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5.1/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.1/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. One Step Ahead of My Shadow remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Honestly, only if you have a soft spot for 1930s animation that feels like a collective hallucination. If you like your cartoons weird, dark, and slightly mean-spirited, you might get a kick out of this. If you need a coherent story or characters you can actually root for? Maybe skip it. It’s barely a few minutes long, but it feels like it lasts a lifetime.
The whole thing starts out simple enough. People are playing music. Everything is fine. Then this dragon shows up, and the vibe shifts instantly. The way it breaks out of that cage is just… aggressive. You can tell the animators were having way too much fun with the concept of a cranky, oversized lizard.
Okay, so someone decides the best way to handle a giant, angry dragon is to shove fireworks down its throat. I mean, that is one way to solve a problem. It’s the kind of logic you only see in cartoons from this era. It’s like, 'Oh, there’s a beast attacking the village? Light a fuse!'
Watching the dragon explode is one of those moments that sticks with you. And then it just keeps going. The fact that it turns into a walking dragon skeleton after the blast is just absurd. It’s not scary, it’s just strange. It’s got that same chaotic energy I remember from Spook Spoofing, where nothing really makes sense but you can’t look away.
It’s not as polished as the big studio stuff, but that’s the charm. It reminds me a bit of the rougher edges in Some Cave Man. Sometimes the animation just jitters in a way that feels intentional, but you know it’s just because they were probably underpaid and overworked.
You don't need to analyze the symbolism here. There isn't any. It’s just a dragon getting blown up, and then a skeleton dragon shuffling around. Sometimes a movie is just a series of drawings that move, and that’s perfectly fine by me. 🐉💥
