FEBRUARY 22, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 3

Maybe I’ve given out too many horror apothegms already, but when I sat through Madame Tutli-Putli I couldn’t help but decree some more pithiness.

The seventeen minute, dialogue free, animated short follows a lonely flapper girl with an impossible amount of luggage as she climbs aboard a train for a quiet, lonely journey. Her compartment is cramped and uncomfortable, and is full of unfriendly, strange, and repellent travelers. Madame’s face is gaunt and sallow; her eyes are sunken, yet large and full of an emotion that leaps out of her figure’s diminutive frame. Once I had my first glimpse of this main character, the first impression was of the real soul inside the stop-motion figurine- its lifelike movements that brought to mind the literal definition of animated- and those eyes. People I asked later seemed entirely convinced they were the actual eyes of unfortunate orphans superimposed on or sunken into the characters’ faces.

Madame’s is a sad face, on top of an airy, hunched frame draped in subtly jaundiced flesh and bedraggled clothes, which fit in excellently with the surroundings. All the wonderful, stuck-in-a-forgotten-time-period objects and settings seemed proud of their handmade origins as they simultaneously breathed and flexed with lifelike movements. When a fellow traveler makes some ludicrously lewd advances on our Madame, her head recoils in the most perfect tic of silent disgust, and her wet, dreamy eyes look out the window at anything but the wretch.

But then the Horror and Suspense and Thrills begin, and the film shows off that not only can it bring to life the most human of intimations, but it can extend the motif into a comprehensive, compelling visual atmosphere. The train’s engine, a cold hybrid of vintage streamliner locomotive and prop plane, sits in the dark woods as ephemeral blue electricity shoots up and down the tracks, and Madame Tutli-Putli wakes to find herself alone on the darkened train. Disturbing images fade in and out, of horrific interlopers robbing the passengers of more than their precious possessions, of a moose standing alone in the woods, of the train’s Cyclops eye cutting through the tree-lined fog as it speeds along a blind track. The Madame fumbles through the train to escape the darkness and evil closing in around her, her dainty feet incongruously scrambling along and her small mouth stuck in a seemingly-permanent pout fashionable in the nineteen-twenties. On and on she hurries, on and on the train rushes to its unknown destination, until a sensory climax is reached when the suspense must be released.

And it was then I wondered if I could be entirely satisfied with nothing but atmosphere. Sure, whatever, horror has rules, and all that—and Madame Tutli-Putli does seem to play by a set of (unrevealed) laws. However, it could not be called plot-driven. The ending is a captivating descent into a surreal vision: a simultaneously whimsical and sinister image that offers no explicit resolution. As Madame stands up straight and fearlessly follows the tiny, beautiful, ethereal winged creature that flits across a blindingly redemptive light, the peace in her face rubbed off on me and I felt the conclusion, rather than saw it. I kept thinking of her, at this point, as an almost holy martyr to some unspeakable, anonymous horror that was otherwise inescapable. This effect would have been impossible, however, without the gorgeous acting (or “animation,” if you prefer), and so I can only conclude that I am not a viewer who relies solely on visual panache and mere atmosphere, but that I also require the human element. It’s something that is common in all great horror films—in all films, for that matter.