Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films

The embodiment of ultimate evil, a glowing orb terrorizes a young girl with bizarre stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.

Animals on a farm lead a revolution against the farmers to put their destiny in their own hands. However this revolution eats their own children and they cannot avoid corruption.

An animated, dark satire of America's automobile-obsessed, consumerist culture. An anonymous, brilliant scientist toils tirelessly in his ivory tower satisfying the public's ever-increasing demands for novelty and status consciousness, with predictable environmental consequences.

Examines in detail Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting, 'Netherlandish Proverbs', which illustrates over 100 proverbs and allegorises a whole world of sin and folly as relevant today as in the 16th century.

Modern advice and old-fashioned values combine in this postwar animated health guide from the makers of Animal Farm.

A particularly vicious Father Time with a hit-list in his Book of Doom seeks to wipe out characters brought to life from fabric patterns. This neat concept for a cartoon washing powder commercial can be credited to Alexander Mackendrick, who worked at the J Walter Thompson advertising agency before making films at Ealing and then Hollywood.

A humorously semi-factual account of the history of cinema.

Ever seen a snake with a moustache? The Middle East was as much an ideological as a physical battleground in the Second World War. In the midst of the conflict Halas & Batchelor were commissioned by the British Government to make four cartoons featuring a young boy Abu and his mule. They were intended to demonstrate in simple visual terms that Britain was a stout friend and the Axis powers a pernicious evil.

A powerfully graphic piece of animation that best expresses John Halas' own feelings about mans universal quest for freedom.

A lonely man living in a large city buys a life-size sex doll. His relationship with his dream doll causes a certain reaction in the community. A bizarre adaption of Le Ballon Rouge.

A BAFTA award nominated film made for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company charting the history of aviation from Daedalus to jets.

For centuries, the Murgatroyd family, the Baronets of Ruddigore, have been under a witch's curse — commit a crime every day, or die in agony. Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, the rightful heir, has run away to live as innocent peasant Robin Oakapple in the Cornish village of Rederring, sticking his brother Despard with the curse. But on the very day that "Robin" is to marry sweet, beautiful Rose Maybud, it all falls apart. Can Sir Ruthven outwit a picture gallery full of his ancestors' ghosts to save the day?

The Shorts and the Talls just can’t see eye to eye until a mediating fairy arrives to help them make ends meet.

Joy Batchelor directed, produced, wrote and designed this short film for Brook Bond Tea: two girls compete for the affections of a Teddy Bear.

This a story of a violinist, pianist and cellist as they perform from place-to-place, under very unusual conditions. Every time they play, they remind someone of a lost love, so they are hired immediately hired by nightclub owners, ship captains and even a pirate... wherever circumstances take them.

Instructional cartoon for the Admiralty.

This cartoon propaganda short by Halas & Batchelor sweetens the pill of post-war coal prices by promising jam tomorrow.

No man is an island, but Charley represents his nation in this economical cartoon tale of Britain’s economics.

Set to Gilbert and Sullivan tunes, a musical cartoon attempts to describe the character of the British nation, with occasional interruptions by Prince Charles.