Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown (1986)

Truly Dreadful Film

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

A CAL-ARTS student film by Jim Reardon (who worked on numerous episodes of "The Simpsons"), "Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown" does what it says on the tin: numerous beloved fluffy characters go after Charlie Brown by order of the Pumpkin King. It's all done in B+W and resembles pencil tests, much like most films made by animation students. Yet I can imagine that it would have stood out a lot from its contemporary CAL-ARTS productions in terms of tone, as it really does feel like not a sort of Disney/WB homage or an art-house film but rather the kind of spoof that one would find on YouTube or MySpace. Thus, this can be viewed today as a good piece of immature fluff that was perhaps ahead of its time in terms of style and tone. If you can track it down somewhere, it's worth taking a peak.

After the Great Pumpkin places a huge bounty on the ever-hapless Charlie Brown's head, the Peanuts gang try to bump poor Charlie off: Schroeder drops a giant piano on him, Lucy tries to get Charlie to kick a bomb that's disguised as a football, Snoopy bites his hand off (blood gushes everywhere from the grisly stump), and Linus even attempts to strangle Chuck with his beloved blanket. So Charlie, sporting a gnarly Travis Bickle-style Mohawk and packing an Uzi, opens up a king-sized barrel of marvelously gory and excessive over-the-top violent death and destruction on the whole nasty lot of 'em. Writer/director Jim Reardon, who went on to direct countless episodes of "The Simpsons," pokes blithely wild and deranged anything-goes no-holds-barred wicked fun at everything from Sam Peckinpah to Richard Simmons to even Mickey Mouse and Godzilla. The animation is admittedly crude, but still effective and the adult voice actors ham it up with lip-smacking brio. Better still, the amusing novelty song "Charlie Brown" by the Coasters even plays during the gut-busting ending credits (the disclaimer at the very conclusion is absolutely priceless!). Favorite line: "Happiness is a warm Uzi." A gloriously tasteless hoot and a half.

This is a great student film, with bonus points for making fun of such a cherished cartoon icon.Lots of garish humor, over-the-top violence, and blatantly sadistic comedy. The things that make student films great.Audio and voice-overs are rather sub-par...but I think it might have been intentional to just lampoon the voices rather than trying to copy them.Model wise, they're pretty dead-on to the Charlie Brown art form.Interestingly, most of the people who worked on it have had some impressive careers and worked for major studios.If you want to see it, check the message boards for a couple of links to it (or just google search it).

(Revised on 4/9/2005 - I originally wrote it in 2001 out of memory!)I'm sure many people have watched twisted parodies of Charles Schulz beloved PEANUTS comic strip like MAD TV's "South Parknuts" and Saturday NIGHT LIVE's Peanuts tribute sketch in 2000, but none of them have the fast-paced thrills of this obscure animated student short done at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1986 by renowned animator Jim Reardon (who later worked on cartoons like MIGHTY MOUSE: THE NEW ADVENTURES and THE SIMPSONS)! The short has been screened at Lunacon (a sci-fi con I regularly attend) since about 1997 or 1998, and I was immediately hooked! This was the best of the old CalArts student shorts among what Lunacon showed (before I saw Craig McCracken's WHOOPASS STEW, which later became THE POWERPUFF GIRLS)!Most of the other Peanuts parodies always had Charlie Brown die or commit suicide, to all of which I say, "been there, done that," but this was about the first time I've ever seen Charlie Brown unleash the beast within (something I, and possibly some other people, always wanted to see him do after some of the Peanuts Gang were so cruel to him)! In this short, the Great Pumpkin puts a bounty on Charlie Brown's head, and the rest of the Peanuts Gang race against each other to kill Charlie Brown in all sorts of ways, until Charlie himself, when getting chased by the gang at one point, becomes Rambo/Schwarzenegger-like and goes around blowing away all of the Peanuts Gang with his uzi! Then, for some reason, we see other cartoon characters slaughtering each other (Mickey Mouse, Popeye, the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla with a sound byte from GODZILLA '84 etc.), and amongst all the carnage and destruction, Charlie Brown stood victorious! The climax was just hilariously chaotic! There was even a funny (and long) disclaimer in the closing credits ("This film is not intended to ruin the good name of Charles M. Schulz's PEANUTS characters," etc. etc.)!This short may not be for the more sensitive fans of PEANUTS, but if you're lucky, give BRING ME THE HEAD OF CHARLIE BROWN a try! It is, by far, the best of the twisted PEANUTS parodies!