Hi there, I just stumbled across your site the other day and I'm loving it! I've got a Name That Trauma that I've been wondering about for the past 30 years. Wow, typing that just made me even more aware of my own mortality. But that's another trauma.
The one in question was a series of animated shorts that came on PBS sometime in the mid-to-late ‘70s. I must have been about 5 and my sister and I were at my aunt and uncle's house and were left with our cousins in a spare bedroom to watch "cartoons". Well, the first one starts off nice and pleasant as a man goes frolicking around in a field catching butterflies in a net for his collection back home. He pins them into his little display box and they look very pretty, besides, bugs don't have feeling, right? Right?
Cut to his next collection session and out of nowhere, a huge, school bus sized butterfly swoops down and snatches him up by the scruff of his neck. As he struggles, the giant, animated Monarch flings him onto a thorn of an incredibly large flower impaling him! As he slides down further onto the huge thorn, we are panned back to see all the other unfortunate human specimens in the butterfly's collection.
There was another one with a guy cutting off the top of his own head and putting his brain in the refrigerator or something, but it was the butterfly one that really got me. Hopefully you can help me figure out just what the hell these demented shorts were!
Thanks and keep up the disturbing work,
Jeff R.
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! It appears to be a short from the International Festival of Animation.
Well, you definitely didn't dream it up, as I remember it too. I'd thought it was part of a feature film called Fantastic Animated Festival, which I remembered because of another traumatic (at least for me) animated short included in it called "Closed Mondays", about some drunk who sneaks into a museum and sees the artwork come to life, before he too becomes another exhibit while trying to escape. I tried looking it up for further details, but have to go out now, but maybe this will point you in the right direction – good luck!
Thank you so much Kahotep! That tip led me to some messageboards that named it as "The International Festival of Animation" and described the butterfly scene! My sister is going to sh*t! Haha. By the way, if anyone has a Karagarga invite lying around, I'd love to see if it's available on there.
jprochester@gmail.com