User blog:Jamesgrout/Astonishing Animation no. 18: "One Stormy Night", Count Duckula

Previous one here: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Jamesgrout/Astonishing_Animation_no._17:_%22Brick_Like_Me%22,_The_Simpsons

Count Duckula is highly under-rated, there are acknowledgements of it going around, like by Phantom Strider and I know people regard its theme song, though I know its title doesn't exactly do much for it, a little obvious, but boy is there way more to it to enjoy and laugh your head off at.

The premise of a vegetarian vampire and a castle that can teleport, taking us to all different settings and the writing is just fantastic, full of unexpected twists and turns and the humour is brilliantly written, misunderstandings a lot of them. Also all of the characters being a different kind of bird, being enough types, well known or not to make every character a different one. There are of course animals in general, but specific birds really shows the thought that goes into it, not that that's the biggest selling point of course, it's just them being birds.

The trouble with this though is that with a comedy show, humour shouldn't be analysed or spoken about too much or you'd ruin it, so to talk about a stand out episode... I chose this one because I feel there is enough to talk about without ruining the humour.

So, the show presents itself as scary and sinister, whenever you think it's inappropriate for kids, you forget that kids like scary and sinister, as long as it's at the right level for them to handle, although really it's comical, the theme song demonstrates this well.

So the episode File:One Stormy Night Title Card.jpg begins with the antagonist Goosewing about to bring to life a creation, obvious Frankenstein set up. So, Goosewing, he wants to save people from vampires but completely disregards the fact that Duckula doesn't actually suck blood nor do anything evil. The whole question about it is, of course, is Goosewing just closed minded and prejudice, thinking he's doing good but not looking at what evidence is actually there? We are supposed to be on Duckulas side and there's one selling point of the show, can't Goosewing just notice how things are really presented? He seemed to be doing it in Duckulas castle though, in the top turret, he broke in I guess.

Meanwhile, Igor, the butler reads Duckula a bedtime story about monsters devouring people. Igor's whole character is wanting to serve an evil vampire while Duckula, the master, is not evil at all, thus Igor tries to manipulate him into it. So as it's the 3rd episode, we're still establishing this. Nanny, his other servant, on the other hand, is just very dumb, for the shows humour. She gets afraid that monsters like the ones is Igor's story are real, the other 2 assure her they aren't. Then again, while they're all monsters, is it really crazy to think ones like that could be real?

Meanwhile, as Goosewing conducts his experiment, the lightning bolt of like strikes a stone form of Duckula instead and brings him to life.File:DuckulaIXstatue.png Goosewing penetrates the castle and is found by stone Duckula and he appears to be evil, almost beheads Goosewing before Igor comes in, inadvertently causing distraction before the dead is done. Igor doesn't notice Duckula is stone coloured but it's understandable that he wouldn't be able to consider that this could have happened, also, Stone Duckula being evil, it's what Igor wants to believe so of course he does. Igor now thinks he has finally influenced his master to being evil, delighted in being ordered to get a shovel.

Goosewings creature File:Count Duckula S01E03.jpg is then brought to life, a monster made out of metal, except he is the least like a monster out of any character in the show. He is the only character in this episode and possibly also in the entire show who thinks rationally, he has a normal mind, somebody with his own mind in fact. You'd never expect it to be him either, out of all characters, recurring or one off and that's what makes it so great.

The bulk of the episode is the characters getting mixed up with each other, causing different confusions amongst them, the real Count Duckula wants a sandwich, Igor keeps mixing him up with Stone Duckula, Goosewing doesn't realize his original monster came to life. Nanny thinks there might be monsters downstairs, still treated as irrational for it, again, unusually. Soon, she takes a nap on the bed where Goosewings monster lay, leading Goosewing to think Nanny is the monster (and a truly hideous one at that).

The most attention grabbing aspect though, like I said, is the metal monster, it's the wonder of how somebody as deluded as Goosewing could have created him.

People just assume he'd like to live in a bleak castle while nobody would ever ask him what he really wanted. So he brings it all back down to Earth. Technically, Duckula doesn't like living in the bleak castle either, the characters are all well written by their unusual positions, considering all options, so I guess Goosewing is the bad guy for how he doesn't consider what things really are, or really could be. That, of course, would be why it's so amazing that it's this character out of any that could appear in the show that doesn't only consider options but is completely rational. Even if you expected the unexpected you probably still wouldn't have seen this coming.

Listening to him talk and say the unexpected things is just brilliant, having a head made from a trash can for instance, it causes him quite a bad headache.

Eventually, Duckula does of course meet stone Duckula, reflection pretending gag but of course, vampires don't have reflections. Stone Duckula wants to bite real Duckulas neck, so this is weird when he is also a vampire of course but if that's what works, it's also strange how he is going to do that when made out of stone, but that's great and quirky weird. He probably couldn't but the idea is that he is an evil version resurrected from a statue, unusual possibilities, it's part of the shows great writing.

Duckula locks himself inside his room safely, until Nanny walks through the wall, that's another of her character traits, just never using doors. So Stone Duckula gets in but all is resolved when the sun rises and stone Duckula crumbles.

Nanny did appear to see Stone Duckula but now she thinks that there are no such things as monsters, but Duckula and Igor now know there are.

The metal monster scares Duckula and Nanny just by asking for an asprin, he isn't seen the way he wanted to be but that was never really what the episode was about. It's a cartoon from the 80s, a time where anything comedy would most often end badly for the main characters, it might not have aged so well but it was just a thing of the time of the show, not really the fault of the show. Quite a few of them do in later eras too of course. It's more the fact that there was far more to the metal monster than you'd expect, why his appearance made for a stand out episode.

The next one can be found here:

https://theloudhouse.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000000179303/r/4400000000000763112