The Adventures Of Mark Twain (1985 Animated Film)

April 8, 2026·1 hr 1 min·5 clips

Why did a Claymation pioneer make a dark film where Mark Twain pilots an airship to die with Halley's Comet?

1. Awesome Movie Year covers The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985) as the animated film pick for its 1985 season. 2. Josh Bell, a film critic, hosts alongside Jason Harris, a filmmaker and comedian, with David Rosen as a third participant. 3. The episode's central tension is whether the film's breathtaking claymation animation compensates for a weak script and annoying child characters. 4. Will Vinton won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1974 for Closed Mondays, a film he co-directed with Bob Gardiner; the pair split bitterly afterward, with Gardiner eventually dying by suicide. 5. Vinton went on to create Claymation as a trademarked technique and produced the California Raisins advertising campaign and the Domino's Noid mascot, but he missed the merchandising rights to the California Raisins due to poor business decisions. 6. The Adventures of Mark Twain was produced over three and a half years; Vinton used black-and-white reference footage of actors to guide animators throughout the shoot. 7. The film's premise is that Mark Twain pilots an airship to intercept Halley's Comet in 1910 and die, with Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher as stowaways; the story is framed as Mark Twain processing grief over his dead wife. 8. Josh reads Twain's actual 1910 quote in which he predicted he would 'go out with' Halley's Comet, and notes Twain did die 22 days after the comet passed over the US. 9. The film grossed $849,000 against a $1.5 million budget; its distributor Atlantic Releasing placed it in a children's matinee sub-label called Clubhouse Pictures and then added a 'may not be suitable for all children' warning to the VHS release. 10. Veteran actor James Whitmore, who played Harry Truman in the one-man show Give 'Em Hell, Harry, voices Mark Twain and recorded his entire part in two days; both hosts praise his performance as far above the rest of the cast. 11. The child characters — Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Becky Thatcher — are described by Josh and Jason as 'terrible,' with poor voice performances and thinly written roles. 12. The film is structured as an anthology, with Mark Twain guiding the children through short adaptations of his works: The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Diary of Adam and Eve, a segment featuring a young Satan, and a story about a captain who travels to heaven. 13. Josh and Jason agree The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is the strongest segment — self-contained, amusing, and the most faithful to Twain's humour — while the Adam and Eve segment runs too long and the Satan sequence is unsettling in a memorable way. 14. Vincent Canby in the New York Times described the film as 'virtually unclassifiable' but criticised the Claymation as making everything look 'soft, squashy, and kind of ugly.' 15. Harry McCracken in Cinefantastique was more positive, calling Vinton 'one of the most vital and inventive animators in the world' but noting the art form took precedence over 'coherent' storytelling. 16. Will Vinton's Vinton Studios went on to produce the California Raisins, the Domino's Noid, the M&M's mascots, and TV shows including The PJs and Gary and Mike, before Vinton was eventually bought out by Phil Knight's son Travis Knight and the studio became Laika. 17. The episode is discursive and occasionally tangential, with conversations about the California Raisins, Max Headroom, the Aardman Animation debate (Dave preferred this film to Wallace and Gromit), and a comparison to Phil Tippett's Mad God. 18. Tone is critical but affectionate, with all three hosts acknowledging the film as a genuine artistic oddity even if they disagree on how enjoyable it is. 19. This episode suits listeners interested in animation history, the Claymation technique, Will Vinton's unusual career trajectory, or obscure 1985 films. 20. Listeners who have not seen the film and are uninterested in animation production history will likely find the episode slow; the film itself is not recommended for children despite its G rating.

As heard by us

A strange Claymation film gets a sharp, unsparing discussion.

The Adventures of Mark Twain is treated as the strange 1985 stop motion film it is, and that gives the discussion a welcome edge. Josh Bell and Jason Harris start with Will Vinton's Claymation background, then move through the movie's odd shape, its mythic ambition, and the sort…

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For when you want a very strange 1985 stop-motion film picked apart by two movie people who know their way around the edges.

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