Footrot Flats: A Dog`s (Tail) Tale
Dog finds life on Wal Footrot's 400 acres of swamp /farm is not easy, but it's not dull either. Trying to prevent Wal from using up valuable energy before the rugby game in which he hopes to be selected as an All Black, Dog falls from favour, spoiling Wal's Friday night date with girlfriend Cheeky. (…)
When the film was made Murray Ball's much-loved fictional Ureweras - inspired farming district, Raupo, celebrated in his cartoon strip Footrot Flats, was appearing in 120 newspapers in Australia and New Zealand and in translation in several other countries. (…)
Appealing principally to an adult audience the narrative wallows in things earthy and visceral - mud, sexual innuendo, the elimination of body waste - and sets up Herculean good / evil battles where the honest country underdog briefly triumphs. New Zealand, and to date only animated feature film was a huge success, grossing over $2 million at the local box office.
Helen Martin, New Zealand Film 1912 - 1996
Print courtesy of the New Zealand Film Archive Nga Kaitiaki of Nga Taonga Whitiahua with kind permission of John Barnett.
Murray Ball was born in 1937 in Feilding, New Zealand. He is cartoonist known for the wry social comment of his widely syndicated comic strips: Bruce the Barbarian and Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero. In 1976 Ball first published a strip called Footrot Flats in Wellington's afternoon newspaper, The Evening Post. Ball's Footrot Flats has appeared in syndication in international newspapers, and in over 30 published books. Footrot Flats inspired a stage musical,a theme-park and New Zealand's first feature-length animated film, Footrot Flats: The Dog's (Tail) Tale (1986).
Filmography:
1986 Footrot Flats: A Dog`s (Tail) Tale