Up Close & Peculiar
More than 100 years ago, the globetrotting Robert Ripley began collecting artifacts from his journeys around the world, which today form the heart of the greatest collection of oddities ever assembled. Up Close & Peculiar brings the curious history of these pieces to a personal level as our very own, Allyson Iovino, explores the strange relics that lie within our Warehouse walls! Become a part of the story as we share pieces for every history buff, pop culture junkie, and oddities collector alike.
Today: The Nightmare Before Christmas Christmas Tree
We’re so used to seeing stop motion on the big screen today, with movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas being a Halloween (and Christmas!) classic at this point. But the history of stop motion goes further back than you might think.
Stop motion began with an 1898 film called, The Humpty Dumpty Circus . Filmmakers J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith made it only using the toys of Smith’s daughter. Smith saw that the toys had movable joints and decided to play around with them until a movie was made. Unfortunately, the movie has been lost to time, as there are no known copies in existence.
An early stop-motion film that can still be watched is The Cameraman’s Revenge , which came out in 1912. Filmmaker and insect collector Ladislas Starevich was commissioned to make an educational film about the life of stag beetles, when a few days into it, he realized that living bugs don't love being under bright studio lights.
He then decided to start experimenting with how he could make his dead bugs look alive! He made a few short films, which eventually led up to him making The Cameraman’s Revenge , which is generally considered to be the first example of stop-motion with specially made puppets. He made these puppets by attaching wheels and strings to the taxidermy insects he had in his collection, in order to make it easier for him to move them around.
From there, the floodgates opened to all sorts of stop-motion movies and shows like King Kong, Gumby, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer , as well as movies like 20 Million Miles to Earth , which Tim Burton says inspired him to start experimenting with stop-motion animation.
Do YOU want to get Up Close with even more iconic movie props? Visit a Ripley's Believe It or Not! near you!
December 24, 2024
Invented in Germany around 1610, tinsel was originally a luxury decoration made from hammered silver!
Robert Ripley began the Believe It or Not! cartoon in 1918. Today, Kieran Castaño is the eighth artist to continue the legacy of illustrating the world's longest-running syndicated cartoon!
