PLOT: An all-powerful flower is at the center of stories about the rise and fall of gods and kings in this animated fantasy anthology.
REVIEW: A tribute to the works of Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, the animated fantasy film The Spine of Night was a labor of love for writers/directors Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King that took them the better part of a decade to complete and push out into the world. It’s quite impressive that they were able to pull this off, and they packed an epic story into a running time that falls just under 94 minutes.
The movie lets the viewer know right up front that this animated film is not for children: the first character we see is a fully nude woman, trudging up a mountainside, seemingly unaffected by the cold and the snow falling around her. This is the film’s heroine Tzod (voiced by Lucy Lawless), and she will never decide to start wearing clothes. Tzod has climbed this mountain to find a Guardian (Richard E. Grant) who stands watch over a bloom of blue flowers, keeping the outside world safe from the power this flower holds. Or so he thinks. He is unaware of the fact that spores from the flower blew away and took root in the swamp Tzod used to dwell in. Tzod is there to tell him of the horrific events that have occurred as a result of that flower falling into the wrong hands.
The Spine of Night then plays out like an anthology film, with Tzod and the Guardian catching each other up on world events, all of which revolve around this flower. We see how the flower was first discovered, in the aftermath of a massacre of gods. How it was stolen from Tzod by a scholar named Ghal-Sur (Jordan Douglas Smith), who used it to turn himself into a ruler with god-like powers. The story of Tzod and the flower being taken out of the swamp also involves a hapless would-be ruler called Pyrantin (Patton Oswalt) and his lackey Mongrel (Joe Manganiello). We hear the story of the conflict between noble scholar Phae-Agura (Betty Gabriel) and another scholar who was corrupted by the flower, Uruq Il-Irin (Malcolm Mills). And we see a trio of people who make themselves up like birds and have names like Kestrelwren (Abby Savage), Falconhawk (Tom Lipinski), and Sparrowcrow (Nina Lisandrello) take to the skies with their glider capes to sabotage Ghal-Sur’s steampunk flying war machine and attempt to assassinate this power-mad villain.
There are definitely some very cool ideas in The Spine of Night. There are awesome visuals, and it’s entertaining to see the amount of animated blood and guts that get splashed across the screen. The movie worked best for me when I was able to just sit back and let the visuals wash over me. The problem was the dialogue; there’s so much exposition and overwrought lines with mention of things like “the spine of night”, I started to find it maddening whenever I had to listen to the characters talk for too long. And they talk a lot. Hardcore fans of this brand of fantasy will probably get into the vibe of the dialogue, but I wanted these people to pull it back a bit.
The voice cast did well delivering the lines they were given, with Lawless and the writers/directors managing to make the naked swamp witch Tzod someone who is very likeable, the best character in the movie. Gabriel’s character Phae-Agura also stands out as one of the best, but she’s only in the movie for a very short period of time. While I wasn’t sold on Smith’s earliest lines as Ghal-Sur, I found that he got better the more evil his character becomes.
The rotoscope animation approach was perfect for bringing these stories to the screen, allowing Gelatt and King to show the viewer some spectacular sights. Thanks to the animation, we can see things like that aforementioned flying war machine, a villain with a giant eyeball opening in his abdomen, massive gods being slain, and people getting hacked to pieces. This movie couldn’t have existed in live action, it would have been too expensive.
The Spine of Night is worth checking out to see the blood-soaked insanity that Gelatt and King put so many years into creating. If you enjoy movies like Conan the Barbarian and its knock-offs and/or the Bakshi/Frazetta collaboration Fire and Ice, you’ll probably have some fun while watching this one.
The Spine of Night is now available to watch on the Shudder streaming service.