Happy Tree Friends Blood Sample AB

Friday I planned to sit down with a normal movie on DVD, but the wife and I decided to go out and I discovered that Big Lots had gotten in a fresh selection of $3 DVDs from Paramount.  I didn’t find the classics from the 30s that I tended to find in their Warner Bros. overstock sales, but I did find quite a few from the 70s and 80s (and a few from earlier as well).  By the time I got through looking through the DVDs and taking care of a couple of other things around the house, it was 10 PM.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem on a Friday, but I had promised to take my wife to work and pick up my daughter from her sleep over early on Saturday morning.  It was time to pull out the last of the Happy Tree Friends Blood Samples. 

The final of the 4 volumes has a cover with Giggles on it, a safety pin poking through her eyeball.  The cartoons on the disc include Eyes Cold Lemonade; where Petunia and Giggles open a lemonade stand and both get mutilated by a wooden sign that is not securely nailed in place, You’re Bakin’ Me Crazy has Giggles as a cookie selling scout that catches Lumpy at the wrong time (he’s cooking, ironing and wearing a towel that likes to slide off), Hide And Seek with Flippy flipping out to the sound of a woodpecker and killing the friends that are hiding, Let It Slide which features the gang at a water park, Housewarming; where Handy builds Petunia a tree house that bursts into flames, and Out On A Limb in which lumberjack Lumpy gets his leg trapped under a tree he has felled and must cut the leg off using only a spoon.

The smoochies this time are Giggles and Toothy, while the kringle has the group caroling and getting impaled by a falling icicle.  Like the previous three volumes, the humor you find in these cartoons will depend on your own sense of humor.  I love them and give this volume another 10 on the Night Flight scale.  And for the record, Eyes Cold Lemonade probably takes my vote as the grossest of the videos in the four volumes.  There is just something about a blind squirrel or chipmunk or whatever Giggles is supposed to be, slicing an eyeball in half, running it over a juicer, pouring off a glass of the bloody liquid that she thinks should be lemonade, and then drinking it, that  ranks as pretty darn stomach churning.  The fact that she adds sugar and ice before cutting off a round to hang over the rim of the glass like a lemon wedge just completes the gross out factor.  It makes the injury to the eye scene in Zombie look tame.

Happy Tree Friends Blood Sample O+

This week turned into a Happy Tree Friends week due to numerous time constraint factors.  Thursday night I needed something to fit in between Community and 30 Rock.  I decided on another Blood Sample mini disc and plopped in O+ with the cover featuring Shifty and Lifty the raccoon bandits.  The disc has the same make-up as the other discs; 6 cartoons, 2 smoochies, 1 kringle and 3 bonus features.

The cartoons on this disc include Wheelin’ And Dealin’; where Lifty and Shifty enter a race and steal parts of the other cars causing them to crash and kill their drivers, Milkin’ It; where Lifty and Shifty steal a cow in a hot air balloon and have to milk her down to skin and bones to keep from hitting a power line, Crazy Antics; where Sniffles tries to eat the inhabitants of an ant hill but ends up getting his tongue nailed to the table and torture inflicted upon him, It’s A Snap; where Lumpy has gotten caught in several bear traps trying to get some cheese, Shard At Work; where Handy tries to change a light bulb only to have it shatter in his mouth, and Icy You; where Nutty over indulges on slushee straight from the tap.

The smoochies feature Pop and Petunia, while the kringle has Cub playing with his Christmas toy electric train to catastrophic results.

Not a bad entry in the series and still a 10 on the Night Flight scale, this may have been one of the weaker entries in the Blood Sample collection.

Happy Tree Friends Blood Sample B

My daughter needed me to take her to a sleepover on Wednesday and the DVR was screaming for me to clear some space before Thursday night when Community, Parks & Recreation, The Office, 30 Rock, Archer and Project Runway all go looking for space to get recorded.  I needed something incredibly short, so it was back to the mini disc Happy Tree Friend Blood Samples. 

The second one in the series features Cuddles on the cover with one of his bunny ears chopped off.  As I mentioned in my review of Blood Sample A-, the Happy Tree Friends are like Care Bears or My Little Pony if they were written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and Takashi Miike.  They are extremely graphic and extremely violent.  They are also extremely funny if you have a twisted sense of humor.

The second volume features 6 cartoons, 2 smoochies, a kringle and some other bonuses.  The cartoons on this disc include Spin Fun Knowin’ Ya in which the little critters learn the dangers of asking Lumpy to spin the merry-go-round faster.  Class Act is a Christmas themed episode with the gang putting on a school Christmas play that ends with blood, gore, dismemberment and the school burning down and blowing up.  Chip Off The Ol’ Block has Pop and Cub mowing the grass.  Pop is dozing in the hammock as Cub pushes the mower.  When the little guy gets the blade stuck on a brick he reaches under to remove the obstruction.  Pop wakes up just in time to save his boy and take over the mowing.  Unfortunately Pop decides to run the mower over a pile of broken glass and syringes which get shot out the side of the mower hurling toward little Cub.  It’s a Happy Tree Friends cartoon.  These things never end well for the little animals.

Rounding out the cartoons are the two part Happy Trails featuring Lumpy as the bus driver on a trip that goes from bad to stranded on a deserted island patrolled by a hungry shark.  Keepin It Reel features the Tree Friends enjoying a movie until a strobing effect sends Flippy into a wartime flashback. 

The smoochies feature Cuddles and Sniffles.  Cuddles comes with three options that involve taking care of the little rabbit.  Sniffles allows you to give one of three objects to the brainy little aardvark.  The kringle has Lumpy skiing and impaling two of the tree friends on his skis.  The cheery holiday message: Hope I Run Into You This Season.

Another great collection of the Happy Tree Friends that easily rates a 10 on the Night Flight scale.

Happy Tree Friends Blood Sample A-

Tonight I had planned to watch and review the Something Weird Video of the Doris Wishman classic, Deadly Weapons with Chesty Morgan.  Unfortunately there was a soothing rain falling and despite watching the tale of a woman with a 73 inch bustline using her breasts to kill people, I began to fall asleep.  When killer breasts can’t keep you awake for 79 minutes, you know you need something incredibly short.  What better time to haul out the Blood Sample collection from Happy Tree Friends.

The Happy Tree Friends started as an Internet flash animation series.  The cartoons are only a few minutes long and feature colorful anthropomorphic animals that resemble Care Bears having wacky adventures and getting mutilated into bloody piles of goo.  Yep, it’s not for the kiddies.  Blood Sample A- features 6 cartoons, 2 Smoochies, 1 Kringle and 3 bonus features.  The first 2 cartoons star Flippy a green chipmunk that suffers from PTSD and has wartime flashbacks that end badly for the other characters.  In This Is Your Knife, the crackle of the campfire brings on memories of rocket fire and Flippy stabs Cuddles, disembowels him and uses his intestines to strangle Giggles.  Flaky tries to hide inside a sleeping bag which Flippy picks up and tosses on the fire, roasting the little porcupine inside.  The cartoon ends with Flippy roasting marshmallows over the campfire. 

Flippin’ Burgers, which just happens to be the second cartoon on this disc, was the first Happy Tree Friends cartoon I ever saw.  A coworker from Pizza Hut showed it to me and got me hooked.  The plot of this cartoon has Flippy having another war flashback after mistaking the ketchup stain on a tree friends blouse for blood.  This leads to stabbings, ketchup bottle impalement, and a head bashing ont a hot grill.  The episode ends with Flippy dipping a French fry into a pool of ketchup. 

Other cartoons on the disc include Eye Candy involving Toothy the beaver accidentally popping her eye out and getting it wrapped around a tree branch, Treasure These Idol Moments with an evil idol that makes that Brady Bunch tiki idol seem like a piker, Nuttin’ But The Tooth where Nutty the candy loving rodent attempts to have a tooth pulled, and Better Off Bread where Splendid the flying squirrel with super powers tries to save several of the tree friends only to end up burning the bread he was cooking.  Needless to sy the rescues don’t go too well and like Superman he has to fly around the Earth to reverse time so his bread can be taken out of the oven before it burns. 

The disc also features 2 Smoochies where you get to choose what item to give to a tree friend.  No matter what you give them, they end up killing themselves.  There is also a Kringle which is a flash animated Christmas card.  In this Kringle, one of the tree friends finds a reindeer that promptly kick and stomps the little critter to death.  The message then pops up, “Hope You Get A Kick Out Of The Holiday”.

You have to enjoy this sort of twisted dark humor to enjoy Happy Tree Friends.  If you do, this disc has a nice selection.  There are 4 discs in the Blood Sample collection.  They are actually mini DVDs, but they are packed with content.  There are also several larger full size DVD collections and box sets of the Happy Tree Friends TV series that aired on cable channel G4.  I picked up the Blood Samples several years ago during a clearance sale at Hot Topic. 

On the Night Flight scale, I have to give Happy Tree Friends a perfect 10.  Some episodes are better than others, but they all entertain that twisted part of my soul.