A TOWN CALLED PANIC

Rated NR; 75min; Director:Stephane Aubier  

Location: Alamo South Lamar

One last chance to see this brilliant comedy onscreen with an audience. You'll be howling with laughter, we swear! With special advance copies of the forthcoming DVD to some lucky audience members.

It's hard to believe that a stop motion animated Belgian film about a reckless Cowboy, his best friend the Indian, a super cool horse, and larcenous underwater gill-men could cause all the hard-boiled, seen-it-all programmers at the Alamo and Fantastic Fest to fall all over themselves, but that's exactly the case. We laughed so hard and long at this movie that when it was over, we knew we had to bring it to Austin. The problem was, they weren't planning on releasing it in Austin. So we have jumped through flaming hoops to bring it to you. Would we do that if this movie were anything less than an ATOMIC BOMB of righteousness?

Here's our Fantastic Fest colleague Todd Brown's summary of A TOWN CALLED PANIC:

Will Horse find true love? Will Steven fix his tractor? What will it take to stop the underwater pond dwellers from stealing the walls of Cowboy, Indian and Horse's house? Yes, boys and girls, it's the feature version of A TOWN CALLED PANIC, the demented cult Belgian animation sensation. And, yes, it is truly a sight to behold - a very odd sight that will confuse some while leaving others on the floor gasping for breath from laughing so hard.

To try and summarize something as manic as PANIC is a chump's game, it can't really be done, but here's what you need to know. Primitively animated in stop motion using clay models of the plastic cowboy, indian and farmyard plastic toys we all had as kids, PANIC revolves around house-mates Cowboy, Indian and Horse as they go about their daily lives. Which in this case means dealing with the aftermath of an attempted birthday present gone wrong that results in fifty million bricks piled on the roof of the trio's house, which then collapses under the weight of the bricks, which opens up a portal to a secret underwater civilization that covets the trio's building skills and simply - and repeatedly - steals their home. There's also a giant snowball throwing penguin-robot, parachuting cows, equine romance, parachuting cows and more, more, more. And also parachuting cows.

Special thanks to Zeitgeist Films for making these special screenings possible. Preorder the DVD now at Amazon or from Zeitgeist.