Best Animation Movies of 1980

Two Hobbits struggle to destroy the Ring in Mount Doom while their friends desperately fight evil Lord Sauron's forces in a final battle.

Charlie Brown, Linus, Peppermint Patty and Marcie travel to France as foreign exchange students. Also along is Snoopy and Woodstock. While everyone is excited about the opportunity to travel to a foreign country, Charlie is disturbed by a letter he receives from a mysterious girl from France who invites him as a her guest only to find that he does not seem welcomed to her Chateau.

Animalympics is all about the Animal Olympics Contest where all the animals around the world gather to take part in everything from skiing in North America to the very long marathon race in humid conditions.

When Rupert and his friend Amelia find the new substitute teacher doing odd things, they discover that she is actually a witch with a magical talking cat who sought them out in order to stop an evil coven of witches from destroying her.

A jive-talking Easter Bunny named Jack decides to retire, so his friends throw him a crazy roast before he officially hangs up his basket. A series of kooky flashbacks tells of his life-story and career, but will all this reminiscing only convince him not to quit after all?

Snuden is a secret and peaceful animal who lives in a green bog. He is a friend to all animals. One day a hunter tries to shoot Snuden's best friend, the otter Otto. Snuden decides that he will try to find an explanation to why humans are that mad.

In 1376, the city of Hamelin is freed from a plague of hungry rats by a mysterious Piper who plays a tune and leads the vermin on a mery dance out of town and straight in to the river. But the greedy city Governers refuse to pay their agreed fee, so the Piper wreaks a terible revenge. He plays his pipe once more, only this time he leads all the children of Hamelin away to a magical mountain portal, from which they never return...

In this prelude to the television series 'The Raccoons', Bert, Melissa, and Ralph Raccoon have their home accidentally stolen when it is cut down to become a Christmas tree.

A young man wishes he could get away and his wish is granted in a globetrotting, song singing way.

Snuden has left his bog to visit the giant rat Rita in the big city.

Snuden decides to leave the big city and return to his green bog.

A puppy encounters a series of tragedies and losses brought on by the evils of uncaring humans as she tries to find a family and a place to call home.

Peppermint Patty is in zealous training for a figure skating competition, but with no help from her grumpy coach, Snoopy. He growls coaching tips that don't make sense, and Marcie can't sew the dress Peppermint Patty is dying to wear. Still determined to win, Peppermint Patty turns to Woodstock when disaster looms at the competition.

Geppetto prepare for Christmas, Pinocchio joins a puppet show to earn money for a present. There he meets and elopes with the beautiful girl puppet Julietta, leaving Geppetto alone and worried.

Fred is annoyed when an eerie new house is built next door, inhabited by the Frankenstone family.

Yogi, Boo Boo and Cindy are awakened from hibernation and join their friends' Christmas activities while interfering with 2 villians' efforts to ruin the holiday.

When the circus comes to town, Snoopy naturally pays a visit. There he falls for a beautiful poodle performing there. He soon runs away to join it. While he quickly becomes a star performer, Charlie Brown is distraught by Snoopy's decision while Snoopy himself has to face some realities of show business himself.

The Pink Panther tries his paw at various winter sports, getting ready for the Lake Placid Olympic Games

Due to a mix-up at the doctor's office, Fred believes he has only 24 hours left to live.

F.B.I. and C.I.A. agent Elmer Fudd is after a tall, dark, stranger who robbed a bank. He gets him confused with Bugs Bunny...the chase is on.

The coyote chases the road runner, but in this one he actually succeeds, to his bemusement.

Utilising an apparently new-found obsession with the colour red and reinvigorating some of the circular imagery of A Man and His Dog Out for Air and 69, Breer delves into the very basis of animation to explore how a variety of easily recognisable objects can be portrayed and manipulated differently using pixillation and classically drawn animation. -Malcolm Turner

Lye completed his last great film a few months before his death at the age of 78. The film returned to the black-and-white techniques of Free Radicals. Lye created what he called “vibrant little images” or “zig-zags” with a sense of “zizz”. The clusters of small scratches gave the film a unique texture – the images looked rough but were in fact extremely subtle. The title Particles in Space referred to flashes of energy of the kind sometimes seen by astronauts in space. The soundtrack combined “Jumping Dance Drums” from the Bahamas with drum music by the Yoruba of Nigeria and the sounds of Lye’s metal kinetic sculptures. The opening titles demonstrated Lye’s mastery of the scratching of letters and words on film, a method imitated by other film-makers such as Stan Brakhage.

Educational film about solar energy, told with striking imagery and animation.

I made this film while experimenting with a home made rotoscope. It was drawn on index cards. It's a sort of valentine to film, to life and to Xavier Cugat too. The original 16mm negative was lost when my lab at the time closed suddenly. Boy, I don't miss film at all. (JS)

Duck Dodgers finds Marvin Martian's hideout.

Dorothy is carried back to Oz by a green turkey balloon on the final Thanksgiving she is to spend with her aunt and uncle, who are moving to a retirement community. She meets Jack Pumpkinhead, The Hungry Tiger, and Tic Toc (sic), and must stop the evil Tyrone the Terrible Toy Tinkerer (looking suspiciously like John R. Neil's depiction of the Nome King), who brings the balloon to life.

Shortly after the Civil War, while exploring the long deserted and reputedly haunted Sullivan's Island off Charleston S.C., a boy encounters two obsessed eccentrics living there. These men chase him away and warn him never to return or to tell anyone about them. Soon, however, they locate him and summon him back, because he has unknowingly given them a clue vital to their quest and they need his help to unravel the rest of the mystery. If he can do so, they will find buried pirate treasure and all become rich. But in joining the search, he falls under the same obsession and curse -- an ominous fate suggested by the unearthly electronic music which contributes to the film's atmosphere.

Three all-new cartoons from animation legend Chuck Jones showcase Bugs Bunny and some of Jones' most famous characters. Springtime has arrived and stirred the birds, the bees and Bugs Bunny -- the time when an infant Elmer Fudd chased a youthful Bugs with his popgun, waiting for the start of "wabbit season"; when Bugs was held captive by Marvin Martian (in "Spaced Out Bunny"); and when, after 30 years of chases, Wile E. Coyote finally caught the Road Runner (in "Soup or Sonic").

Animation, also of a new order in the recent series of short works. Mostly on black space, the figures in blue perform a very compact and jewel-like opera in surreal form, again to Satie’s piano music. Ideally, the film should be projected on a 30" wide white card sitting on a music stand, center stage of a large auditorium or music hall, with sound from the projector piped into the big speaker system. The film is most effective this way, but can be shown normal-size also

Bugs Bunny gushes with excitement over the end of school, but while stopping to wonder why he's excited about this at his age, he runs into a tree and has a flashback to his youth, when he was just as excited about the end of school. But his nemesis, a young Elmer Fudd, is also out, and he's out to get the budding wascally wabbit.

Bugs Bunny is abducted by Marvin the Martian and brought to Mars to be the companion to his pet abominable snowman Hugo, who will "hug him and squeeze him and call him George."

Daffy is looking forward to celebrate Easter but his mysterious animator decides to make very bad things with the three completely new episodes. In the first, "The Yolks on You", Daffy seeks to outfox Sylvester the Cat for a golden egg laid by Prissy the Hen; the second story, "The Chocolate Chase", finds Daffy attempting to protect a chocolate factory from intruders; in the finale, "Daffy Flies North", Daffy attempts to hitchhike north for the winter.

A clip-show music video for the album of the same name and vintage. Includes 5 songs from the album ("Mousetrap", "Disco Mickey Mouse", "Watch Out For Goofy", "Macho Duck", "Welcome To Rio").

A 1980 Looney Tunes Thanksgiving special, starring Daffy Duck. Cartoons featured "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" "Robin Hood Daffy" "Drip-Along Daffy" "His Bitter Half"

Oscar nominated animated short from 1980, depicting a history of life on Earth compressed into three minutes.

Foghorn Leghorn assigns Prissy, who's been laying some odd, unsatisfactory eggs, to lay turquoise eggs for Easter...

Betty Boop runs for president in a loose storyline assembled from Fleischer cartoons redrawn by Korean animators.

Refusing to go with the flock, Daffy seeks an easier way to travel north.

Created and produced as a sample of the proposed (never realized) animated feature. "It was like a 30's musical in which Anita left the alligator farm to pursue her dream of opening the ultimate tropical nightclub. I had a script and storyboard [...] Nightclub of the future with live alligators and a tipsy train that serves drinks." -SC

Speedy Gonzales is once again called to get past Daffy Duck when he denies the mice of Mexico chocolate bunnies for Easter.

The wicked queen creates an ice storm meant to get rid of the younger Snow White, but instead freezes the whole village just barely missing her. Snow White travels to the land of the Seven Friendly Giants and makes friends with them. Snow White is never safe from the wicked queen because she'll always be able to find her. Can the giants save Snow White from her vengeance, or will she end up an icicle like her parents?

Welcome to Strawberry Land, the charming and peaceful home of Strawberry Shortcake and her fruit-filled friends, where rivers of strawberry juice flow past homes made of pastry! But all is not well in this picturesque paradise. The presence of the Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak and his beastly Berry Birds threatens their tranquil existence.

Animated video to accompany the record of the same name, released under the pseudonym of Suzy and the Red Stripes, but in reality Wings' with Linda on lead vocals.

In this animated version of the Jean Webster classic, living in an orphanage, Judy Abbot earns a scholarship to study at a prestigious American university thanks to a mysterious admirer.

When the animals on their way to Noah's Ark find themselves stranded at the North Pole, an old dragon that has lost its ability to breathe fire sets out to help them.

Octopus-like puppets cut out of foam rubber are the central characters in this delightful underwater fantasy with its message about ecology and conservation. Two Grotoceans sent on a special mission find all kinds of surprises awaiting them as they roam the sea in search of treasure. Film without words.

This fast-paced and entertaining animated film is about water and the demands placed on our waterways by agriculture, industry, and urban life. An army of droplets, led by The Chief, shows what happens to water from the time it falls as rain until it reaches its destination.

The inhabitants of a village learn to overcome their fears of the unknown.