Gary Larson's Tales From the Far Side is an animated short film created in 1994 by Gary Larson

Gary Larson

Gary Larson is the creator of The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to newspapers for 15 years. The series ended with Larson's retirement on January 1, 1995. His 23 books of collected cartoons have combined sales of more than 45 million...

, based on his The Far Side

The Far Side

The Far Side is a popular single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from January 1, 1980, to January 1, 1995. Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world,...

comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

. It was first shown as a Halloween

Halloween

Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

 special on U.S. television, and later it was awarded the Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival

Annecy

Annecy is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.It lies on the northern tip of Lake Annecy , 35 kilometres south of Geneva.-Administration:...

.

The film is loosely structured, jumping between several simple stories. Many of these situations use staple cliché

Cliché

A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...

s of horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

s, such as undead

Undead

Undead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased and yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...

 monsters and the dark and stormy night. The stories sometimes turn macabre

Macabre

In works of art, macabre is the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere. Macabre works emphasize the details and symbols of death....

, but are presented in a lighthearted fashion. They are mainly as those in the printed comic, including lots of background throwaway gags from well-known panels.

The characters and settings are all common to Larson's work, such as aliens

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

, anthropomorphic animals and other objects, and cowboys in the Old West. The art style is essentially the same as that of The Far Side, though the film necessarily adds animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 and sound effect

Sound effect

For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...

s.

The animation was made in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 at director-animator Marv Newland

Marv Newland

Marv Newland is a filmmaker who specializes in animation.Newland began a career making animated motion pictures in Los Angeles with the creation of the short Bambi Meets Godzilla...

's International Rocketship Productions.

The film features an original music score by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell

Bill Frisell

William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...

. Some of the compositions from the soundtrack are included on his 1996 album Quartet.

In 1997 the film spawned a sequel, Tales From the Far Side II. This follow-up was never broadcast on American television, but it aired in the UK on BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and it appeared in numerous film festivals. Both films were released on VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

 and DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

and can be purchased from The Official Far Side website, but only for U.S. addresses.

Alternative version

When the first special was issued on video in 1999, Larson made numerous changes:

• In the TV version, after the camera pulls back to reveal the snakes watching "The Bacon Bunch", there's a fade-out to commercial. The next scene is the "Wolf's Home Movies". In the video version, the camera pans into the forest for another vignette featuring an African warrior and a big-headed American tourist.

• The audio mix during the egg scene is drastically different. The video version includes a radio announcer, while the TV version does not. In the TV version, the scene depicting the next morning is edited differently and includes a much longer shot of the female egg screaming.

• Between the "Exploding Kid" and "Old West" scenes, there is an additional scene featuring a group of carrots.

• The "Old West" scene features the same narration in both versions. However, in the broadcast version, the narration came at the top of the scene along with the words on-screen. In the video version, there's no writing, so the narration simply plays over the action.

• In the video version, there's voice-over narration in the zombie "Dead Ranch" scene to make it seem like a travel infomercial. In the TV version, there's no narration, some of the audio differs, and the hayride scene plays intact, complete with a crossover from the Bride of Frankenstein cow who was featured at the beginning of the special.

• In the broadcast version, the "Bob's Monsters" truck was also stocked with Exploding Kids. In the video version, the truck contains the less macabre Garden Rakes.

• In the TV version, the end credits begin with a final shot of the aliens; the credits run thirty seconds and close with an animated variation of the FarWorks, Inc. logo. In the video version, there are no aliens, the credits are stretched over three minutes, and it closes with a still version of the FarWorks logo.