KoKo's Earth Control

Quoting the Library of Congress's writeup on the National Film Registry website:

Imaginative, sassy, surreal and non-linear characterize films from the Fleischer Studios, which battled the Walt Disney Co. for animation supremacy during the 1920s and 1930s, with their competing styles delighting audiences and leading to many technical advancements. Among the contributions from Max and Dave Fleischer were rotoscoping and legendary characters such as Betty Boop, Popeye and KoKo the Clown. In this film, KoKo and Fitz the Dog gain power over the levers controlling Earth, to disastrous results. KoKo’s Earth Control has been photochemically restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from the original nitrate negative with main titles restored and a missing section enlarged from a supplemental 16mm source. Restoration funding provided by Jerry Beck, Will Ryan and the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood.

KoKo’s Earth Control was named to the National Film Registry in 2024.

The film is in the Public Domain; download or watch it at the Internet Archive or Wikimedia Commons


Tropes used in KoKo's Earth Control include:
  • The End of the World as We Know It: The whole point of the short. It even said so on the sign.
  • Inventional Wisdom: "Danger - Beware - Do Not Touch Earth Control - If this handle is pulled the world will come to an end"
    • Tempting Fate: So of course Fitz goes out of his way to pull the lever, despite KoKo's best efforts.
  • Losing Your Head: After the lever has been pulled, KoKo puts his head in the sand... and it gets stuck. He puts it back on his body, though.
  • Surrealism: The end of the world is very surreal for a low-budget 1920s film.
  • When Trees Attack: Although Fitz fights back.


This article is issued from All The Tropes. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.