Best Animation Movies of 1971

Ebenezer Scrooge, a skinflint visited by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future one fateful Christmas Eve. It's up to them to help the old crab see the error of his ways. And they do, to the delight of Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.

Years ago, there was a place called The Land of Point, because everything in The Land of Point had one: the barns, the houses, the cars, everything, even the people. Everyone in The Land of Point had a point at the top of its head. Everyone, that is, except Oblio, who was born round-headed. Since he had no point, Oblio, along with his trusty dog, Arrow, was banished to the Pointless Forest. Join them to see what wonders await these two intrepid travelers as they make their way on their amazing, song-filled journey of discovery!

Peter Cottontail wants to be the #1 chief Easter Bunny, and everyone in April Valley agrees...except for Evil Irontail. Peter must deliver more eggs than this archrival to earn the top spot...and save Easter for children everywhere!

In a marvelously animated version of one of the most beloved of all Dr. Seuss tales, two youngsters find themselves at home with nothing to do on a rainy afternoon. But when the magical, mischievous Cat in the Hat arrives on the scene, they're all cat-apulted into a day of rousing, romping, outlandish antics they - and you - will never forget!

The film's soundtrack is an original musical composition produced with synthetic sound - through photographing unusual geometric shapes and running them through an optical sound head. The images are an artistic rendering of this soundtrack.

How Death Came to Earth is a 14 minute cutout animation film by Ishu Patel produced in 1971 by the National Film Board of Canada. The film deals with an Indian myth of creation, and is notable for its trippy visual style.

Play It Again, Charlie Brown is the seventh prime-time animated TV special based upon the popular comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. This non-holiday Peanuts special centers on Lucy, her infatuation with Schroeder, and her willingness to do anything to win his affections.

This tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale by Croatian director Zlatko Grgic traces man's checkered history with fire, and shows how growing carelessness in the form of overloaded sockets, smoldering cigarettes and other fire hazards can have highly undesirable consequences.

In the Alps, The Pink Panther's sleep is disturbed by a tuba player and his howling dog, and he decides to stop it.

The Pink Panther arrives at Nome instead of Rome, and meets a friendly seal, an unfriendly polar bear and a hunter trying to catch the seal.

This short animation set to Lenny Bruce's live monologue tells how the Lone Ranger hooks up with Tonto. With Bruce doing all the voices, this animation begins with local folks upset at the Lone Ranger because he won't stay around to be thanked after a good deed. So, he stays and finds he likes hearing "Thank you mask man." When their attention starts to shift elsewhere, he shocks and disgusts the townspeople with a final request. According to the cartoon’s producer John Magnuson, at early showings of this, gay audiences were upset by its apparent “fag-bashing”. And it’s true, part of the fun of the piece is just crying out “Masked man’s a fag”, scandalising and defacing the image of this all-American hero. But it’s within the larger context of Bruce’s analysis of heroism, and that the towns people reject the Masked Man is because of their prejudices, not because Bruce is asking us to endorse them. (from: http://ukjarry.blogspot.de/2010/01/352-lenny-bruce-thank-you-mask-man.html)

The story “Alice in Wonderland” is used as a metaphor about the dangers of accidental drug use among children. Curious Alice's trip to Wonderland is not through the rabbit hole, but rather through her home, where the medicine and kitchen cabinets hold substances of lure but danger. After ingesting one of these substances, Alice, now in the Wonderland of her mind, has an altered sense of reality. In her new psychedelic world, she is exposed to more and more drugs, which she may take based on her impaired judgment from the initial drug use.

The Pink Panther takes a job in a Chinese restaurant that places orders by gong beats, but annoys a man working at the glass shop above the restaurant. (Last Pink Panther cartoon directed by series creator Hawley Pratt.)

The Pink Panther is attacked by a dog flea and tries to get rid of it.

A humourous illustration of the natural process of evolution.

The Pink Panther gets a job working in a busy café beside a building site, and has trouble serving food to the construction workers.

A giant builds a wall to keep children out of his garden, but then winter sets in permanently. Children's classic story by Oscar Wilde.

A scientifically-enhanced fruit fly attacks the Pink Panther's apples, and he decides to get revenge.

While changing a flat tire, the Pink Panther loses his spare tire and chases after it.

Woody Woodpecker Show - Flim Flam Fountain. "Flim Flam Fountain" is the 180th animated cartoon short subject in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on 1970, the film was produced by Walter Lantz

Blasting off into cosmic visual abstraction, pioneering computer artist Lillian Schwartz’s UFOs is a kinetic tour-de-force whose innovative pixel pigmentation showcased advanced stereoscopic technology as art.

‘At the work's core is an experimental approach to the stuff of film and a fiercely political outlook. Dresden Dynamo is an abstract assault on the senses. Eschewing a camera, Rhodes affixed patterned Letratone stickers to the film itself and used filters to create red and blue colours. Stripes, dots and wavy lines surge across the screen, and their forms dictate the accompanying barrage of white noise and atonal bleeps.’ --Ben Luke London Evening Standard 26 January 2012

The Pink Panther reads some old letters from his army friend Loud-Mouth Louie.

A woman goes into a pet store seeking a gift for her husband. She decides to get him a bird with a most unusual talent, but her gift brings about an unforeseen result.

Crazylegs Crane gets an amnesia and Toro and Pancho tricks him into thinking he's a frog. They use him to guard them from the Blue Racer, the fastest snake in the west, who wants to have them for a meal.

Study in motion based on Muybridge’s photographs of man running.

The story of a man who has reached the very top of society and eventually became a victim of his own ideology.

A farmer wanted words to go with the tune he was playing when he saw a frog sitting on the bank of the stream. The frog did something silly which gave the farmer the words for his song. The farmer went to the corner store to sing his song for people there.

A piece of abstract cinema by John Whitney. A series squares follow a 3-dimensional track, each one with a slight delay after the other.

Using life-like seal fur puppets, this animated short by Co Hoedeman tells the traditional Inuit tale of the owl and the lemming.

A film of free-hand line animation, where the movement as much as the designs reflects the artist's thoughts on the life of humans and their universe. What evolves is a stream of ideas about the elemental situation of humankind, poised midway between the primary dust and the measureless universe yet unplumbed.

This 1971 animated movie tells the well-known story of Jim Hawkins and his adventures in search of treasure of Treasure Island.

An Animated Short Film by Bruno Bozzetto

A craftsman's short poem on humanity, using painstaking cutout animation by animating thousands of small pieces of linoleum.

A woman’s nightly domestic rituals—from putting her baby to bed to making love—unspool in a playful parade of surreal, straight-from-the-id images.

With his purple crayon, Harold draws a picture for his room - and then becomes part of it.

Canadian filmmaker Gerald Potterton utilizes extensive footage from the Soviet adventure film Dr. Abolit in his Tiki Tiki. Abolit boards a rocket with two monkeys and blasts off into space, bent on rescuing a group of monkey kids from extraterrestrial bandits. Framing the live-action storyline are a few animated cartoon sequences involving the efforts of a producer to sell his concept to an apelike movie mogul. This device works as effectively here as it did thirty years earlier in W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. As a payoff, the studio boss is revealed to be King Kong, who sees a lot of potential in a story about heroic simians. (allmovie.com)

After being run over by a truck, both the ant and the aardvark wind up in the hospital with broken legs. However that, along with sharing the room with an aggressive bulldog, doesn't stop the aardvark from continuing to pursue the ant as his dinner. NOTE: Last "Ant and the Aardvark" cartoon.

The dossier of an inveterate doodler, a man whose compulsion to put scrawls and squiggles on everything at hand brings him to no good end, according to the narrator, at least. The commentary, delivered with the perspicacity of a coroner's report, follows the development of the doodler's mania from boyhood through adolescence to manhood, when it suddenly breaks all bounds. An amusing "case history" that some of us might identify with.

Proud parents Poncho and Toro "adopt" Crazylegs Crane when they "find" his egg.

The colonel takes a trip to the mountains, to the same habitat as Chilly Willy.

Toro and Poncho watch the Sheriff's posse chase the Cactus Kid right into a showdown with Poncho at the Horny Toad Saloon for the fastest tongue in the west.

A collection of the classic morality tales narrated by Bill Cosby as "Aesop" that have been passed down from family to family for thousands of years. Every story has a lesson.

After waiting 400 years for a first kiss, the witch gets impatient and decides to make a brew that will make her attractive. She needs a hair of a frog to complete her brew, so Toro and Pancho is in the chase to avoid being caught by the witch.

The Aardvark chases The Ant, but this time The Ant has found a new pal in a termite.

All is peaceful on the pond till Toro sends Pancho out to bring back lunch. Pancho finds some alligator eggs, and he brings just one back. Our Tijuana Toads heroes' choice backfires when an angry mother comes looking for the egg. By then, little Georgie is hatched. Georgie has a great appetite, and he will eat anything in sight... especially frogs. Georgie's mother helps him with his lunch.

The Crane from "Go For Croak" and "A Snake in the Gracias" returns to eat the toads, but of course, his plans backfire.

Short cartoon based on the comic strip by Johnny Hart and Brant Parker.