The Red
Balloon was on TCM
recently, and in it a red balloon is brutally murdered by a gang of young
toughs. And then all the balloons in the city fly off from the hands of
children everywhere (making them all cry and traumatizing them for life) and
come racing to the boy who loved the red balloon, lifting him up into the air
to fly over the city. This is such a great fantasy film, I have always wondered
what happens next? Does the boy lose his grip on the strings when his hands get
tired from holding up his whole body weight, and he plummets to his death? No,
actually, I think this is probably what happened:
Beginning where
the last film left off, we see the balloons carry the little boy up into the
air and across the sky, where he meets the demon he has summoned to get revenge
on the boys who killed his red balloon, promising the demon the souls of the
boys killed by the resurrected red balloon. And so the red balloon rises from
the dead, but this time it’s evil, like in Pet Sematary. Then the
balloon flies around to find each of the boys in the gang that killed it, but
makes sure to find each one alone. And so, after getting the attention of each
boy, and he tries to grab the balloon’s string, the balloon flies away just
enough to make him lean too far out a balcony and fall to his death, walk into
traffic and get run over by a bus, fall off a bridge, walk into a junkyard to
be mauled by guard dogs, walk off a cliff, walk off the end of a pier and
drown, walk onto train tacks to be hit by a train, etc. And once the red
balloon has killed them all, it sprouts devil horns that grow from the top, and
it flies away into the sky, carrying off the corpses of its slain murderers
with it (all hanging by the neck from its string) to deliver their souls to the
demon who made its revenge possible.
(So, do you think
anyone will make this revenge fantasy film about balloons? That would show
bully boys what will happen to them if they mess with the wrong balloon. {It is
a red balloon, after all, and red is the color of anger, revenge,
passion, and Satan in most representations in art, so they really should have
known better.})
