Here’s another fantastic clip from Pete Peterson’s personal projects. This clip was discovered, along with The Las Vegas Monster, in a trunk from his former residence. Pete Peterson died in the 1960’s, before his work found much appreciation.
In his story for the film, the beetlemen are humans who mutated while hibernating in suspended animation.
Behind the scratches and damage to this short length of color footage lies an atmospheric scene that exceeds its simple concept. A lesser animator might approach this demo as a straightforward walk cycle, but Peterson evokes tremendous personality from each beetle-man. His long, evenly-paced style applies perfectly to the skulking mutants, and makes the appearance of an entire horde of bettlemen even more startling. This is a superior example of character animation.
Pete Peterson must have built several articulated puppets to support the multitude of characters in this short film. How many? I imagine that, when a puppet exited the frame to the left, Peterson immediately repositioned it to re-enter the frame from the right. I don’t believe it’s likely that Peterson optically composited puppets to create a crowd, especially considering that this is color film. Nevertheless I count four bettlemen on screen thirty seconds into the clip. I don’t know if Pete Peterson had assistance machining and skinning the armatures, but manufacturing four detailed, highly articulate stop-motion puppets is its own accomplishment.
At least one beetleman stop-motion puppet saw life in a feature film. A sword-fighting beetleman, animated by Jim Danforth, makes a strong impression in the 1972 feature Flesh Gordon.
What a great idea to dig out some of the unseen wonders of stopmotion animation. Everyone knows the work of Ray Harryhausen, but there are some unsung heroes in this field, especially poor Pete Peterson who had to fight multiple sclerosis and yet did some fantastic animation scenes.
I also like the FLESH GORDON sequences, I remember driving way out to a suburban cinema that ran it as a late night show…30 years ago certainly.
Perhaps you could find some scenes in better quality?
Keep up the good work !
Albert