Post by Eddie on Jun 17, 2023 23:35:04 GMT
He Who Laughs Last (Cine Râde la Urmă) is an Romenian cartoon series consisted of 13 episodes, produced in the 80s by Animafilm Studios, the most famous Romenian cartoon studio of its time.
It combines a lot of Animafilm's most famous characters like Balanel the Dog, Miaunel the Little Cat, Manole the Bulldog, Tom the Nasty Cat (Motanul Pusy), The Sea Wolf (Lupul Volf) and Monk the Monkey (Maimutoiul Monk) in one single story. They all sail into an funny adventure to find the treasure of Captain Benito Bonito, that is hidden in Coco Island (Insula Cocos).
The cartoon was a great hit in Romania. It even had its own postage stamp at the time:
for some reason, Tom is referred here as "pisoiul" (kitten)
Sadly, the cartoon hasn't got any home media releases in Romania, so it's lost media ... at least in Romania.
Outside Romania, the cartoon was dubbed (poorly) into English and released on VHS by an comapny called Movie Master. It's name was translated to He Who Laughs Last, an direct translation of the original. An YouTube channel that focuses on Movie Master VHS tapes uploaded the 1st part of the series (the whole series was released on 2 different tapes):
The uploader said that he doesn't have the 2nd tape and is still on the hunt for it.
So, out of 13 episodes, only 5 were found. The other 8 episodes are lost media, as well as the original Romanian dub of the cartoon ... or is it really lost? The awnser is: no, not really!
There's an 2007 movie-documentary called "O Scurtă Poveste", that tells the story of Romanian animation and showcases some short films. Among them is a snippet of He Who Laughs Last in its original Romanian dub and in high quality!
go to timestamp 32:16
So the thing is: probably the episodes are not lost to time, but archived in the archive of an television studio or something, but isn't been available online yet. Let's hope it resurfaces!
It combines a lot of Animafilm's most famous characters like Balanel the Dog, Miaunel the Little Cat, Manole the Bulldog, Tom the Nasty Cat (Motanul Pusy), The Sea Wolf (Lupul Volf) and Monk the Monkey (Maimutoiul Monk) in one single story. They all sail into an funny adventure to find the treasure of Captain Benito Bonito, that is hidden in Coco Island (Insula Cocos).
The cartoon was a great hit in Romania. It even had its own postage stamp at the time:
for some reason, Tom is referred here as "pisoiul" (kitten)
Sadly, the cartoon hasn't got any home media releases in Romania, so it's lost media ... at least in Romania.
Outside Romania, the cartoon was dubbed (poorly) into English and released on VHS by an comapny called Movie Master. It's name was translated to He Who Laughs Last, an direct translation of the original. An YouTube channel that focuses on Movie Master VHS tapes uploaded the 1st part of the series (the whole series was released on 2 different tapes):
The uploader said that he doesn't have the 2nd tape and is still on the hunt for it.
So, out of 13 episodes, only 5 were found. The other 8 episodes are lost media, as well as the original Romanian dub of the cartoon ... or is it really lost? The awnser is: no, not really!
There's an 2007 movie-documentary called "O Scurtă Poveste", that tells the story of Romanian animation and showcases some short films. Among them is a snippet of He Who Laughs Last in its original Romanian dub and in high quality!
go to timestamp 32:16
So the thing is: probably the episodes are not lost to time, but archived in the archive of an television studio or something, but isn't been available online yet. Let's hope it resurfaces!
