopelessness and sadness, watching Gromit endlessly clean up after Wallace and never truly being seen.
ALSO: the penguin having literally no facial expression at all haunts me still.
There's definitely a purgatorial vibe to it, yeah. Gromit has no mouth, but wants to scream sometimes when Wallace is inches from death.
Speaking of music, the upbeat yet muffled music that Feathers McGraw plays when he takes over Gromit's room always, always freaked me out. The distant hum of voices.
@Nicholas this is a really amazing take.
The penguin was supposed to be emotionless and unsettling. The music in the show is always 40's and 50's traditional English music you'd dance to in a "dance hall".
apparently the next film is gonna be about gromit getting tired of wallace’s inventions and going on his own journey
> always made me feel really weird, especially when they go to the moon and literally eat the moon.
That's literally a play on the gag that the moon is made out of cheese, there's nothing weird about it.
This was fantastic! That penguin's beady little eyes still haunts my nightmares.
Thank you very much. When I was grabbing footage for this video I made sure there was a whole lot of Feathers McGraw. What a presence.
@@dennigalla Apparently the design was inspired by Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock's Rebecca. Which explains my night sweats.
@Khaled Shanshal I feel the same, man. I watched them all when I was a kid but going back to them when I was older and able to properly appreciate all the work and vision it takes to put them together really put it in a new perspective. To this day I think The Wrong Trousers model train chase scene is a top 10 movie setpiece of all time. Thanks for watching, mate.
must be very sensitive
@@dennigalla kind of forgot the penguin had a name to be honest
I always felt a deep, strong uneasiness and loneliness in "The Wrong Trousers" when Gromit is reading the newspaper in that empty Cafe; I think your video explained perfectly why that is.
It might’ve been intentional on the creatives’ part. The scene is meant to be unnerving since Gromit is secretly following a suspected criminal and trying to keep a low profile. Filling the scene with background characters would’ve kinda lessened the suspense.
Another kind of creepy but sad thought, the robot on the moon in A Grand Day Out (canonically known as “The Cooker” because it resembles an oven) would shortly run out of coin power after the end, meaning it would be just an inert machine sitting on the moon with skis
My grandparents showed me these shorts when I was a kid, and my first question was if the robot would run out of time soon and become inert again. My grandfather said, "Best not to worry about it."
@@SuperLabelPerson best not to worry about it indeed what a surprisingly disturbing thing to think about
@@SuperLabelPerson lol
it appears to be sentient or at least intelligent. Creepy to think it goes in and out of living, with small moments of life between longer moments of nonlife? Sleeping? Death?
@@Big-Chungus21
You run out of coin power. Everything goes dark.
Then you wake up again. You don't know how long it's been. Maybe an hour. Maybe hundreds of thousands of years. You have little time before your coin power runs out again, and no idea whether you will ever wake up again once it does run out.
Say what you like, it's still incredibly genius and inspiring that the first two short films were done with only one voice actor and still got two Oscar awards. Praise to Nick Park!
Nick Park has more Oscars than Steven Spielberg.
Nick park and ardman animations are genius
@@HolyFreakinDragonSlayer Aardman are godly. Honestly, I even managed to get some enjoyment out of flushed away, even if it scored a poor rating.
@@averagejoe8358 im more of the OG before they went digitalised in all fairness. Ive not really watched much of the digital things as it didnt captivate me as much.
@@HolyFreakinDragonSlayer I am aswell, that's just the specific example I wanna give, cause somehow it didn't tske too well.
3:02 I remember noticing this as a kid, always found the town kinda empty and quiet. A Grand Day Out was creepy due to atmosphere and Wrong Trousers had such emptyness.
The movie and the latter two shorts never had that vibe as the world is a lot more populated
2:58 Actually I noticed this too. When I was watching, I was wondering why do we don't see very much people. Honeslty Wallace, especially in the wrong trousers, seems like the only human in this world. They correct this problem later with having more extras, but as with the original shorts, the town seems like a wastleland with no living soul in sight.
Looking back, I think it is The Wrong Trousers that's the main offender. So many signs of life but no bodies. Cheers for watching.
@@dennigalla I mean, there's a practical reason for that- that they didn't have thebudget to create and animate more characters. In claymation, it can be very, very hard to have too many things moving at once, and Aardman in their earlier works have very focused shots with one or two things moving. I also think the stories themselves are so self contained to Wallace and Gromit that making more characters unnecesarily wouldn't have been worth it.
That being said, I do think this is to the show's credit- the very charming, cozy, personal feeling is one side of that coin, and the strangely quiet, mysterious, empty feel is the other side. I have loved Wallace and Gromit formany years, and I do think it's a great example of limitations on a work of art working to its credit.
"the town seems like a wastleland with no living soul in sight."
That's the north of England for you, mate. Thatcher really did a number on this country.
@@jamesgravil9162 Oh, sorry.
@@elder-woodsilverstein7716 No problem!
I've always been terrified of Wallace and Gromit. When I was little my parents made me watch it, and while my brother was amused and relaxed, I was on constant alert. You managed to explain and finally make me rationalize why I felt this way.
Me I was terrified of the animation and for some reason my mom loved it
Same the one with the penguin scared the crap out of me
I loved the show when I was little I remember getting home and asking for my daily cheese and crackers while watching Wallace and Gromit! Def seems more scary now that I’ve seen this video but I just remember always wanting cheese and crackers bc of this show 😂
@@thegreenembers same I fucking hated that one
Made you watch it? I thought I was the only one who was made to watch something. I was stuck with watching the orphan
I have this recurring nightmare -- I've had it ever since I was a kid, maybe around 5 or 6 -- it's just wallace and gromit driving around in their little car in this town with no people, no one except me. And they kidnap me. It is TERRIFYING. And I've never been able to articulate why it was so terrifying until I saw this. Wow.
I never had a feeling of loneliness when it came to Wallice and Gromit. It was actually sort of comforting, I don't know why but something about there only being two main characters and hardly seeing any others had me kind of relaxed, like I was in my element. I was a very lonely child, friends weren't easy to make and my mother restricted where I could go for a long time leaving me confined to the house most of the time. In that sense I suppose the lack of other people in the shorts never really bothered me because being alone although not something I nessisarily enjoy is something I am very much used to and have grown accustomed to.
The only negative emotion that I have gotten from Wallace and Gromit if any is the feeling of sadness in a grand day out. The oven on the moon was and still is a character that makes me shed a tear for and it being for a few reasons. One reason being the fact that I could relate with him, he was all alone. But really the thing that made me the most upset was that when we see him Skiing over the hills of the moon at the end I always had a feeling of dread and sadness that he would shut down again. As we see in the film the oven is only operational for so long until he just suddenly stops working because of his built in clock. Each penny that is put into him only kept him on for so long and as A kid the idea of him suddenly stopping again upset me as the oven wasn't evil and it was clear it had dreams and ambitions like a human so the sad idea of him enjoying what little time he had before suddenly shutting down again even has me feeling a little sad now. I always tried to make myself feel better and head cannoned the idea that maybe the penny got stuck and messed with his clock so he wouldn't turn off again so he could keep enjoying himself on the moon. If that were true I would feel a lot better in that case but something always told me that he stopped shortly after Wallace and Gromit left.
poor oven :(
Omg you really are lonely lol you’re thinking waaaay to in-depth about what happened to a non existent oven robot bro.
That moment when the spaceship handles come off in the robot's hands and it realises it is being left behind on the moon is, to me, the most gut-wrenching moment in cinema. It just wanted to be happy!!! 😭
wow...i can't say i ever had any negative associations with wallace and gromit growing up, but this video has definitely convinced me to see it from your perspective. love your voiceover as well, very expressive. please make more videos - you've earned a sub and i'm eagerly awaiting more from you!!
Cheers very much, I'm fully planning to make more videos soon. I was worried my voiceover sounded a little robotic since it's my first attempt, so it's nice to hear that you liked it.
I never noticed it before, I can say though that the dog endo skeleton was extremely frightening. Not just its looks, but also how it was introduced to the viewer. I only vaguely remember, but I think it was that lady telling them that the dog wasn't a real dog and that it must have a malfuction or something and then it drops into that machine and I believe gets canned, but then that scene you showed with the robot hand just shooting out. It's pretty scary in my opinion.
Yes that was really the one and only scary part for me back when i watched Wallace and Gromit
i really wish that someone makes a horror series with this uncanny vibe
You should check out the films Mad God and Junk Head. They're films, not series, but make great use of Claymation to be deliberately surreal.
It reminds me of this: th-cam.com/video/Ntf5_ue2Lzw/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=DavidRidlen
Stranger Things Season 1 is a lot like that at times
I don’t think it would work because you’d already know it’s meant to be scary where as with the uncanny feeling Dennis talks about can only be felt when you don’t expect it or when the stuff you’re watching isn’t meant to be scary
Angel's Egg has a similar liminal uncanny vibe
I completely understand this. You laid out pretty well how i've always felt; the eyes and the lack of people are a huge part of it. I'd also add the lighting is also sort of terrifying.
Idk why but i feel like this with finding nemo and idk why
The biggest thing with claymation, and especially the W/G shorts that lend themselves to being scary, is the lighting. *Real* (and often very harsh, bright, shadowy) lighting on "fake" characters that move lends a very uncanny noir feeling that enhances whatever is on screen. Look at the behind the scenes of A Close Shave and you'll see some of the rigs they set up with the main and backlight plus scene lights and it starts to make more sense.
oml you're right. The only 2 scenes across all their films that gave me bad dreams was 1. Wallace walking down the basement steps in A Grand Day Out and 2. when Gromit spies on the penguin in The Wrong Trousers, especially the shots of Gromit hiding behind that wall with only light casted on his fixed, almost soulless eyes and ears fully extended upwards. the lighting in both scenes was always so disturbing and I never noticed it as a child
I used to be TERRIFIED of the Aardman intro where the half of the face drops into the frame. I never really was scared of the show itself although I do remember being creeped out at the bit where the wrong trousers were jumping around and running, probably so scary because it was sped up.
It's like double abstract - the claymation is weird, and what they do with it is weird.
@@dennigalla yeah
This comes to show just how subjective art is. I was also an easily scared kid, I couldn't even watch TV around Halloween season because I was genuinely terrified of the commercials. I also remember being creeped out by some CGI, like in this short film by Blue Sky Studios called "Bunny" (it played after the Ice Age credits in the VHS).
However, I remember this warm feeling watching Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, it even inspired me to attempt claymation at home. Never picked up on the liminal space thing until now and I kind of see where you're coming from but I just don't feel it (except on A Grand Day Out, that one does look kinda creepy lol).
I never liked Wallace and grommet as a kid and I never realised why, like they creeped me out, but I always put it down to the art style. I wasn't really an easily scared kid I read scary books and watched some of the more kid friendly scary movies like gremlins, so I never understood why I was creeped out by wallace and grommet. This makes so much sense to me though! It kinda makes me want to rewatch them actually and see if I feel the same still.
I was terrified of Wallace and Gromit the first time I watched it as a child, although I've never looked at it from your point of view before. Cool video and a great insight :)
Alien Mr Burns was pretty spooky too. ;)
Thanks a bunch, man. It was fun trying to logically lay out what scared me about it, because especially as a kid it's hard to explain where the fear really comes from.
Just watched this 3 times it was that good! It’s so rare that I find a video that confirms exactly the way I feel about something - I think I realised in the back of my mind that it was the lack of people that made me so unsettled by Wallace and Gromit growing up, but I was never able to put my finger on it until I saw your video!
I just thought YES when you gave your punchline of ‘where is everyone’! Every analogy was spot on, especially the one about being in a city on New Years Day - I went for a drive around the financial area of London this New Years Day and got exactly the same feeling. I’m fascinated by liminal spaces too.
Something else that affected me especially in A Grand Day Out was how sad and distant it felt - just this lonely, slightly angry, uncanny robot on its own thousands of miles away…so unsettling!
I haven’t watched any Wallace and Gromit for at least 5 years as I know just how spooked it will make me for a while after - no one ever seems to understand why I find it so creepy though! I’ll just show them your video…
Brilliant editing, commentary, and music too so well done!
Thanks for the lovely comment, man. It took me a long time to really put how I felt into words but I'm glad I did because the video clearly resonates with people. Cheers.
It has always given me a sense of existential dread thinking about the amount of time it takes to put a scene together.
I never had this reaction when watching Wallace and Gromit, but in looking back I can see how and why others could have felt that way.
I actually found the silence more comforting if anything. I always saw it as being peacefull, with nothing else to distract or stress over, except the story of "today's wacky hijinks."
It was really cool to see such a different opinion on these stories.
The fear your describing in the second fear is called kenopsia, which is the fear that stuff like the backrooms is based on. Also why source games feel weird.
Not everyone is scared of walls and air
@@Keatoil Nowhere in his comment did he claim 'everyone' is. Learn to read.
@@faithpearlgenied-a5517 "which is also why source games feel weird" implying everyone feels this way, he should have used "which is why I feel that source games feel weird" Learn English
oh my god no one cares, you still understand what the original commenter means
@@Keatoil you must be fun at parties
I have religiously watched TH-cam for 10 plus years and have probably seen millions of videos over the years but I can definitively say this is my favourite TH-cam video ever. I love your editing, the music you choose, the clips, your arguments. This is simply incredible. THANK YOU!
calm down lmao
@@JBackkkkk no, calm up
@@MrMasterKaio How do you even calm up? Be less calm?
Glad I'm not the only one who found wallace and gromit really scary when I was a kid. Now that I think about it probably was just all the uncanny stuff that freaked me out. I used to have nightmares where their eyes blankly staring at me where very prevalent. I love watching the animations now though. Thanks for the video.
Sorry if I provoked another series of nightmares, haha. Cheers for watching.
I have found my people
It's so uncanny with Wallace always flapping his hands countless times
I always loved Wallace and Gromit growing up, staying at my nan's place and watching "A grand day out" on VHS was one of the best things to do as a kid. The only thing that ever scared me was the opening to Wear-Rabbit and any scene that had to do with Bake-O-Light girl.
This video just made me relive those memories, and although I don't find them as scary now as an adult, there is some sort of uncanny feeling when showing them in a different light like this video.
I think the main reason why the Wallace and Gromit episodes and most stop-motion animated projects lack background characters is mainly due to budget related reason. Plus, it would be a right faff for the production team to build all those extra characters.
Exactly what I was thinking.
There was always that vibe that everything was very much held together by string and duct-tape. All those crazy machines and contraptions so whimsically composed in a light element juxtaposed by some quite dark colour pallets at times always created quite a stark and unsettling contrast, especially in the final act of A Close Shave. The jaunty camera-quality of the 80s/90s in the first two never helped either.
I LOVED W&G when I was really young. Then aged 3 or 4 it suddenly freaked me out. Until about aged 9, if I saw a picture of them I’d have nightmares that night.
Claymation can just be really creepy. I think it’s often used to create grotesque characters (that Babylon short) but there’s a bit like opposite of uncanny valley, because your brain knows they’re something real.
The porridge hitting Wallace’s face was what changed everything for me and freaked me out for some weird reason.
Also the frame rate has always been creepy to me. Lends itself to jerky movements and a feeling of panic or lack of control as the audience.
i feel the exact same way. What you said about seeing a picture of them, and having night sweats, I can relate to.
I searched that porridge scene and now I understand why you were terrified.
No same!!! I remember loving them when i was really little, then once so watched them again when i was maybe 8 or 9 and I couldn't ever again. Keep in mind that as a small child I thought that animated people were real and just looked different than people people. So maybe because I knew it was fake, it made it much scarier? Idk.
Hello from Southern California! I don’t see Wallace and Gromit as terrifying. I think they are too funny, especially Gromit who is a dog but has a personality of saving the day for Wallace. Or when he rolls his eyes or shakes his head. Gromit is the smart one in that duo. I think the people who created Wallace and Gromit did just make it about them, focus on them because they are the main two characters, it’s not about the other people (if there were any). Plus, I’m sure if they had more claymation characters, can you imagine how much time and effort it would take for each short video they create. Hours and hours in one day just to get each movement just right. Wallace is out there with his ideas and loves cheese too much, not always good for the system! Lol… But I could see Gromit with his own series on t.v., or even continuous short videos on TH-cam. Claymation can be awesome in a different setting. Not all claymation is scary. My brother did a stop and go claymation short video for just about 50 seconds about an Eskimo fishing in a pond, accidentally slipping on the ice, smoothing out his little fur hooded coat, it took him a few hours just for those 50 seconds! That’s just crazy and it definitely teaches you patients. It was so good and funny and my brother was only 10 at the time. That was in the early 80s. He got an A+ for his project and an award ribbon. It’s funny how some people aren’t really afraid to watch scary movies but freak out with even a funny cartoon or characters made of clay. I would say, Wallace and Gromit don’t frighten me but why did the creators of W&G, make Wallace look that way? Lol. No one has a head like that! I’m sure it’s just for character and exaggeration with his features…. btw, I absolutely love how Scottish people sound. I really can’t say, love a Scottish accent because we all have an accent or dialect. My moms best friend was from Edinburgh but her and her family moved to Southern California and they were our neighbors. Her three boys were absolute terrors, loud, noisy, bratty and talked back to their parents. I always wanted to visit Scotland. Someday. 😁❤️
Wasn't there a weird live action Wallace and Gromit short that was put on tv? Wallace may already look a bit odd, but this short goes strait into uncanny valley. As for the official stuff, I've definitely questioned where everyone else is. In The Wrong Troulsers, there's a bit where we hear Wallace bump into somebody and say "sorry," and I just wondered who it was. It never really disturbed me, but I definitely felt off. That's not even mentioning Feathers McGraw, Preston the cyber dog and how the main villain in A Matter of Loaf and Death is quite literally a psychopath. Like, it's goofy and fun, but there's definitely a side of me that feels slightly unnerved
I have a video explaining it here th-cam.com/video/y1JpylHsSto/w-d-xo.html
I always loved Wallace and gromit as a kid but even I noticed straight away as a kid where is everyone.
When I was little, I had a DVD which contained all the Wallace and Gromit films. I loved watching those films all the time. And would rewatch them over and over.
But in the far corner of the back of my mind, little me found them unnerving at times to watch, especially with the thought that these towns are completely desolate and the claymation just adds a sort of uncanniness. But even then, I would still watch them.
Revisiting these films give me a huge amount of nostalgia and joy, but there’s always that lingering feel in that back of my mind.
Aside from the scary factor. The obvious 1950's theme of Wallace and Gromit has always weirdly comforted me.
I actually grew up in a household where my granddad absolutely adores wallace and gromit, so i've never felt fear towards the show at all. We used to watch these movies all the time whenever they played them on the BBC, and we still do if we get the chance. It's really interesting to see other peoples thoughts on the franchise since a lot of people didn't have that sort of upbringing, but i an 100% understand why and how people feel this way. It's very interesting indeed!
So glad to see that someone else felt the same lingering dread as I always have watching W&G, theres just something slightly wrong and it haunted me as a kid. Earned yourself another sub!
Thanks for subbing, hope there's something else on my channel you can enjoy too. I'm glad I finally managed to put it in terms other people can understand.
@@dennigalla ive watched basically all of your content dude, so far so good! Best of luck with the channel!
@@adamfleetwood3980 Cheers Adam, it means a lot. I'm glad to hear that because sometimes I worry that the like randomly changing subjects of my videos will mean people just watch the one video relevant to them and then leave, so I'm very glad you stuck around to check them all out. Cheers, more coming soon!
@@dennigalla ive had a lot of fun with your content so far! You should check out a game called The Forest, I really enjoy your vibe and would like to see some content on that, just a suggestion =)
I always loved how otherworldly it felt as a kid. Compared to other run of the mill kids TV shows Wallace and Gromit was entirely unique. It always felt like stepping into some kind of bizarro dimension where nothing but everything made sense.
im so glad you made this video, i’ve always found this cartoon weirdly creepy and my family always laugh at me when i say i don’t want to watch it. as a child i turned on the tv to see the man (either wallace or gromit i dont know) stomping around his house in those robotic trousers and it creeped me out so much, i had dreams about it for days even though the actual concept of it isn’t ‘scary’, there was just something about it that seemed really uncanny and uneasy. you have put it into words perfectly why i got the uneasy feeling, maybe i will show this to my family and they will take my fears seriously 😂
Hope I help them to see things your way. I never found Wallace and Gromit too scary to watch, but that Ident short is another story.
I got this same feeling from Mario 64 as a tiny child. The noise of trying to open a locked door followed by Bowser's laugh terrified me - it felt like I was being caught trying to go somewhere I wasn't supposed to. Also, you don't think about it much, but you DIE in games a lot. Mario 64 made me scared of that sudden loss of life, not just as a punishment for missing a jump, but that Mario would cease after simply stepping on lava, quicksand or water.
Liminal spaces? Mario 64 is full of them. I had dreams where there would be a door I never had seen before in the castle, only to find another endless staircase with Bowser laughing all throughout it.
It also doesn't help that the castle has really weird architecture to begin with.
There's no furniture, no windows to look out of, every room just has portraits, the Toads fade out of existence when you're far enough away, the whole building seems to be non euclidean, and it just doesn't look like a place you could actually live in.
I mean, there isn't even a throne room for the princess to sit inside, let alone a bedroom for her to sleep in. Even Super Mario RPG had those two rooms.
I think part of the uneasiness of it is also because the game's story is literally you being alone. It's not just a "feeling", that's literally how it starts, Mario and his brothers are locked up in dark rooms, and Peach is God-knows-where.
With that being said I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had dreams based on the game lol.
Mario 64 (DS for me) was honestly the King of Liminal Spaces in video games. You're not alone, a LOT of people found Mario 64 unnerving.
@ghhn
64 DS at least had the mini game bunnies. I remember just hanging around these guys because everything else seemed so empty.
I generally find older games are better at horror than modern games. The lack of NPCs and emptiness of the worlds give it a very lonely feeling. And the early 3D models give off a more scary look.
Wallace's face alone gave me nightmares as a kid but I still watched them over and over again for some reason.
I can't stand that narrow mouth, can't even tell if he's showing emotion
You're not the only one. This show was so terrifying to me as a kid. Especially the video game for the game cube. I couldn't stomach it
Movie you even mean?
Maybe it's because I grew up in a small rural town, but it never bothered me that the streets were empty. They're empty where I live all the time.
It's very common to walk down the street and not meet any person or see any cars for quite a while. Also, many outdoor scenes took place in the morning, so I just assumed everyone was still at home, having breakfast or whatever.
"Overlooked by chimney shadows cast long by sunset." Bloody hell, wasn't expecting this to be so poetical
You're an incredible writer pal, got your point across so clearly with great imagery. I agree with your point about the emptiness of the town and how were-rabbit having so many people made it lack a certain charm.
Anyways this gives me an excuse to rewatch all the shorts and be scared shitless now :)
Cheers man, glad I could give you a new way to look at them. Really appreciate the kind words.
This man is giving a full review of claymation, including Wallace and Gromit, but I'm just here to listen to a genuine thick Scottish accent
It’s not a thick accent 🤨 It’s pretty tame
@@GourSmith fair enough
So glad I found this video. I adore Wallace and Gromit as an adult, but as a child I was terrified, especially of characters like preston and feathers. They have an intensely quiet concentrated menace. The commentary on liminal spacing and eye movement for stop motion animation is spot on. I think as well there's not just sadness but deep melancholy in the shorts, plus the later films; wallace and gromit are brimming with beautiful ideas but are inherently lonely, almost shunned by others. Its definitely creepy. Maybe its that middle ground of a quintessentially british setting coupled with that loneliness (both very relateable) that makes it so creepy.
I always felt this way when watching Wallace and gromit always felt like there was something very unsettling, like they were inside an empty void a somewhat of an experiment being watched and followed from the shadows and they were completely unaware of it, to them everything was normal and perfect.
You nailed exactly what I felt about it watching as a kid, but I didn't necessarily think they were scary. I was very introverted and shy as a kid and I loved the feeling of those empty spaces and I felt comfort when I saw it in W&G. Perhaps other children were the same way and maybe that was a small part of the appeal as well?
I wish I'd made it clearer in the video that I absolutely love these films. Even though everything Aardman made freaked me out a wee bit.
I felt this way about The Snowman....it always freaked me out, especially the theme song. Wallace & Gromit was always spooky, especially "a grand day out", that basement was freeeeeaky, and the way the robot on the moon chases them? Nah, that's terrifying stuff
wow! I watched them as a kid. Sure I found them creepy in parts and I guess I never understood why but this makes a lot of sense. I just never consciously thought about it at all before. Crazy. I do remember being scared some. But they were always one of my favorites to watch.
Shaun the Sheep is way less creepy in this aspect. In fact I was never creeped out by it and always laugh a lot when watching it.
I haven't really watched much of Shaun's show but I'm sure it's up the the usual Aardman standard. Cheers for watching.
As an Aussie I always found a lot of UK children's drama creepy. It was like visiting your granny's house. Everything was darker, grey. The landscapes always looked bleak and cloudy, with grimy urban decay everywhere, and everyone sounded mean.
Well, they did make it realistic.
When I was a kid, I developed a strange fear of wallace and gromit seemingly out of nowhere. I’m still not quite sure where it came from, since I watched those shorts incessently as a young kid. It got so bad to the point that my sisters could torment me by literally naming wallace and gromit shorts. Even watching a grand day out as an adult gives me a weird, soulless vibe that shakes me to my core. It’s hard to pin down, but I know what you mean.
I used to live near a Welsh industrial estate and I FULLY get your sentiment here about the uncomfortable history of this thatcher stricken area of the country that feels hauntingly abandoned. It should feel welcoming, there's a history here that implied that it was but it's no longer there. Kind of reminds me of Rhyl or Blackpool in that they were popular resort/beaches that were left to decay as the abroad holiday rose in popularity. Great video!
Cheers. I've got family in Northern England so I've been around there a whole lot and that heritage is definitely still present. Wallace and Gromit doesn't exactly go into the socio-political, but little background details sort of cause you to fill in the blanks like this.
Please stop saying "Thatcher-stricken", those towns were on the brink of collapse and were decaying anyway, there was no money there and the country was in crippling debt from WW2.
As someone who lives Norf’, it’s definitely a strange vibe that we _still_ encounter literally everywhere as well. Working class towns have a contrast between fairly busy populations and downright apocalyptic-looking areas. The factories are very creepy at night. I’d best describe the atmosphere as “cheerful depression” 😂💀
3:03 can you imagine animating all those characters at one time, especially if most people wouldn't even care that the extras are there. This is why the struggle of animating lots of characters is saved for scenes like what we see and the Curse of The Ware Rabbit movie, where we require many towns folk and extras in one spot to drive the plot forward.
I thought I was the only one until I stumbled upon this video. Absolutely adore them but they used to scare me so much when I was younger but couldn’t put a finger on why. I think you’ve really captured it. Never noticed the liminal aspect before but that combined with the uncanny valley-ness of Wallace definitely unsettles
i wouldve never thought anyone found wallace and gromit scary! i LOVED it as a kid, still do. i can see how, i mean, claymation has that eeriness to it. but i dont know how, i was a scaredy cat as a kid, but i loved it!
I still love it, man.
Same! Except for the penguin (I think), the oven in chicken run and the were rabbit movie I can’t remember being scared while watching, and I was scared very easily as a child
Creepiest thing was when my primary school did Wallace and Gromit pasta. Just imagine how terrifying that is for a kid
Wallace and Gromit is amazing. It may be creepy, but it's still a phenomenal watch.
Totally agree, the whole style of the show has an ever-so-slight grimdark aesthetic that is just a bit uncanny
You're quite right and this is a problem a lot of children's programming has, actually. At least in Wallace and Gromit they tend to acknowledge that other people exist, even if you can't see them.
In other programmes the characters don't acknowledge other people at all, and it's downright disturbing. Pingu used to terrify me because he lived in a vast icy wasteland.
In The Clangers, this feeling is also there, but Firmin and Postgate were clever and acknowledged the weirdness in the opening, and had people visit the Clangers every episode.
Children’s programming is nightmarish precisely because adults have lost the ability to communicate honestly with their children. So there is always this feeling that the show is hiding something. The positivity is piled on to absurd amounts. It becomes a parody of the real world. This is way Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared becomes cathartic because it combines the absurd positivity with the actual beliefs of the adults who create it. Let me say it another way: Modern people are nihilists but they want to shield their children from that horrible nihilism so they go overboard attempting to present the world to children as something they don’t believe it is so it all rings very false and sensitive children see through it and it disturbs them. Children’s programming is insane.
Pingu had friends he played with, he was a penguin, not some hispter living in a city. He had more social interactions than the millions of londoners do in their daily 2-3 hour commutes.
@@amjoshuaf Over analysation. There were plenty of kids shows that weren't like this, and Wallace and Gromit is hardly overboard or cathartic. It's literally budget and time constraints. Things get more complex the more money and time that is pumped into it.
@@loolfactorie yeah, I’ve since watched a Wallace and Gromit short and I’ll agree it’s not exactly what I was pointing out. I was referring more to stuff like Sesame Street or Mr Rogers. Although I still believe Wallace and Gromit is unhinged, it just expresses its dysfunction in a different way.
@@amjoshuaf The main writers, or at least Nick Park were from Yorkshire, and were going for a "last of the summer wine" appeal. It's humour was old timey and it was meant to be pleasant and simplistic. There are some interviews about it.
This is probably one of the strongest first videos by any TH-camr I have ever seen. Short, hilarious and makes it's point very very well. Definitely indicitive of the rest of the channel content.
Cheers man.
i absolutely loved wallace and gromit as a child but a part of me was always terrified of it. Like you said, I was never scared of the water rabbit film or even a matter of loaf and death, it was just the earlier ones like close shave, wrong trousers and a grand day out. i could never really put a finger on why but man they were so scary, still didn’t stop me watching them all the time though
Wrong Trousers was the first episode I saw, and while I enjoyed it, I always found it unnerving. Decades later, I've finally realised why.
The emptiness is just so insanely creepy. I really wanna re-watch all the shorts now, with this in mind.
Glad to hear it. All I wanted with this video was to inspire people to do exactly that, haha.
I came across this video on my recommended page and watched it out of curiosity more than anything.
I also remember watching Wallace and Gromit as a child and though I was an easily frightened child who was also scared of things most people would laugh at, I wasn't that frightened of Wallace and Gromit at all.
However, listening to what you were saying about the appearance of the clay characters and also the emptiness of the town that the characters live in, it definitely enlightened me to a new perspective that would have otherwise gone straight over my head as a kid.
So, to answer your dilemma, I don't think you've been losing your mind at all. It is because of your very interesting analysis that I'll probably never watch an episode of Wallace and Gromit the same way ever again.
Thank god I found this video. For the last 5 years ever since I first saw Wallace and Gromit I have been wondering, am I the only one that finds this shit scary and creepy. The whole experience just puts me on edge, makes me feel uncomfortable and creeps me the hell out. There is always something off with every scene and I just can't seem to shake the creepy feelings I get from this. Even to this day re watching it those feelings are still there, which makes it even more creepy to me as usually when I watch a horror movie the effect has normally rubbed of the second time I watch it, but not with this.
i always had a wierd feeling in the back of my mind when i watched these as a kid... i alsways wondered why i would get creeped out by a childs film, but nlw i know what it is. thanks Dennis!
You're welcome man, cheers for watching.
I never thought Wallace and Gromit wasn’t supposed to be scary. I always thought they made it uncanny and creepy on purpose
Is there a way of knowing for sure? Judging by the mature aardman productions, I'd say that's exactly what they did. As professionals, they had to estimate the kind of impression a given scene was going to cause.
I've always loved Wallace and Gromit! I literally would make my parents make me crackers and cheese to eat as a snack as I watched it lol. I never noticed that the town seems empty, but I totally see that now! I definitely think they just lacked the budget to add extra characters but they finally had that for the Curse of the Wererabbit. Very interesting video!
1:53 The pie machine was one of the best bits when I was a kid.
Man, you just articulated so much stuff from my childhood, which I didn’t realise I needed to articulate
3:09 literlly england. ENGLAND MOMMENT LITERLLY ENGLAND
I'm surprised you mentioned the Lion instead of the Bear from the teletubbies. As a child I can recall hiding in places around my house because the Bear use to frighten me so much, up until the end of my teens it still induced fear in me. The Bear from teletubbies travelled fast and created weird sounds as he travelled. Even now it makes me a little uneasy. Good video.
It's crazy to me that for some 20-23 years of my life, this show has somehow lingered as an unsettling terrifying memory. I always remembered the show as extremely scary to me. I even just tried to watch the first episode again and couldn't help but feel the uneasiness from my past well up despite knowing there's really nothing horrifying about it. If it was any other cartoon with the same plot I probably would have never felt that way. But yeah this show is just unsettling to me.
I was absolutely terrified of the scene where Hutch first talks in Curse of the Wererabbit
I LITERALLY SEARCHED for this video. I just saw a picture of Wallace and Gromit recently and I suddenly realized that it was my biggest fear when I used to be a child. According to the view number of the original Wallace and Gromit, I think it's not so popular, but according to the view number of this video, I realized it scares A LOT of children seeing it.
Man there’s so much to say. I loved how u made this video. Loved how u talked about the people in the penthouse party. I think when I was a kid, my mind filled in the gaps for cartoons that didn’t have background characters, which added to the ambience, not took away from it. But now, whenever I watch any Netflix movie/show, which never has any extras, maybe for budget reasons, it looks so hollow and empty and fake. And it’s so lonely that I can’t watch a lot of Netflix stuff. It reminds me of this thought I had, that if they remade The Exorcist as a Netflix property, it would only contain the mum and daughter, and the two priests. But watch the original, it had thick overflowing crowds for no reason, scenes of a whole community of workers in the desert, just because. I miss when films were made like that
Films are still made like that my man you just be watching shit movies
@@Starkl3t what’s ur reccs?
5:06 dude that's actually poetic
Aye, I like that wee bit.
4:46 you perfectly describe wales, northern england, scotland and some parts of the south i live in the north and when i go to sheffield whch was once the steel capital of the world is now full of homeless people, drug addicts and abandoned warehouses, mills and factories and is honestly depressing
In "the wrong trousers", the scene with the penguin on the side of the building trying to get the diamond, he starts sweating profusely. When I was a kid I didn't realise he was starting and always thought he was crying really hard. Which made the scene even creepier.
Other than that, I love grolton and hovris.
Grolton is the man and hovris is the dog
I can understand that. I never really found Wallace and Gromit to be scary or anything, but I have seen other claymation shorts and movies that have, including the one you show at 0:51, The Adventures of Mark Twain. One other I found particularly scary, as a child anyway, was a short by Bob Gardiner and Will Vinton called "Closed Mondays." I used to see it on HBO between movies sometimes back in the 80s. Check it out if you haven't already.