The Silverfish King Print #1

Transcript (Download)

You You I'm getting a little worried now about my ear There is quite a deep passage in the ear.

The ear leads to the mouth and nose and to the brain as well.

It was a striped object soft like putty but silver gray with white bands It was embedded.

I could not hear well for several days before I found it Now I have arranged some mirrors on stands in such a way that I can peer into my ear while looking straight ahead Always to I keep one eye on my floor and one on my walls My apartment you see is infested with silverfish Sometimes I wonder if one hasn't crawled into me.

That is the reason for my concern about my ear.

I Remember a cartoon character called the silverfish king He was a diabolical little fellow who always smiled at the audience and puffed up his body after each cartoon and As he smiled orange poison juice would slide out of the side of his mouth Onto the H in the end Often he took a special kind of cheese and shoved it into the noses of sleeping humans attempting to murder them Even so he was extremely funny His greatest triumph was escaping from a bathtub a miraculous feat which no other silverfish could manage He did it by clinging to one smear of bathtub scum after another leaping this way and that where the traction was greatest Ultimately finding his way up and over the top one split second before a large old woman would thrust her fist from behind the shower Curtain and twirl on the boiling hot tap water bringing down upon the heads of the inferior silverfish a Torrent of waves which drove them brutally into the drain of death Waiting always on the bath mat beside the tub was fang ah the most beautiful of female silverfish She would open wide her glazed brown eyes and bend her shimmering antennae forward in a beckoning gesture the silverfish King would leap atop her back and she would carry him into the wall crack to the old familiar strains of Oh, you red hot firecrackers.

Oh you red hot firecrackers.

Oh you red hot firecrackers the silverfish King's theme song When I was nine years old I went to see my favorite silverfish King cartoon ten times Now it seems almost too horrible to relate The King had crawled upon the stubby chin of a heartless politician Standing ready on the wall was a legion of 100 lesser fish led by the fiercely plumed fang ah But the King motioned them back with a subtle twist of his anus Then he scurried headlong across the cheek and through the stubble of the sleeping victim entering ultimately the forbidden cavity Suddenly we became the King saw through his eyes and felt his terror as the index finger of the man like a guided missile Angled in with crushing force But it's the man not the King who cries out as the impact of finger against bug Pops the King through the tiny opening in the tympanic membrane and into the inner ear a Scream echoes up the long connecting cavity from the nose and mouth as the King four legs broken clings tightly to the delicate bones of the inner ear the hammer the anvil and the stirrup and Manages with his last ounce of strength to flutter his mangled feelers against the sensitive tissues It is just enough to drive the devil into the man's already guilt -ridden brain Now there is a quick series of steps a sudden crash of glass and the long 10 -story trip down to the deadly pavement below the evil career of the heartless politician has been ended single -handedly by the King but what of the King himself Blood oozes from his abdomen Orange poison juice slides out of the side of his mouth and we are led to believe that he too is dead But of course he was not It was not long before once again He was a top the pretty back of the reckless beauty fang a riding into the crack of the wall Now it is time for bed it is time to set the clock and to turn out the lights One last look in the mirrors I Do not sleep very near a wall My bed I've placed upon several porcelain tables, which I keep spotlessly clean I do not live in a 10 -story building and I am NOT a cigar smoking politician Still I am uneasy about the idea of a silver fish getting into my ear And then there is one other possibility I Remember that I once had a kit to make miniature putty silver fish.

They were silver gray with white bands.

I I I I I I I I I I I I

Identifier

F.2016-01-0089

Date Of Production

1973

Abstract

Somersaulter-Moats and Somersaulter's first independently produced film is a surreal meditation on a childhood phobia. At once humorous, playful and twistedly obsessive, The Silverfish King follows a narrator as he describes an early fascination with a cartoon character that morphed into an irrational fixation. Following the twists and turns of logic and accompanied by idiosyncratic doodles, The Silverfish King is reminiscent of the stories of Gogol, Poe and Kafka.

Run Time

0:06:34

Format

16mm

Extent

350 feet

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Language Of Materials

English

Element

Genre

Experimental

Form

Animations

Subject

Imagination

Related Collections

Somersaulter-Moats and Somersaulter Collection

Distributor

Pajon Arts

Main Credits

Somersaulter, JP (is director)

Somersaulter-Moats and Somersaulter (is production company)

Additional Credits

Somersaulter Moats, Lillian (is contributor)

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