Pinocchio and The Emperor of the Night (1987), anyone seen it?

It's a really cool and very dark animated fantasy that continues on the original fairy tale about a mysterious creepy carnival comes to town, Pinocchio who is human just had his first birthday and must do an important task for his dad as he must bring a jewel box to the mayor for 10 gold pieces. However he makes a fool of himself by being swindled by a raccoon and his monkey assistant for a worthless fake ruby, it makes his dad so upset that Pinocchio decides to run away to join the carnival for he falls for a beautiful girl puppet and is changed back into a puppet no thanks to an evil puppet master named Puppetino. He does escape however, to find the two scumbags that swindled him to get the jewel box back for they go after the carnival and end up in the hellish nightmarish yet Las Vegas-esque realm of the empire of the night conducted by the evil Emperor.

Very entertaining and well animated flick from Filmation (The guys that did "He-Man", "She-Ra", "Fat Albert" and "Bravestarr") that has a couple of good songs like the haunting "Love is the Light Inside Your Heart", the jazzy "Neon Cabret" and the best one which is the toe-tapping "You're a Star". It has the voices of James Earl Jones, Tom Bosley ("Happy Days"), Scott Grimes ("Critters 1 & 2" and "American Dad"), Don Knotts, and Ed Asner! i remembered when i was 5 watching this movie in a mall theater back in 1987 on christmas night, it scared the living crap out of me but now i love it for it's one of my favorite cartoon movies. There are some dark moments like the absolutely horrifying sequence where Pinocchio is under the control of the evil puppet master as he's slowly changing back into a puppet for we see hundreds of puppets in close-up looking at us as the villainous Puppetino laughs maniacally with creepy music playing.

Recommended!

 

i remember this film, i had it on vhs

i can remember thinking as a kid where was jimeny cricket!!!

 

I have it on DVD-R after transfering the tape to it, do you ever find the scene where Pinocchio becomes a puppet again no thanks to Puppetino scary as hell? that scene haunted me since i was six but now i don't think it's as scary but still gives me chills.

And does anyone think the idea of a young man lusting over a girl puppet kind of creepy? i mean Twinkle is an inanimate object for god's sake and there's a scene where Pinocchio escapes from the carnival as he finds a discarded poster of Twinkle then he sighs over it with love in his eyes then decides to put it in his shirt pocket for later, i mean plu-eese.