Seven Surprizes (1963) Online

I don't remember much about the other six surprizes except that I found them entertaining, but when I was a kid I'd always seek this movie out on TV because of that last short.

It's about two guys who are the best of neighbors, until the day a beautiful flower springs up right on the boundary between their two yards. One guy builds a picket fence that puts the flower on his property, the other guy moves the fence so that the flower belongs to him, and they eventually get into a life-or-death battle over it.

The thing that made it so fascinating to me as a kid was the fact that this is the first time I ever saw stop-motion animation using human subjects. One part in particular shows the two men zipping all over the place while floating around off the ground, and the only way I can imagine that it was done was for the actors to jump up and down repeatedly, kicking their heels back each time--and then the frames of their feet touching the ground were excised, leaving only the airborne bits to run together. It creates a incredibly cool effect.

The film gets almost scary at the end as the battle for the flower turns grisly. I haven't seen SEVEN SURPRIZES for several decades but that last short still stays in my memory.

This is, as the title hints, a compilation of seven rather avant garde shorts. Their main connection to one another is Canadian government subsidies for their production. I saw it on 16mm film either at school or church in the mid-60s.

I can no longer remember all seven segments. One segment I do recall was an interesting documentary about an old man living alone in the rugged Yukon or NW. The account of his very physically demanding and lonely life was quite moving.

There was also an odd little bit called "The Chair" which, as I recall it, consisted of a chair moving around a room.

The last bit I remember was a clever anti-war message involving two men who are neighbors with a fence between them - it ends with their deaths.

If it were available on DVD at a reasonable price, I would buy it.