One Got Fat (1963)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Simply Perfect

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I am not exactly sure why I watched this short film, but I do recommend you see it just because it's so incredibly creepy and strange. It's currently on YouTube and it's worth wasting 15 of your life watching it.The film is a very moralistic tale about bicycle safety that was marketed towards kids. But it's very different for several reasons. While it's cheaply made, they somehow got Edward Everett Horton to narrate the thing and, as usual, he's excellent. Also, instead of showing children, they made grotesque and creepy monkey masks and tails for them to wear. It's hellishly creepy, believe me.As the narrator tells the story about a group of kids riding to a picnic on their bicycles, each of the monkey kids illustrate how NOT to ride your bike. Several seem about to die or be mangled but in each case they down (thankfully) show the collision. At the end, you do see one in a hospital bed...covered in bandages and casts. I'm not going to give this one a numerical score. It's because I don't think this was intended as anything more than a film they showed kids in school to scare them into being good. Plus, the print is scratchy and ugly and not exactly fun unless you have a weird sense of humor like I do.

I remember this from Elementary School on 16mm. It is kind of brutal, but it makes its point: there are rules, reasons for the rules, and consequences for breaking the rules.It's kind of cheerfully macabre, but over 40 years later I remember it, and that I should ride with traffic, obey stop signs and not ride two on a bike! -let's give it some credit: for the sake of a few fictional (and humorous) deaths and injuries, it's entirely possible this saved real lives.(They just need a 10th monkey who forgot his helmet for the remake!)

"One Got Fat" is a bicycle safety film from 1963... so why are we still talking about it? Simply put, it's an off-key attempt at ironic humor that fails on every level... it's a kiddie snuff film, and a perverse one at that.Gleefully narrated by Edward Everett Horton, the movie teaches bicycle safety through the story of ten children who each violate one of the Schwinn Commandments and suffer death. To cartoon sound effects. And did I mention the children are faceless monkeys wearing nightmarish ape masks?What might have been funny, what might have been twisted or lovably dark is rendered cold, cruel... the underlying message that ignoring or flaunting society's standards and rules will earn you an instant, well-deserved death is sickening. "Step out of line, the man come and take you away...""One Got Fat" is still available on Google and/or YouTube if you have a taste for adventure. Personally I like to forget my nightmares...

This short film was narrated by the same guy that did "Fractured Fairy Tales" on Rocky and Bullwinkle. That's about as far as the whole "kids' short" thing goes.I saw this film a couple of times as a primary school student in Cortland, NY, around 1975-1978, and here it is now (2006) and it still gives me the creeps. If its goal was to teach bike safety, all it really succeeded in doing was to scare the bloody heck out of me and make me never want to go near a bicycle (or any lower primates) ever again. The blithe, almost gleeful, manner in which these lawbreaking bike-riders meet their bloody fates is slightly beyond macabre and and just short of satanic. For two of the ill-fated ape-boys, just before they are bumped off, they are shown with a look of horror on their faces with their eyes bulging out in panic -- not unlike you might see in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon -- except that here it is unexpected because of the low production values (special effects? in a 1963 bike safety flick?) and because it is unexpected and not for comic effect, and it is just a few frames - the image is almost subliminal. Very haunting. The end result, if you're a single-digit age viewer of a bygone era (pre Grand-Theft-Auto, etc...) such a thing might just scare the bejeezus out of you.In historical retrospect, it joins such classics as the 60s and 70s anti-drug scare films common to grade school health classes, and such foot-tapping Drivers Ed classics like Crimson Asphalt.