Best Animation Movies of 1966

This classic "Peanuts" tale focuses on the thumb-sucking, blanket-holding Linus, and his touching faith in the "Great Pumpkin." When Linus discovers that no one else believes in the creature, he sets out to prove that the Pumpkin's no myth—by spending the night alone in a pumpkin patch.

Christopher Robin's bear attempts to raid a beehive in a tall tree.

After their humiliating 999th defeat, Charlie Brown's whole baseball team quits on him. All seems lost...until Charlie Brown learns that his team can join the Little League and become an official team with real uniforms! But as the team's enthusiasm sparks, Charlie Brown learns that neither girls nor Snoopy would be allowed to play. Charlie Brown faces the difficult decision of breaking this horrible news to his excited team.

In this feature-length film based on the "Flintstones" TV show, secret agent Rock Slag is injured during a chase in Bedrock. Slag's chief decides to replace the injured Slag with Fred Flintstone, who just happens to look like him. The trip takes Fred to Paris and Rome, which is good for Wilma, Barney, and Betty, but can Fred foil the mysterious Green Goose's evil plan for a destructive missile without letting his wife and friends in on his secret?

Window shopping children watch as toy soldiers come to life and fight a war with all its unvarnished ferocity and horror.

Zero-X, a manned exploration mission crashes during lift-off on its maiden flight. Two years later an investigative committee finally concludes sabotage, and decides to call on the services of International Rescue to oversee security at the impending second launch. The second Zero-X successfully reaches its destination, but encounters unexpected hazards, ultimately leading to another call for assistance on its return to Earth. International Rescue respond, and once again Thunderbirds are GO!

In this short animation film the triangle achieves the distinction of principal dancer in a geometric ballet. The triangle is shown splitting into some three hundred transformations, dividing and sub-dividing with grace and symmetry to the music of a waltz. The film's artist and animator is René Jodoin, whose credits include Dance Squared and several collaborations with Norman McLaren.

At a building site, the Pink Panther finds a blueprint for the construction of a generic home and replaces it with a pink-colored plan for an ultra-modern house. When the little man on the building site rejects the Pink Panther's pink blueprint and continues his original project, the panther decides to construct his preferred house on the same site, using the man's materials. The accident-prone Pink Panther sneezes a swarm of nails in the direction of the little man's backside and unleashes an out-of-control power saw that splits the man's ladder in two. The Pink Panther dyes his pink plan blue and slips it in the man's pocket, and the man then appears to unwittingly build the house to the Pink Panther's design. The carpenter has the last laugh, however, when the whole "fancy" front section of the house tips forward and falls on the ground, revealing the plain cape-style house that the carpenter had initially been attempting to build.

Clouseau receives a tip that the elusive smuggler, Captain Clamity, who looks like a clam with eyes, arms, and legs, is laying anchor off the French coast. Clouseau and Sergeant Deux-Deux make a number of unsuccessful attempts to board Clamity's ship, with Clouseau going down to the sea bottom every time

A boy on another planet builds a ray-gun and breaks something in his house and is sent out by his mother to go play in space.

The Surete Commissioner orders Inspector Clouseau and Sergeant Deux-Deux to track a mysterious and elusive Monsieur X. Using a submarine, an army tank, and mountaineering equipment, they chase Monsieur X all the way to Africa, where they encounter him in the Sahara Desert and at Mount Kilimanjaro. After a series of painful mishaps, they concede defeat in the strenuous and perilous chase and return to Surete headquarters, where Monsieur X is revealed to be the Surete's new physical training instructor!

The Inspector and Sergeant Deux-Deux ineffectually try to stop the Blotch from robbing the Louvre.

The Pink Panther learns to play the violin, and interrupts a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with the Pink Panther Theme played on various instruments.

The Pink Panther decides to be a superhero and keeps trying to help the same little old lady, but doesn't actually succeed in any attempts.

Inspector Clouseau and Sergeant Deux-Deux investigate the theft of French dowager Madame Pouletbon's diamond, the Plymouth Rock, and discover that the Madame's servants, all of them chickens, stole the jewel and hid it in a bundle of eggs, some of which contain moving images of can can girls.

Wile E. Coyote finds a spy kit and uses its contents (sleeping gas, a mail bomb, explosive putty, and a gadget-filled spy car) in his unsuccessful attempt to catch the Road Runner.

The little pointy-nosed man and his dog are out camping one night, not knowing that the Pink Panther is on a tree branch just above them. He can't sleep because of the man's snoring, so he cuts loose the man's hammock with a knife, sending him flying straight to the river. When the dog hears the man's scream for help, he grips the knife in his mouth, and seeing this, the man blames the dog for what's happened. Later, the panther attaches the little man's hammock above the campfire, and sends the tent with the man in it floating down the river towards a waterfall. Every time the dog gets the blame, making the man hating his pet.

At Pinkstone National Park, the Panther heckles a nature photographer (Big Nose Man) and ultimately gets what's coming to him.

The Inspector ineffectually tries to protect the Commissioner from a mad bomber's revenge campaign.

The Martians speculate on the nature of Earth's apparent dominant life form, automobiles.

The Pink Panther is a chemist who has perfected a pink health drink. When the Pink Panther tries to promote his drink with a series of signs, each of them in pink writing, the starry dot atop the "i" in "pink" has a mind of its own and, to frustrate the Pink Panther, turns green and repeatedly squirts ugly, green fluid on the panther's fur. The Pink Panther is able to restore his fur's pink color by drinking some of his health drink. But the green dot persistently interferes with the panther's efforts to promote his pink drink. Infuriated, the panther tries to eradicate the green dot, only to find that the dot has a guardian - another green dot of a much larger size.

Trying to catch a purse snatcher, the Inspector sets up a sting operation by disguising himself as a woman and soon falls afoul of the Commissioner's jealous wife.

The Pink Panther buys a car and has a driving argument with Granny Flash, Senior Citizens Drag Champion, who drives a souped-up jalopy.

Inspector Clouseau and Sergeant Deux-Deux's investigation into a stolen cargo of bananas takes them to a run-down waterfront apartment building, where they follow a trail of banana peels to the abode of a diminutive Cockney sailor and his impish ape. Clouseau doesn't see the ape, and when he is repeatedly punched through the floor by the ape, Clouseau thinks the stocky sailor has been the one hitting him. When he sees Deux-Deux easily subdue the sailor, Clouseau believes that Deux-Deux is a muscular power-house and declares the Sergeant his hero.

During an investigation at the Château de Vincennes, Sergeant Deux Deux clumsily drinks a swig of the formula of a mad scientist and therefore transforms as Mr. Hyde, in routines, goes torturing the Inspector.

Wile E. Coyote uses scrap metal from a dump to build a huge, mechanical likeness of himself, and uses this robot to chase the Road Runner. It ends up as just another pile of scrap.

Jerry keeps sleepwalking and doing violence to Tom. He realizes this and tries to keep awake, but fails. He catches himself a couple more times just as he's about to do serious damage, but ultimately sends an anvil down a chimney, while Tom is tied to it and dragged through half the house.

On the Western frontier, the Pink Panther is a traveling vendor of pep pills. He unwittingly sells some pills to a frail criminal, who gains the strength to rob every bank in a nearby town! Thus, the panther is in as much trouble with the law as the robber and must act to apprehend the scoundrel.

“Aleph” is an artist’s meditation on life, death, mysticism, politics, and pop culture. In an eight-minute loop of film, Wallace Berman uses Hebrew letters to frame a hypnotic, rapid-fire montage that captures the go-go energy of the 1960s. Aleph includes stills of collages created using a Verifax machine, Eastman Kodak’s precursor to the photocopier. These collages depict a hand-held radio that seems to broadcast or receive popular and esoteric icons. Signs, symbols, and diverse mass-media images (e.g., Flash Gordon, John F. Kennedy, Mick Jagger) flow like a deck of tarot cards, infinitely shuffled in order that the viewer may construct his or her own set of personal interpretations. The transistor radio, the most ubiquitous portable form of mass communication in the 1960s, exemplifies the democratic potential of electronic culture and may serve as a metaphor for Jewish mysticism.

James Whitney’s Lapis (1966) is a classic work of abstract cinema, a 10-minute animation that took three years to create using primitive computer equipment. In this piece smaller circles oscillate in and out in an array of colors resembling a kaleidoscope while being accompanied with Indian sitar music. The patterns become hypnotic and trance inducing. This work clearly correlates the auditory and the visual and is a wonderful example of the concept of synaesthesia.

Each having submitted his challenge card to the other, Tom and Jerry meet in a field to duel, using as weapons swords, pistols, bows and arrows, cannons and slingshots.

The Pink Panther finds a talking magic lamp and becomes a genie. However, he cannot get anyone to rub the lamp.

The Pink Panther battles with a hungry mouse raiding his refrigerator, who throws a late-night party with a crowd of other mice.

Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner using a skateboard, a hunting falcon, two doves tied to his feet.

The film offers a comical look at dangers of addiction and the difficulties of quitting through the story of a chain smoker.

The Inspector and Deux-Deux go on an undercover search for an agent across the world.

Jerry's mouse hole connects two homes, with Tom living in one residence, a neighboring cat in the other. Jerry decides the best survival plan is pitting the cats against each other, without their knowledge.

Tom is wooing Toots; he presents her with a present - Jerry. But Toots would rather play mother to Jerry than eat him, much to Tom's annoyance.

In this experimental animated short, Ryan Larkin (Walking) creates a series of figures who move across the screen and disappear into a hole. Eventually, the hole metamorphoses into a bridge, on top of which stands the young man from whom the others figures originated.

Woody rescues his dog Duffy from a bully dogcatcher.

Daffy Duck, broke and impoverished and desperately needing money, finds an offer for $15 to shoot a small moving target...

Jerry is chased into a circus, where he removes a tack from the foot of an elephant. This gets him a friend for life, and a powerful ally in the continuing battles with Tom, not that it stops Tom from trying, even when Jerry becomes part of the act.

Woody mistakes an about-to-be-launched rocket for a high-rise luxury treehouse. He becomes a space traveler and causes havoc along the way.

Wile E. Coyote uses a chemistry set to try and catch the Road Runner. He mixes chemicals to yield invisible paint...

Jerry's a wharf mouse; he sees a load of cheese being loaded onto a cargo ship and tries a variety of tricks to board, but Tom is on guard.

Daffy Duck, who has mice living in his house, decides on a way to dispose of them; to send them across the seas for starving cats over there to feast on.

Daffy Duck moves into a new house only to find it inhabited by Speedy Gonzales. Daffy does everything in his power to dispose of the mouse, even putting enough dynamite in it to blast it into the sky.

Artype patterns, intended for loops. Benday dot patterns. Dots, lines. Screens, wavy lines, parallel lines, etc. on clear film. No camera.

Speedy Gonzales and a little boy mouse watch a broken television set in a junkyard using their imaginations to create a picture...