Tomb

Remember Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969)? This well-loved animated film lasts about one minute and 40 seconds, and of that running time, one minute and 39 seconds are credits. “Bambi Meets Godzilla” goes to “Written by Marv Newland,” on to “Screenplay by Marv Newland,” “Choreography by Marv Newland,” and so on.

Then... splat! A scaly foot obliterates Bambi, and the end credits roll.

The film is short, cheap and funny. Its impact on the current short film industry cannot be overstated. Nobody expected the movie to end in the most obvious way imaginable, and the brevity of the story made a perfect punchline.

Back then, people didn’t think that films could actually be that short, and the revelation that a few seconds of hilarity could actually be called “a film” changed everything. Today, we watch hundreds of tiny movies on our computers and smart phones.

Newland wasn’t the only innovator in the pre-Internet field of micro movies. Len Cella made a name for himself by cranking out loads of quickie comedies that got substantial coverage on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, and later on Dick Clark’s TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes (1984 to 1986). Cella’s films are a one-man operation — he is the sole actor and crew member. Some of his films are hilarious, some are insane and some make no God damn sense. All of them are only seconds in length, so audiences often settle into a kind of viewing fugue in which film after film washes over their glazed eyes, occasionally inspiring barely explicable laughter.

Shall I describe a few of Cella’s creations? Might as well — they’re pretty quick. In Bad Transplant, Cella stares blankly into the camera and, he says in his monotone, “My operation didn’t turn out so good. They didn’t have any fingers left so they gave me a monkey’s tail.” He pauses to look at his hand, which now sports a furry appendage. “It ain’t worth a damn.”

In another film, Bowling Ball Imitation, Cella gently rolls across his lawn with a black circle of paper taped to the top of his head.

Cella’s films have been collected on two long-out-of-print VHS tapes called Moron Movies (1985) and More Moron Movies (1986). Opinions on the entertainment value of these tapes tend to vary considerably.

Now that the Internet is making it easy for new filmmakers to share their miniature creations, the field of ultra-short films is ever-growing and exciting. 5secondfilms.com has been cranking out a series of hilarious films, each with a running time of (you guessed it) five seconds. Well, that doesn’t include the two-second title card and the one-second “The End” card, so I guess these are technically eight-second films, but hey, shut the fuck up. The website has been up for years, so there’s quite a large archive to browse through. Films such as Sex Kitten, Last Anchor Standing, Johnny Quickdeath Goes Scissorjogging and The Day Before Yesterday When Everything Was OK and There Weren’t Any Zombies are certainly worth the minimal time commitment it takes to watch them. The five-(or eight-)second time limit gives each film just enough time for maybe two lines of dialogue and a sight gag, and really, what more do you need?