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6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Spark Plug remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Honestly? Probably not, unless you have a strange obsession with early animation or old-school horse racing tropes. If you like your cartoons to have a bit of a surreal, fever-dream quality, you might get a kick out of it. If you need a plot that makes sense or characters that aren't just bouncing around the screen, stay far away. 🐎
It’s the kind of short that feels like it was put together in an afternoon by someone who really liked drawing horses that look like they’ve seen too much. You’ve got Snuffy, who is about as expressive as a wooden fence, and then there’s Spark Plug, who spends half the runtime looking like he’s reconsidering every life choice he’s ever made.
The whole bit with Rudy the ostrich is just… weird. It’s supposed to be this charming friendship, but watching a horse hang out with a bird that looks like it’s vibrating on a different frequency is distracting. It reminds me a bit of the frantic, slightly unhinged energy you find in The New Teacher, where nothing is really grounded in reality.
There's a moment during the race where the camera just sort of gives up on tracking the action. It feels like the animators went on a coffee break and forgot to finish the middle frames. You can almost feel the movie trying to convince you that this horse is actually fast, even though it moves with the urgency of a Sunday afternoon nap.
It’s not as heavy-handed as something like Should a Woman Divorce?, but it shares that same weird, dated perspective on how stories should be told. It’s light, it’s forgettable, and it leaves you feeling a little confused about why you spent seven minutes watching an ostrich train a horse.
Maybe it’s the simplicity of it all that gets me. Sometimes a movie just needs to be a horse failing, then winning, and that's it. No grand lesson. No deep dive into the human condition. Just a horse and a bird. Sometimes that's enough to keep you awake for a few minutes while you wait for the kettle to boil. ☕
