As mentioned previously, in “Impossible Voyages” I’m watching and writing about a run of new (to me) science fiction films to be watched over this year (and possibly beyond). You can read the rationale and ground rules here. In the meantime, we are advancing from 1925 to 1928 with this movie, #8 in this series.

Finding science fiction movies from the 1920s is a little challenging–there were, relatively speaking, less movies being made, not all of them still exist, and not all the ones that do are easy to find. I found one movie from 1926 online (I can’t even remember what it is anymore) but it was in another language and didn’t come with an English translation. Metropolis of course came out in 1927 but I’ve already seen it, which means I can’t use it for this series.

So all of that has led me to this animated short from 1928 for this post, so that I wouldn’t just forward through the early 20th century too quickly.

Spoilers Ahead

KoKo’s Earth Control (1928)

Directed by Dave Fleischer. Produced by Max Fleischer.

The Story: KoKo the Clown and his dog Fitz enter a building labeled “Control of Earth”, with technology that commands the weather, the seasons, the movement of the sun and moon, and more. Fitz finds a lever which warns that if pulled will cause the earth to come to an end. In spite of Koko’s best efforts, he pulls it, leading the whole world to spin madly out of control.

Starring: The film is an animated and silent, so mostly there isn’t a cast. But there are some live-action segments showing the earth going out of control, which apparently include director Dave Fleischer and animator George Rufle.

Comments: The Inkwell Imps was a series of animated shorts produced by Fleischer Studios (a company I mostly know for making that awesome series of Superman cartoons in the 1940s) which I have only discovered thanks to watching this short. It was originally called Out of the Inkwell but changed name by the time KoKo’s Earth Control came along. The short films blended animation and live action, and commonly started with the character KoKo the Clown either being drawn by an artist on a canvas (and then coming to life via animation) or emerging from the inkwell on his own, to have all sorts of misadventures.

In this case, he and his dog Fitz (whose name I glean from reading about the cartoon, not from the movie itself) wind up on a drawing of the whole earth, which they power-walk to the “Control of Earth” building which seems to be somewhere near the South Pole.

Inside, they are excited to find all sorts of controls which they get excited to experiment with, making it rain and turning day to night. But Fitz, the little psychopath that he is, becomes just obsessed with pulling a doomsday lever. There are some amusing cartoon antics as KoKo tries to stop him, but the film follows through on the promise of the premise, and the lever gets pulled.

This leads to the second part of the film, where the cartoon world goes bonkers. The sun melts the moon, a moment comes along and seems to blow up the sun, and some sort of devil monster emerges from the earth! Through all this KoKo tries to hide his head in the sand (briefly putting the devil monster’s head on by mistake).

The earth begins to split, KoKo narrowly survives a volcano, visualised as the earth smoking a cigar, and Fitz gets beaten up by an angry tree (which he later kills by chopping it down with an axe).

Then we go to the third and last part of things, as KoKo and Fitz return to the live-action earth, to find that things are crazy there too. The planet shakes and tilts madly, and buildings begin to collapse (using a similar animation techniques to what we later see from Terry Gilliam in various Monty Python projects).

The movie ends with the art studio where things always begin in these shorts rocking madly back and forth as Koko and Fitz dissolve back into the ink from whence they came.

I realise I’m just giving an expanded plot description here but I feel like it’s really the main thing to talk about here. Not being familiar with this series at all, or even with the idea of silent animated cartoons, this little film really took me by surprise by its unbridled lunacy. Obviously, it’s not to be taken seriously as a work of science fiction–there are no deep themes on display, no facets of the human condition which are being explored (unless it’s the question of the darkness in Fitz’s soul that makes him want to pull that lever so badly)–it’s just inventive and goofy.

We’re not here for the plot, we’re not here for the characters–we’re here for the visual experience. In that sense it reminds me a bit of watching El Hotel Electrico from 20 years earlier, which I talked about previously in this series. KoKo’s Earth Control is only about eight minutes long, which means that like many animated shorts, it delivers that experience with incredible efficiency.

I will say that I’d probably have enjoyed that experience more with a well-produced soundtrack. The version I saw was completely silent. I’ve read of other Inkwell shorts being available with soundtracks, but I couldn’t easily find this one in any other format. As such, I didn’t really love it, but I am impressed by its audacity and imagination.

EDIT: Right after posting this, I found another version online which not only had music, but also was about two minutes shorter (not by cutting anything out, but just by running the film a little faster). It made for a more fun watch.

KoKo’s Earth Control was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2024 as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” and I can see why.