Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films

Animals on a farm lead a revolution against the farmers to put their destiny in their own hands. However this revolution eats their own children and they cannot avoid corruption.

The embodiment of ultimate evil, a glowing orb terrorizes a young girl with bizarre stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.

Ever seen a snake with a moustache? The Middle East was as much an ideological as a physical battleground in the Second World War. In the midst of the conflict Halas & Batchelor were commissioned by the British Government to make four cartoons featuring a young boy Abu and his mule. They were intended to demonstrate in simple visual terms that Britain was a stout friend and the Axis powers a pernicious evil.

Modern advice and old-fashioned values combine in this postwar animated health guide from the makers of Animal Farm.

A particularly vicious Father Time with a hit-list in his Book of Doom seeks to wipe out characters brought to life from fabric patterns. This neat concept for a cartoon washing powder commercial can be credited to Alexander Mackendrick, who worked at the J Walter Thompson advertising agency before making films at Ealing and then Hollywood.

An animated, dark satire of America's automobile-obsessed, consumerist culture. An anonymous, brilliant scientist toils tirelessly in his ivory tower satisfying the public's ever-increasing demands for novelty and status consciousness, with predictable environmental consequences.

A lonely man living in a large city buys a life-size sex doll. His relationship with his dream doll causes a certain reaction in the community. A bizarre adaption of Le Ballon Rouge.

A BAFTA award nominated film made for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company charting the history of aviation from Daedalus to jets.

A poem of unrequited love: the studio's first puppet production. Based on a poem by Cosbie Garstin, the film tells the story of a carved wooden saint who is painted to look like a soldier and used as a figurehead on a sailing ship. The ship sinks and the figurehead is saved by a beautiful mermaid who falls in love with him. Her love is not returned because despite his dashing looks he has the wooden heart of a saint.

A short animation based on the Edward Lear poem

Set to Gilbert and Sullivan tunes, a musical cartoon attempts to describe the character of the British nation, with occasional interruptions by Prince Charles.

Instructional cartoon for the Admiralty.

A short animated War Office commissioned health education film, showing the fate of each of the 6 jungle soldiers.

For centuries, the Murgatroyd family, the Baronets of Ruddigore, have been under a witch's curse — commit a crime every day, or die in agony. Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, the rightful heir, has run away to live as innocent peasant Robin Oakapple in the Cornish village of Rederring, sticking his brother Despard with the curse. But on the very day that "Robin" is to marry sweet, beautiful Rose Maybud, it all falls apart. Can Sir Ruthven outwit a picture gallery full of his ancestors' ghosts to save the day?

A dancing radio stops partying to transmit an announcement on fuel conservation in this WWII cartoon short.

A humorously semi-factual account of the history of cinema.

One of a humorous series of films devised to explain in graphic terms the concepts of basic mathematical functions.

Our animated hero questions his sanity after blowing his top and driving his car into a police station.

This a story of a violinist, pianist and cellist as they perform from place-to-place, under very unusual conditions. Every time they play, they remind someone of a lost love, so they are hired immediately hired by nightclub owners, ship captains and even a pirate... wherever circumstances take them.

The film is designed to encourage recycling - which was a key part of the war effort.