Hugh Kott was the best stop motion animator of all time. Nothing will ever change my opinion on that, even after everything that has happened.
If you can find them, watch his movies again. You will be overwhelmed by creative vision. Every scene is funny, inventive and exciting on a level not seen before or since. They are perfect for family viewing. Every title is a guaranteed Christmas hit. We watched them every year in my house, and these are some of the best memories of my childhood years.
Consider how much skill this took in the late eighties and early nineties. Hugh whipped them together in spare rooms with cardboard sets and plasticine, shooting on grainy, bank draining celluloid bought at personal expense. In rare DVD extras you can see him sweating under exposed bulbs, moulding plasticine bunnies into a another hilarious chase. This was a master at work.
I am not saying he should be celebrated. But imagine a world where his crimes did not happen. Where the police never found the cooking pots, the blood encrusted knives. Where white suited officers did not excavate the garden of his ground floor flat. Where his face did not appear in grim mugshots on tabloids across the lands. Hugh would be one our most treasured creators.
Even after everything that happened, this was not an instant death knell for his films. Art has survived worse. Take a list of a dozen classic films, dig beneath the surface, and you are certain to find issues of serious moral concern. Hugh Kott’s movies were a part of people’s lives, and something many would have continued to enjoy.
If not for the fingerprints.
Stop motion animation is a tactile art form. One where the creator has to roll their sleeves up, and get their hands dirty. Remember, this was cheap clay, and televisions these days have excellent picture quality. They reveal things not seen before.
Let’s pretend you are tucking into a Sunday Dinner, a forkful of pink lamb heading for your lips. You ignore your guilt, and decide to pop in the video, and to watch the three bunnies undertaking their heist once again. All is going well, and you are laughing, engaged in their exploits.
Then you spot the fingerprints imprinted into their white plasticine flesh. And you remember what those hands had done. What they had wrapped around. What they had plucked from living things. It would be like finding out your lamb shoulder was horse meat.
But you cannot ignore his genius.
It took five years, but I tracked down all of his movies. I slogged through charity shops and car boot sales, and many people gave me concerned looks. But they are mine.
My curtains are drawn when the films begin. The lights are down, even if the magic has not dimmed. They still bring back all those wonderful memories of Christmas afternoon.
But the fingerprints are there, no matter how hard I try to ignore them.
Line: Remember, this was cheap clay, and televisions these days have excellent picture quality.
