Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Short film: the Adventures of Figaro Pho: Fear of Becoming a Vampire (Transmutasanguivoriphobia)

A wacky Australian animation, the Adventures of Figaro Pho was a 2012 series of animated shorts directed by Luke Jurevicius. Figaro Pho has every phobia known to man and each 7 minute short concentrates on one of those.

In this particular sequence it is Transmutasanguivoriphobia or fear of becoming a vampire. The shorts themselves are silent and feature Figaro and his robot dog Rivet. There is a Tim Burton-esque quality to the shorts.

the vampire film
In this Figaro and Rivet are watching a vampire film when the film stops playing. A bat flies into his home (a mansion) and bites his neck. Figaro believes he has been transformed into a vampire and has fangs, talon like nails and no reflection. He becomes hungry but is scared by the meal made by Rivet – it has garlic in it.

Figaro as a vampire
This leads to Figaro looking for a suitable neck that can provide his vampiric sustenance and this, in its turn, leads to some animated physical comedy in its own right. Eventually Figaro takes to a cupboard for the day but Rivet sees the end of the film, where the vampire is caught in sunlight – and this cures him. He sets to lure Figaro into the sun.

Fun, snappy and just a little bit Burton-Goth. The episode's imdb page is here.

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