The Head of State is the main antagonist of the 2009 Czech stop-motion fantasy film Toys in the Attic. He is the tyrannical dictator of the east side of the attic.
He was played by Jirí Lábus in Czech and Douglas Urbanski in English.
Personality[]
The Head of State is an egotistical leader who believes himself to be far superior than all the other beings living in the attic. Despite being obsessed with having Buttercup by his side, he was perfectly fine in threatening to feed her to the doll-eating savages of his land should she refuse to marry him. He also acts somewhat hypocritical, as he refers to the toys of the west as vile beasts that dare bring harm to his land of peace, despite being much worse than them.
Biography[]
In the attic of an elderly woman's house, inanimate objects come to life when nobody is around. While the west side is comprised of toys that go about their lives like if they were real, the east side is comprised of a dictatorship with insects and rotting vegetables, with their leader being a bust of a bald man with sunglasses calling himself the Head of State. Using a long wired eyeball attached to a television, the Head monitors the west side of the attic, particularly through a hole in a trunk that the toys use as a house. Eventually, the Head observes Buttercup the doll and becomes infatuated with her appearance. Using a gloved extendable arm and a phone, the Head hacks into a small radio in the suitcase and attempts to woo Buttercup into joining him, but she stops it by cutting the radio wire.
Later, the Head uses the family cat into sabotaging a suitcase train by setting it on the wrong chalk tracks. While the other toys were distracted by the wreckage, a toy ladybug sneaks its way into the west side. Outside of the trunk, the ladybug opens to unleash multiple bugs into the suitcase, causing havoc amongst Buttercup's possession. The approach of the woman's granddaughter prompts them to take shelter back in the ladybug, while the girl places Buttercup on a shelf so she and her grandma could later fix the damage caused by the insects in the trunk. After the girl leaves, the cat sends Buttercup in the wrong direction back to the trunk, straight into the Head's territory. Using a speaker, the Head sarcastically welcomes her arrival before a dragon-like blanket abducts Buttercup and flies off.
Buttercup then finds herself trapped in a glass bottle, which is taken to the Head who introduces himself, claiming that he wants nothing from her but herself. Buttercup beckons to go back home, but the Head remarked that she was home. Kicking over the bottle, Buttercup tries to escape but fails, with the Head disappointedly remarking that they couldn't be friends like that and has his goons take her away and encage her within the chandelier on the roof. After some time, the Head asks Buttercup how she likes her new home and asks her to be his wife. Disgusted, Buttercup throws her pail of drinking water at the Head. Angered, the Head has Buttercup thrown into a wood burner that he uses as an ashtray for his cigars and forces her to clean it out, threatening her that the next time she refuses to accept his hand in marriage, she will be cooked and eaten by the vegetables.
Meanwhile, Buttercup's friends head towards the east side of the attic to rescue her, including Teddy the teddy bear, Sir Handsome the marionette, and Laurent the blob of plasticine. The Head monitors their adventure through his eye wire. He uses his extendable arm to open a closet containing blue sheets, which temporarily washes Teddy and Sir Handsome away. When the Head still sees them heading his way, he conducts a meeting with his men that the toys intend to carry out anti-state activities and threaten their "land of peace". Buttercup takes this opportunity to escape from the wood burner, only to be caught by the cat. While imprisoned again, the Head taunts Buttercup, comparing her to a caged bird trying to fly away. His earwig doctor suggests an idea to conduct an experiment on Buttercup, which the Head gladly lets him conduct.
Soon, a plane built by Madam Curie and the other toys comes to aid Teddy and Sir Handsome, only for its power cord to be yanked out before it could reach the other side of the attic. Seeing the toys together again, the Head instructs his men to release a long roll of black bin bags, which floods the attic. The toys take shelter in a tub they convert into a boat. He has his men fire a rock at the boat, causing it to capsize. Thinking they won, the evil toys celebrate with a party. However, once the bag ocean resides, the toys come out of the wreckage, where they see Buttercup seemingly brainwashed feeding the Head jelly. When they sneak their way into the bad toy territory, they come around multiple Buttercups, having been cloned to serve as the Head's slaves.
They eventually find the original Buttercup inside the steel cabinet that the Head was sitting on, but this activates an alarm that alerts the Head. Enraged (to the point of emitting steam from his mouth) that they would touch his most "beloved treasure", the Head rocks back and forth to slam the cabinet into the ground in desperation to crush the toys, indirectly destroying his empire in the process. Meanwhile, Laurent, who was trying to enter the east side through the roof, smashes through when an owl tries to grab him and smudges on the Head's glasses, blinding him. As the Head rocks the cabinet in a blind frenzy, the toys take this opportunity to place a pipe underneath the cabinet, making it rock even faster. Ultimately, the Head falls from his unstable cabinet and smashes into pieces upon landing on the concrete floor below. What remains of the Head and his empire is then sucked into Teddy's pocket watch.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Head is animated using a rubber cast with its mouth edited to match the actor's mouth. However, in a few certain shots, it is clearly comprised of the actor's real-life head painted silver.
- According to director Jiří Barta, the Head and his empire of the east represents his childhood when the Czech Republic was under a dictatorship during the Cold War.