This film was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.The first thing I noticed was how incredibly vibrant the Cinecolor was with this restored film. Audiences might think it strange to see a color film where two main colors predominate--bluish-green and orange-red. With Cinecolor and Two-Color Technicolor, three strips of film overlapped--black & white, red and green (though the Cinecolor films I have seen look a bit bluer). It's all rather primitive by today's standards, but it's nice to see a film like this with all it's vibrant color.This is set in Balloon Land--a place where all the creatures are made of balloons. Suddenly, the Pincushion Man (Billy Bletcher) appears with his pins and starts acting like a big jerk--threatening to pop everyone. Naturally, the folks are scared and run and hide. Soon the alarm is sounded and the weird little creatures of Balloon Land go on the attack--though what they can do with the Pincushion Man seems pretty dubious. Yet despite an obvious disadvantage, the balloon folks work together for a common good and save the day. I think there's supposed to be an object lesson here, but it escapes me.While compared to cartoons of the 1940s and 50s this one seems VERY old fashioned and dull, for the 1930s it's actually pretty exciting and fun. It's no where up to the standards of the stuff being produced over at Disney (where the series director, U.B. Iwerks had once worked), it's pretty good.

A great cartoon from my childhood, because I remember having this cartoon on VHS as a kid along time ago. But alas it's been lost over the years, and I couldn't find it ever since; but it has been my favorite cartoon from UB Iwerks: the father of Mickey Mouse (my favorite Disney character). At first I didn't know that UB created Mickey; until now that is. I also would like to point the excellent voice characterization of Billy Bletcher as The Pin Cushion Man; who also was The Big Bad Wolf and Pegleg Pete from Disney.I love the concept of using babies for an alarm. You know take their bottles away and then...WAHHHHH!!!

This was a nice kids' cartoon but one in which adults should find enough entertainment to watch along with the toddlers. It's old, and it looks it, but it's original. As one who has seen hundreds of cartoon, I appreciated the originality of the story.All the creatures here are balloons, and we see some of them "birthed," which is fun. One of them is a young boy and his sister and the kid is brash. He's already heard about the "Pin Cushion Man" of the forest who goes around the pops everyone, meaning kills the balloon people. He's not afraid....until he comes face-to-face with this sadistic guy.Later, when the Mr. Pin Cushion, who is an interesting-looking creature, sneaks into Balloon City, the alarm is sounded and the latter's army goes into full force. The alarm, the battle and other scenes are all pretty clever and should keep everyone's attention whether one is three or 83. It's a deceptively good cartoon by UB Iwerks.

The glorious early cartoons of Ub Iwerks (he's the man who made Mickey Mouse move) make up for their lack of Disneyesque fluidity with a determined, and often startling, inventiveness. The story is quite conventional, and can be found in different guises in the medieval folk and fairy tales from which the film takes its visual cue. A young boy disregards his elders' advice about the safety of society, and goes into the woods with his girlfriend, clearly a metaphor for sexual pleasure. However, nature proves a rapacious shelter, and the couple are chased by a murderer who manages to invade their village and go on a killing rampage.What makes this cartoon strange and different is that the characters and settings are made entirely, as the title suggests, of balloons. Iwerks' introduction of this fantasy world is masterly and brightly coloured, replete with balloon Laurel and Hardy, and Chaplin. It's not quite fantasy, however. The hero and his girl are created and given breath by an inventor and his machine; he warns them that they are mere air, and easily destroyed. On the one hand, this is a conservative message about the dangers of transgressing family and society, a danger which is chillingly realised.On the other, the story is a fantastic dramatisation of what used to be called the human condition - we are just as vulnerable as balloons to the vagaries of chance and inhospitable nature; we too have been breathed into life by a creator who has left us so vulnerable, and whom we cannot satisfy whether we obey or disobey him. The Pin-killer is all destructive demon, though, gleefully revelling in his homicidal spirits, free, but sadly vulnerable too.In a film of such wit and visual imagination, it would be difficult to select an enduring image, but there is one scene where the hero sounds the alarm, a cot of four babies whose bottles he swipes - the resulting din would wake the dead, and, as if following this idea, Iwerks zooms into one of the infants' bawling mouth, a terrifying glimpse of the abyss in a new-born child, a perfect encapsulation of the film's theme.