Les Escargots

In 1965, several years before they collaborated on the feature length animation Fantastic Planet (above), René Laloux and Roland Topor made an 11-minute short, Les Escargots (The Snails), which you can see here. It's not quite as spectacularly warped as the later film, but well worth a look. Below are some stills.

I recently read Topor's incredible 1964 novel The Tenant, which is some sort of weird, terrifying hybrid of Kafka, Poe and The Wicker Man, and which was filmed by Roman Polanski in 1976. I can't quite believe Topor isn't better known over here. Perhaps, as Russell Mills suggested, the English are just suspicious of anyone who can do more than one thing. Anyway, I'll certainly be getting hold of Topor's other works that are available in translation... all two of them.

My copy of The Tenant includes a few of his short stories, along with a small selection of his drawings. Click for larger versions.

Below are a couple of his op-ed illustrations for the New York Times.

Lots more here.