ambient terror

Bod - Bod & the Apple

Bod is a deeply morose cartoon from the 70’s made up of one scene episodes on a single colour background. Each character enters to their own grating theme music and only their legs move. It could only be more minimalist if it was a conversation between grey squares in the snow, but that would detract from the crushing despair of the proceedings and the sense that each character besides Bod is their role and nothing more. It is narrated by a man who hates his job. His every word drips with a loathing that can only be vented through sarcasm and patronising these vapid characters.
Now, Bod & The Apple should be a beautifully surreal moment. He throws an apple in the air only to have it disappear. It’s pure childhood flight of fancy. “What if one day gravity wasn’t there?” and it inspires adults too. his aunt, the farmer and the postman are all in turn captivated by the quandary of the missing apple. They all long to believe there could be some magic in their miserable, two dimensional lives. Then the policeman shows up. This authority figure shames the farmer into returning to his routine role and, in turn, he shames the postman into conformity, and so on, until a child’s dream is crushed. And as they all submit to their everyday grind the apple does fall, and our hero is vindicated. It should all be resolved, except we know apples don’t magically hover and all we are left with is the bitter after-taste of a world of ashamed acquiescence. “Fuck you bod. I hope you choke on that apple”, says the narrator.

~ Charlie H.

Sports Cartoon - Darts 

I don’t really know where to begin with Sports Cartoon. It feels like it was specifically designed to displace comfort and reasoning. Originally aired on the Nickelodeon channel in the late 80’s, Sports Cartoon does nothing to help itself be anything but terrifying. I can identify a number of features of this cartoon that earn it a place on our site, but for me the most obvious has to be location. The sparse, washed out pastel coloured backgrounds are a sure-fire way to completely dislocate a setting. The pastel prisons Sports Cartoon takes place in only affirms my belief that nothing ever happens in these places, except what we see in the episode. I can only imagine the characters forever reliving this scenario, again and again and again. No world exists beyond the washed out walls of their various courts and pitches and they will forever be playing these games, or waiting in stony silence until some unfortunate soul summons them into the only life they know: playing darts (or chess or basketball or whatever, depending on the episode). And don’t get me started on the god damn music.

Our hero awakes after sleeping rough in a post office depot in Bristol. He flees the scene with a postman in hot pursuit, but manages to infiltrate a sports day event and persuade an army of children to charge and overwhelm his foe. After an eventful morning, Noseybonk attempts to join a game of mini golf but the onlookers remain unimpressed, so he finds solace in a gentleman’s public toilet, emerging looking suspiciously happy. We next encounter him peering at zoo animals with his insane grin, inflamed nose and lank, dirty hair – people avert their eyes, families quietly move away. Noseybonk’s ‘escapades’ conclude with him coming to terms with his nightmarish existence through a confrontation with himself locked in a zoo enclosure.

As Jigsaw was aired as a puzzle show, the child viewer is invited to try and work out a word via a series of confusing clues that verge on the nonsensical – ‘the next two letters are the last two letters of the thing Noseybonk swiped his ball with!’. Noseybonk’s sketches were intended as ‘light comic relief’ between other puzzles but if the innocent viewers ever learned anything or were entertained by his antics I’d be surprised.

~ Maxim

Mr Benn. - Ep 12 - Mr Benn and the Magic Carpet 

For me Mr Benn has always been associated with a warm, vacant and altogether very cerebral feeling. Revisiting this show has given a little indication to perhaps why that may be. It is difficult not to read quite deeply into this show. It depicts the surrealist escapism of what we can only assume to be a financier or civil servant (judging by the suit and bowler hat, it was 1971 after all). His only human contact is with a lazy-eyed, fez wearing, costume shop owner - who i have doubts exists at all.

So Mr Benn escapes, the destination is not so important as the action. Though his actions and purpose are trivial, banal even. He barely recollects what happens after leaving the shop, needing small tokens to help him recall his ‘adventure’. I love Mr Benn,   he’s a true anti-hero. What he does with costumes, the world does every day with alcohol and other drugs. 

As a show you can’t help but notice how badly drawn and animated it is - this is utmost slap-dashery, but it sort of works. I really do like soundtrack in this particular episode, (turns out it is composed by Don Warren, a pretty sweet Hammond organ player/composer) and it really makes up for the lacklustre visual. However, the mood throughout episodes of Mr Benn is for me, unsettling, melancholic and almost fever like. I feel an empathy with Mr Benn and a deeper sympathy. He is a victim of society, he is the metaphor of our dreams of escape and he is overwhelmingly blue. Hats off to Mr Benn.

~ Goob

Murun Buchstansangur - Ep 2

There a few words one can use to describe what goes on in an episode of Murun Buchstansangur. The reason for this is two fold. Firstly, very, very little happens and what does is usually so utterly and forgettably trivial you won’t be inclined to bother. The second is rather more complex. Trying to explain Murun is a bit of a can of worms. Certain unanswerable questions arise like; what the hell is he? why is that creep living in someone else’s house (presumably under the kitchen cupboard) and why is he so horribly filthy? why are his terrifying arms so muscled? and why does he only wear clogs and a watch? 

I like to think of Murun as a deep poetic soul, a sort of ascetic or stoic with access to ancient knowledge far beyond our reckoning. If only because the alternative is just too horrendous to consider. 

~ Goob

Pingu - Pingu Goes Fishing

Pingu may not be the most obvious choice to showcase the pervasive disquieting atmosphere of Ambient Terror…but i remember being disturbed and strangely hypnotized by it, unable to turn my eyes away from what were quite adult story-lines - Pingu runs away, gets drunk, has nightmares…

The sparse white landscapes, the frantic and confusing language, the malleable and unstable clay figures. The repetition in this particular episode makes it bizarrely engrossing. Pingu is mocked, tortured you could say, by an unknown enemy, while he sits isolated and seemingly desperate for a modicum of peace and tranquility. It then devolves into a shouting match, while the seal bobs manically up and down. Pingu is exasperated, all i wanted was to help him…but i couldn’t when i was a kid watching this on video, and i can’t now…

~ Charlie

Ivor the Engine - Ep20 - Snowdrifts

Perhaps a pioneer of the genre. Ivor the Engine is without a doubt one of the most desolate and bleak cartoons in the universe. The plot lines are unforgivably trivial, the animation is stunted and unnatural and it exhibits the classic solitary, echoey dialogue - not to mention the deep throated narrator.

I find this episode particularly disturbing. This is due to the uncle left at the train station for 3 weeks, post operatively, with nothing but his blanket, the station master and his new teeth. That poor bastard.

~ Goob

Moomin - Invisible Friend

An obvious first choice. Moomin embodies ambient terror; the desolate landscapes, the curious characters, the malignant atmosphere and the linear plot held together with stunted conversation and an absent narrator. This episode couldn’t be much creepier if it tried, how is this resolved when you can’t see her face?
Why were the 3 ailments Moominmamma lists; “droopy tail, evil eye, melancholy” ?

This is archetypical ambient terror at its finest/worst. Enjoy. 

~ Goob