On a recommendation from Cartoon Brew, I saw this bizarre educational short about bicycle safety, with art direction by Disney artist Ralph Hulett, on Google. Narrated by Edward Everett Horton (best known to modern day viewers for his Fractured Fairly Tales voice-over), One Got Fat has most of the kids in monkey masks and tails suffering one bike accident after another (and not being able to tell the tale) to sound and visual cartoon effects. Only one kid who followed the rules of bike safety was human and he got to eat all his buddies lunches, hence the title...Horton provides amusing commentary especially when he keeps saying, "Right?...Right." Since I'm used to SNL sketches in which characters bleed and die, this short didn't scare me much but I can sympathize with anyone who had nightmares after seeing this in elementary grade school classes for years. Of course, maybe the bland music didn't help...
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tavm2 December 2006
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Someone set out to make a cute, humorous little film to teach the kiddies about bike safety.
What came out the other end was a bizarre and disturbing surrealist vision of a world gone mad.
Kids in cheap ape masks getting run down by cars and steamrollers accompanied by cartoon explosions and "boing" effects, all narrated with relentless chipperness by the great Edward Everett Horton.
It's just weird. -
dmanyc11 October 2012ONE GOT FAT. That's the name of this very strange educational short film from the '60s. From the title alone, you wouldn't know it was suppose to be an educational short film on bicycle safety. After watching it (either by itself or RiffTrax), you still won't see it as an educational short film. You'll see it as the weirdest short film since Mr. B Natural. These monkeys make the PLANET OF THE APES apes look normal in comparison. Creepiest. Masks. Ever. No, this is not suppose to be a horror short, but if I was a kid watching this, I'd have nightmares for days or never step foot in a zoo ever again.
Rooty = stopped making hand signals
Tink = forgot to watch street signs
Floog = riding on the left side of the street
Mossby = too distracted to get license and registration and lost his bike
Slim = riding on Trigby's bike
Trigby = blocked by Slim's body and both fell in manhole
Nel = riding on sidewalk and running into pedestrians
Filbert = riding bike that's falling apart and no brakes
Stan = riding with no lights nor reflectors
Orv = not a monkey; gets fat
Don't say you weren't warned. The five stars is for RiffTrax for their great riffing of this. -
Cujo1089 May 2010I caught this warped educational short on TCM a few weeks back. Detailing bicycle safety, the short follows ten kids as they ride their bicycles to the park for a picnic. These aren't ordinary kids, however, as they're wearing bizarre monkey masks and spring-like tails. During their little trip, the kids begin dropping like flies when they ignore proper bicycle safety rules. The cheerful music and Edward Everett Horton's jovial narration are in stark contrast to what we witness on screen as the kids are brutalized by steamrollers, trucks and open manholes. Each incident is accompanied by cartoon flashes and sound effects, not to mention the horrified expressions of the kids as their eyes bulge out of their sockets and right through the masks.
I can imagine this thing scaring the hell out of impressionable kids back in the 60's. I wouldn't be surprised if it put some of them off of biking for good. The delightful tone makes the short seem even more sinister in nature than it would have otherwise. It seems to be taking glee in watching these kids pay dearly for their irresponsibility. I can't see the director or anyone else involved intending it to turn out this way, but I'm glad that it did. What could have been another boring ol' safety video instead turned into something bordering on sadism. It's damned entertaining too, particularly if you're someone who has an affinity for the terminally weird. I fall into that category. -
classicsoncall2 February 2016If it was 1963 and I were watching this I would have believed it was made fifty years earlier. But I was twelve years old that year and I don't recall watching anything as remotely goofy as this. I certainly would have been a prime candidate for the safety message here as my friends and I took our bikes everywhere, but I don't think any of us would have been able to stop laughing at the total absurdity of this flick. It might have passed muster as a message film if they dispensed with the monkey masks and spring tails, but looking like these bikers just hailed from the Planet of the Apes was just asking for trouble. If it were worth the time I'd walk through each of the potential dangers these kids faced but reviewers 'ethylester' and 'dmanyc' have already done that, so check those out if need be. The one that really baffled me was making sure your bike was licensed and registered. With who? Is that required today? I might need a refresher course on bicycle safety. Is One Got Fat any relation to Yun Fat Chow?
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la_cultura16 January 2006This short film was narrated by the same guy that did "Fractured Fairy Tales" on Rocky and Bullwinkle. That's about as far as the whole "kids' short" thing goes.
I saw this film a couple of times as a primary school student in Cortland, NY, around 1975-1978, and here it is now (2006) and it still gives me the creeps. If its goal was to teach bike safety, all it really succeeded in doing was to scare the bloody heck out of me and make me never want to go near a bicycle (or any lower primates) ever again. The blithe, almost gleeful, manner in which these lawbreaking bike-riders meet their bloody fates is slightly beyond macabre and and just short of satanic. For two of the ill-fated ape-boys, just before they are bumped off, they are shown with a look of horror on their faces with their eyes bulging out in panic -- not unlike you might see in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon -- except that here it is unexpected because of the low production values (special effects? in a 1963 bike safety flick?) and because it is unexpected and not for comic effect, and it is just a few frames - the image is almost subliminal. Very haunting. The end result, if you're a single-digit age viewer of a bygone era (pre Grand-Theft-Auto, etc...) such a thing might just scare the bejeezus out of you.
In historical retrospect, it joins such classics as the 60s and 70s anti-drug scare films common to grade school health classes, and such foot-tapping Drivers Ed classics like Crimson Asphalt. -
Horst_In_Translation8 February 2016"One Got Fat" is a 15-minute live action short film from over 50 years ago that could be called an educational movie on how to ride your bike properly by some and complete garbage by others. This was made five years before the classic "Planet of the Apes", but this is a bit of "Planet of the Apes on Bikes". I guessed this was inspired by the feature film, which would at least give an explanation for the ridiculous masks, but nope it wasn't. I cannot take this little film seriously, I wonder if the writer was on drugs when he came up with it. The writer and director is Dale Jennings and unsurprisingly this is the only credit in his filmography. The narrator is probably the only somewhat known cast member as he (Edward Everett Horton) has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The only reason why this little movie does not have a terrible IMDb rating as some other educational films from that era is probably that it wasn't spoofed by MST3000, which shows how most people are not really capable of making their own opinion without watching the embarrassing MST3k guys. I myself did not enjoy this movie. It's probably a blast when you're on mushrooms, but only then. Not recommended.
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ethylester1 March 2004YES, this film is wacko. The kids have weird names like Rooty Toot. Their ape masks look cheap, but where in the world would you find such a great looking monkey mask today without getting skin cancer? That was no ordinary mask!
The title "one got fat" refers to Orv, the hero of the film who is "not a monkey" and knows all about bike safety, unlike the other children who are all killed (!), injured or left behind somehow because of their negligence. See, Orv was the boy carrying everybody's sack lunches in his bike basket to go to the park for a picnic. One all his cycle mates are... removed... he gets everyone's lunch! Hence - "one got fat".
If you watch closely, before each child gets hit by a car or what have you, the mask suddenly grows giant eyeballs that bulge out of their sockets in horror.
So kids, remember:
1) License your bike or you'll be afoot and your shoes will smolder from running alongside your biking friends.
2) Use reflectors and lights, especially when you ride through a highway tunnel. You are liable to get smashed head-on by oncoming traffic in the pitch black!
3) Ride on the right side of the road or you might flip yourself over a car pulling out of a parking space.
4) Keep your mind on riding and watch the traffic signs or you might miss a stop sign and smash into a semi truck that is crossing the road.
5) Use your hand signals or you might get run over.
6) Don't ride on the sidewalk or you might run over a couple of housewives carrying groceries who end up in a tree.
7) Don't ride double or you'll fall down a manhole into the sewer - bike and all!
8) Tune up your bike or your brakes might fail unexpectedly and force you to be squashed by the oncoming steamroller!
If you do all these things, you might also get fat though, because you will be forced to eat the lunches of all your dead or hospitalized friends. -
I should begin by saying all the bicycle safety advice is perfectly reasonable and not overwrought.
But, within the fictional world of the film, it's certainly strange to see the kids carry on with their picnic trip as their friends drop like flies - one per block - ending up hospitalized (or worse?).
Edward Everett Horton is of course best remembered for the Fractured Fairy Tales of the Rocky & Bullwinkle, from around the same time as this movie.
But he had a solid career as a straight man in some of the better comedies of the 1930s
Anyway, Horton's narration is the best thing about this film, but it's worth seeing for the weirdness, as others have said.
Look for it on TCM, as one of their unannounced "TCM extras" between feature films. -
MartianOctocretr519 January 2013Absolutely hilarious.
This is one of those educational films they used to show elementary and junior high aged kids in class; this one deals with encouraging kids to follow rules of safety, proper use, and care of the bicycle. It makes its point of the seriousness of safety, by indulging in humorously bizarre images and exaggeration.
Enter our heroes: a bunch of monkeys bicycling together; who each in turn dramatically suffers ill consequences for a variety of foolish "what-not-to-do" blunders. These range from violating several traffic safety rules to failing to keep proper maintenance of the bike. The "collision" sequences use cartoonish sound effects and animation. I love the bulging eyes surprised looks on the monkey masks as they make their respective exits. Except for Edward Everett Horton's brightly comical narration, nobody speaks (I guess monkeys don't talk), but the body- language expressions of the hapless bike riders says it all anyway. Oddly enough, the remaining monkeys never seem to notice the disappearances, or the their own steadily declining numbers.
Find it, and run it with some friends. Not to be missed. -
srnumber910 February 2015I remember this from Elementary School on 16mm. It is kind of brutal, but it makes its point: there are rules, reasons for the rules, and consequences for breaking the rules.
It's kind of cheerfully macabre, but over 40 years later I remember it, and that I should ride with traffic, obey stop signs and not ride two on a bike!
-let's give it some credit: for the sake of a few fictional (and humorous) deaths and injuries, it's entirely possible this saved real lives.
(They just need a 10th monkey who forgot his helmet for the remake!) -
Hitchcoc3 February 2015I'm rating this a 9 because it is so hilarious, so out of the norm, that it actually works. In 1963 there were these weird public service announcements that were designed to scare the crap out of little kids. A group of monkey/kids (actual children with monkey tails and monkey masks) each do something wrong with their bikes, leading to death or mutilation. Each has a bag lunch with his or her name on it, and as they are destroyed, there is a close-up of their lunch bag. Edward Everett Horton, one of the most famous voice over guys of his time (remember "Fractured Fairy Tales) narrates in his kind of happy way as the bikers are being annihilated. This is truly a representation of adult scare tactics. Yet, as an historical piece, it is really interesting.
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planktonrules16 January 2016I am not exactly sure why I watched this short film, but I do recommend you see it just because it's so incredibly creepy and strange. It's currently on YouTube and it's worth wasting 15 of your life watching it.
The film is a very moralistic tale about bicycle safety that was marketed towards kids. But it's very different for several reasons. While it's cheaply made, they somehow got Edward Everett Horton to narrate the thing and, as usual, he's excellent. Also, instead of showing children, they made grotesque and creepy monkey masks and tails for them to wear. It's hellishly creepy, believe me.
As the narrator tells the story about a group of kids riding to a picnic on their bicycles, each of the monkey kids illustrate how NOT to ride your bike. Several seem about to die or be mangled but in each case they down (thankfully) show the collision. At the end, you do see one in a hospital bed...covered in bandages and casts.
I'm not going to give this one a numerical score. It's because I don't think this was intended as anything more than a film they showed kids in school to scare them into being good. Plus, the print is scratchy and ugly and not exactly fun unless you have a weird sense of humor like I do. -
rab1-329 April 2010...and we're the luckier for it.
First of all, though, I can't help wondering how the state of Georgia could have thought this was a good idea (a Department of Education logo is proudly displayed at the beginning).
"One Got Fat" is definitely not for everybody. The short can be viewed on so many different levels, ranging from absurdist to alarmist (and all points in between). This thing is a bipolar surrealist's fantasy/dream/nightmare. The monkey face-masks alone, capable of expressing everything from laughter to stark, naked horror are about as cool as anything I've seen in a very long time. The "wipe-outs" are all horrifically comical.
That said, I can't help feeling that some well-intentioned people somehow detoured down a very dark, twisted ill-advised road. The happy-happy music, alongside Edward Everett Horton's always charming delivery, is in stark contrast to the harshest of realities.
Or something like that. -
One Got Fat is a bicycle safety video. In the short, a group of "kids" plan to ride their bikes nine blocks for a picnic. One kid has a large basket - big enough to hold everyone's lunch. The title refers to the one kid who actually made it to the picnic without having an accident or something else stop him. He ate all the lunches and got fat. The children who don't make it to the picnic are all dressed in monkey masks. The moral is don't be a monkey - practice safety when riding your bike.
One Got Fat is especially creepy and dark. The frozen-face monkey masks are the stuff of nightmares. It doesn't help that just before each child has an accident, their eyes bulge out of the mask. It's quite a sight. As for dark, the whole premise of the video is that nine kids don't make it to the picnic. They're hit by cars, run over by road equipment, slam into pedestrian, or suffer some other horrifying accident. All the while, we hear the bright, chipper voice of Edward Everett Horton narrating events. Horton's melodious style is a stark contrast to the images on the screen. It's a bizarre experience.
Was One Got Fat effective? Yes. While it may take it's time getting the message out, I don't think anyone who watches this would forget basic bicycle safety. Was One Got Fat entertaining? In a weird way, it was. It's not a laugh a minute, but it's hard to turn away from the surrealistic images on-screen. I'm giving it an 8/10. -
Michael_Elliott31 May 2010One Got Fat (1963)
*** (out of 4)
A rather hilarious bicycle-safety film has ten kids going to the park for a picnic but they don't follow the safety rules so one by one they are hit by cars. Yes, a film showing kids being hit by cars so you know it has to be one of those now legendary safety films that contain enough unintentional laughs for ten films. The funniest thing is that the kids have monkey masks on as well as long rat tails so seeing them is funny enough. We then get fifteen straight minutes of one kid after another making a mistake and being ran over. One poor sap gets it from a steam roller. None of the actual crashes are seen as we instead get silly cutaways and sound effects. You really can't judge films like this for acting or directing but instead you just rate them on their entertainment level and this one here is pretty high. The entire thing is full of campy moments and it's creepy enough to make you not want to turn your eyes away. -
durrant4145@rogers.com19 June 2008ONE GOT FAT is a short film narrated by Edward Everett Horton - who portrayed Fred Astaire's sidekick in THE GAY Divorcée - and probably written by my favourite childhood author, Richard Scarry. It features a group of ten friends who go out one day to a park for a picnic. Each of the monkeys rides dangerously and gets knocked out of the picture one by one, breaking the law of the time (as a boy, I never had to register either of my bicycles). Only one of the ten friends makes it to the picnic site; the short is based on the childhood game "Ten Little Monkeys/Ten Little Indians." And he turns out not to be a monkey at all, but a normal human boy. Despite the low budget, the masks are astounding and the sound effects accurate. The bicycle safety tips are still accurate, except for one - the idea of licensing your bike. In none of the bicycle safety films I have seen as a child was this issue discussed, and it did not appear in either of the books I have read on the subject(perhaps because a bike was not considered to be a motor vehicle); this movie loses two points for being dated.
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Hereafter1 December 2004We'An early 60's documentary on bicycle road safety. This god forsaken nightmare has me reeling, There is no were to grasp, no safety nets. What is happening here? Trigby Phipps? Mossby Pomegranate? I can't help but feel an occasional undertone of apocalyptic human devastation manifest throughout the narrative, a hidden message about our doomed civilization. You may need some heavy duty counseling after sitting through this. ... a sensation. Dam! I need three more lines so that the IMDb accepts this review and I don't know what to write. Maybe if I just rattle on for just a few more words than that should just about be all the lines I need then I can have a hot chocolate and go to bed. There, all done :)
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. . . is patterned after the classic Agatha Christie story (and corresponding films) sometimes titled AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (a.k.a., TEN LITTLE INDIANS, a.k.a., TEN LITTLE N-words). We see approximately ten members here of a local Ride Your Bike While Wearing a Monkey Mask Club setting off for a picnic. Naturally, the nerdy boy who follows all the rules has the biggest bicycle basket of the bunch. It should go without saying that all the other kids put their sack lunches into this nerd's rolling baggage bin. So as Nerd Boy rides super-cautiously toward the back of the pack, his friends commit various biking rule violations and consequently get T-Boned, steam-rolled, veered into, railroaded, man-holed, creamed, and Salad-Shootered one-by-one, until Mr. Pokey is the only one left. Though Master N's mom has no doubt prepared him a lunch of cucumber sandwiches, his chunky friends were all packing Baconators and Triple Cheeseburgers slathered in Mayo. As the title proclaims, Orville-the-Nerd eats ALL the lunches in homage to his fallen friends, gets fat (think the Blueberry Girl in Willie Wonka), and--EXPLODES!!
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jeremycrimsonfox4 July 2021One Got Fat may be a silly PSA, but it does a good job scaring kids into being safe when riding their bikes. Narrated by Edward Everett Horton (the same man who narrates the Fractured Fairytales segments of The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show), One Got Fat is a tale of ten kids who are riding their bikes to a picnic. However, all the kids are wearing monkey masks (with matching tails) and one by one, a select kid gets careless and end up getting into horrible accidents (although the movie does censor it with a cartoon noise and explosion to keep from traumatizing kids, although one kid gets a most traumatizing death) for not being safe (either forgetting something important or they decide to stop for some silly reason). Yeah, it may look silly, but the accidents can actually occur in real life, and cause injury or even death (or in the case of one character, arrested). This is a good PSA, but not one that would be shown to today's kids due to how graphic it can be.
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Bolesroor28 April 2010"One Got Fat" is a bicycle safety film from 1963... so why are we still talking about it? Simply put, it's an off-key attempt at ironic humor that fails on every level... it's a kiddie snuff film, and a perverse one at that.
Gleefully narrated by Edward Everett Horton, the movie teaches bicycle safety through the story of ten children who each violate one of the Schwinn Commandments and suffer death. To cartoon sound effects. And did I mention the children are faceless monkeys wearing nightmarish ape masks?
What might have been funny, what might have been twisted or lovably dark is rendered cold, cruel... the underlying message that ignoring or flaunting society's standards and rules will earn you an instant, well-deserved death is sickening. "Step out of line, the man come and take you away..."
"One Got Fat" is still available on Google and/or YouTube if you have a taste for adventure. Personally I like to forget my nightmares...