Buxton the Blue Cat

A feature-length Magic Roundabout adventure featuring Dougal, Florence, Zebedee, Dylan and the rest of the tv familiars alongside a new 'wicked' star, Buxton the evil Blue Cat. Here's the plot:

All is not well in the Magic Garden. Buxton the Blue Cat has arrived with evil intentions. Coerced into action by the mysterious voice of Madam Blue, Buxton enters the ruins of the old treacle factory and crowns himself King Buxton, whereupon he unleashes a swathe of - well - blueness upon the land. Blue flowers, blue prickly cacti, blue lettuces and more. Wicked Buxton takes the Magic Roundabout gang into custody in the caves below the factory. He even steals Zebedee's precious magic moustache! The world appears doomed, but for the indomitable Dougal, who colours his golden coat blue and enters the factory to confront the marauding moggy. After much mauve madness which takes Dougal and Buxton to the moon and back, evil is defeated, blueness banished from the Magic Garden and a cool and colourful cacophony restored...

"Dougal and the Blue Cat" was written and directed by Eric Thompson, adapting the work of Serge Danot's animation team in the same way that he'd adapted the original tv series and transformed it into something uniquely different. And boy is this different, an absorbing dip into a surreal world with extraordinary animation design, subtext buried in nonsense, and hummable songs to boot. Like Yellow Submarine before it, thie film takes you on a colourful, almost unfathomable trip. The plot meanders and experiments with dramatic contrasts of tone and style. Witness those jarring and actually, quite frightening, scenes in the seven rooms of the treacle factory, or the intrusion of Buxton's blue soldiers as they sing and goosestep away to take over the Magic Garden. And just what is implied by Buxton's "calling", and who exactly - or what - is Madam Blue?

Does it all mean something more profound? - Maybe. Possibly. Probably not, even. It's still a fascinating trip.

Interesting to note how Dougal's movie and "Yellow Submarine" share similar blue protagonists too (The Blue Meanies, Madam Blue and the Blue Soldiers). In animated circles, at least, as we entered the 70s the enemy was blueness in all its forms. Indeed there are numerous witty references here to the state of Britain's railways, the monarchy and dominating all, the political metaphor for blueness that was Conservatism and all that it stood for at the time...

"Dougal and the Blue Cat" was actually introduced in to the court case brought against the Scala Cinema, a rep cinema in London, by Stanley Kubrick's estate in 1995. Scala owners were punished for using the Dougal movie listing as a cover for secret screenings of "A Clockwork Orange" - banned from cinemas in this country by Kubrick himself, until his death.

By the way, Eric Thompson's actress wife Phyllida Law, appeared on Channel Four's "Top 100 Kids Shows" programme back in August 2001 where she rubbished all claims concerning "The Magic Roundabout"s often-discussed "druggy" references. Could it all just be another Urban Myth, like those supposed sexual references in Captain Pugwash? I guess we'll never know for sure, but there has to be some deeper meaning to the scene in the film where that hippy hare Dylan gets all befuddled by the magic mushrooms that have sprung up around him.

"Dougal and the Blue Cat" is an extraordinary film, fantastically removed from its tv predecessor and still a fascinating work thirty years on from its premiere...

Meanwhile, a brand new CGI Magic Roundabout film has now been co-produced by bolexbrothers for Pathe films. This one is blue too, but there's no cat. Instead we have Zeebad, an evil blue version of Zebadee who seeks to turn the whole world icey blue...