Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969) dir. Marv Newland

Sometimes you just don’t have a lot of time to watch. And that’s okay! Because sometimes Lunch Links doesn’t have a lot of time to write.

What seems like a one-joke bit at first glance is happily a two-joke bit, the first being a credits sequence that extends almost the entire length of the short. Marv Newland stamps his name repeatedly over a good of a piece featuring two characters he didn’t create.

The second joke is Bambi getting squished by a gigantic Godzilla leg. He is much smaller than Godzilla, you see. That joke’s a lot more obvious and only amusing because of the windup beforehand.

Newland made this film as a student and its notoriety kicked off a solid career as a journeyman animator, making other odd shorts and contributing to promotional bumpers for Nickelodeon and MTV. This almost guarantees his work has been seen by the majority of culture lovers of certain age. His longest known directing credit is the eccentric Gary Larson network adaptation Tales from the Far Side.

There is also “Bambi’s Revenge” in which (spoiler) Bambi blows off Godzilla’s leg with dynamite (or does he?) and various remakes using color and/or digital tools.