Lee Hardcastle's animated modeling clay horrors

January 3, 2016 7:12 PM

Four years ago, Lee Hardcastle remade John Carpenter's The Thing in a two minute short, featuring flightless birds made of Plasticine. After that he was “legally advised not to make any more claymations involving penguins and gore,” but he didn't stop making bloody, disgusting, humorous shorts. He remade that short with clay cats, and has made a number of new pieces over the years, including a horror story about toilets that won a place among an international cast of horror directors in a horror anthology. He has posted a number of additional shorts on YouTube, which he has also sorted into playlists for convenient browsing.
posted by filthy light thief (11 comments total)

He also did a version of The Raid that eventually ended up on the blu-ray release
posted by ACair at 7:20 PM on January 3, 2016

He did one for Frozen, too.
posted by boo_radley at 7:24 PM on January 3, 2016

Not a fan. At all. He seems to have a fixation for The Thing, regurgitating the same scene over again and again (the blood test). I tried watching a few of his original things and the first of which, Hamster Hell (don't watch it) is awful. One of the things I cannot handle is the casual cruelty towards animals, especially pets, and that 6 minute short was a hardline dose of that (it's a recurring theme of his based off a few of his other shorts, so no thanks.)

It's interesting how he differentiates between what is labelled 18+ and what isn't. I wonder if it's a legal thing.
posted by Neronomius at 7:55 PM on January 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

“I think I’ve got the potential to be my own Aardman.”
“I’m the South Park of stop-motion – or the Monty Python if that’s more British.”

Ugh.
posted by davejh at 8:04 PM on January 3, 2016

Oh he did that awful Simpsons version of You're Next that everyone acted like was a lovingly gory tribute to the film but barely resembled it at all, right? Eh. The artistry is there but not for me.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:35 PM on January 3, 2016

Oh, I did not watch The Simpsons sketch. What a pointlessly juvenile attempt at sadistic gore. I couldn't help but watch that with cynical, jaded eyes. Oof.
->yellowbinder, people praised that? No way? Really?
posted by Neronomius at 9:47 PM on January 3, 2016

The first few comments were pretty negative, so I'll chime in to say that I enjoy at least some of his work. The Thinguin was cute, or about as "cute" as gratuitous cartoon ultraviolence can be, and had some inspired moments. But he is definitely a gore-hound, and doesn't venture far outside of his bloodsplattered comfort zone. About half-way through T is for Toilets, it went from 'this is a pretty creepy horror short film' to 'huh, the person who made this must be pretty creepy.' But he does have a knack for stop motion, and he's probably the perfect person to make claymation spoofs of The Thing and Evil Dead 2, so there's that.

EDIT: Just watched the Simpsons You're Next cough gag. Ugh. Sadistic violence is not a substitute for humor, people.
posted by Green Winnebago at 9:52 PM on January 3, 2016

Thingu gets much better if you're a parent who has watched endless episodes of Pingu.
posted by benzenedream at 10:49 PM on January 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Huh, I think the shorts are brilliant. Hilarious. Sharing them with all kinds of people and can't wait to have seen them all. The Raid spoof was amazing!
posted by artof.mulata at 12:20 AM on January 4, 2016

I loved the first Thingu but (IMHO) he doesn't quite make it over the high bar as defined by Nagao Takena with classics like Chainsaw Maid.
posted by cleroy at 2:04 PM on January 4, 2016

Awesome work! The Thing is one of my favorite horror movies of all time! This was a great tribute to John Carpenter's classic film, and the music was incredible and on par, instilling the creepy atmospheric theme in where we're not alone!
posted by sampathcse16 at 8:16 PM on January 4, 2016