Continuing its mind-expanding explorations of European animation in all its psychedelic varieties, Deaf Crocodile turns its ear to the Soviet Union from the early '50s to the early '80s with two Blu-ray releases, Treasures of Soviet Animation 1 and 2. Each one contains three films of wildly varying lengths with a sci-fi or fantasy bent, though they play like absolutely nothing else out there.

Volume one's longest entry, 1981's Mystery of the Third Planet, is the only one from Roman Kachanov, a veteran of the studio Soyuzmultfilm who made multiple pioneering features and shorts with drawn and stop-motion techniques. Extremely popular with local audiences, this one feels like a Saturday morning cartoon dosed with acid as we follow the crew of the ship Pegasus -- burly and bearded Captain Zelyony, scrawny Professor Seleznyov, and his little daughter Alisa -- who get a tip during a stop on the moon about a galactic museum that could help on their rare animal scouting mission for the Moscow Zoo back on Earth. Their interplanetary journey sends them after the seemingly extinct breed of Chatterbird, with the sabotaging Dr. Verkhovtsev trying to disrupt them for his own reasons. Also on hand is the huge, multi-handed alien archaeologist Gromozeka, who plays a key role in their latest adventure. With its vibrant colors and expressive, detailed animation, this is a great way to dive into the set. The swift pacing, oddball characters, and funky pseudo-classical score make for a fun place to swirl around in for less than an hour, and it's no wonder a cult following built up around it. The transfer here looks beautiful (as with the other titles in the sets) with excellent detail and fine film grain. The Russian 2.0 mono track sounds pristine and comes with optional English or English SDH subtitles. A new commentary by Adam Rackoff, James Hancock and Martin Kessler is great accompaniment as well as they talk about the various pop culture spin-offs of this film (action figures!), the complex nature of the soundtrack, the possible influence of Yellow Submarine, the two different English dubs that were created (not on this disc but easily accessible if you're curious), and the animation techniques that give the film extra charm like having the characters always moving in some way. The video essay "Roman Kachanov and The Mystery of the Third Planet" by Evan Chester ((21m11s)) covers the director's life after his military service as he was trained in animation and worked up to becoming a beloved figure for young and old alike, with this film being one of his pivotal works.

Also on the disc are two Soyuzmultfilm films by animator Vladimiar Tarasov starting with the short but intense The Return from 1980. Here a cosmonaut in hypersleep won't wake up as his descent to Earth approaches, with ground control and the ship itself trying to rouse him from his vivid daydreams or memories focused around childhood and floating in space. Eventually a novel yet simple solution seems to present itself. Very much in keeping with the tone of David Bowie's Major Tom cycle, this is a beautiful and hypnotic vignette. Running much longer at half an hour is Tarasov's The Pass from 1988, written by Kir Bulychov from a portion of his novel The Settlement. Essentially it's a snapshot in the existence of survivors of a spaceship crash who are now stranded on a harsh planet inhabited by alien lifeforms. The young of them, Oleg, was a baby when they arrived, and now they live far from the crash site. When a trip back to the ship is necessary, Oleg and three others make the trek by foot and reconnect with their earthly existence while finding a renewed sense of purpose. The animation here is moody and beautiful with wild shades of yellow and red, including a spellbinding storytelling sequence around candlelight, and the environment is give a great deal of attention and detail that would put many feature-length films to shame. Specs are the same here, and the same trio return for an audio commentary covering comparisons to the source novel (which has more of a split narrative), the beautiful nuances of the animation and use of color, the unorthodox score choices, and ties to the rest of his work. Chester is also back with another video essay, "Vladimir Tarasov" (17m20s), featuring extensive coverage about his many short films, his amusing appropriation of familiar cartoon characters, the adoption of jazz and familiar soundtrack music in his films, and Bulyachov's issues with the end result of The Pass. As usual this comes in a standard edition or a limited one featuring a slipcase designed by Haleigh Buck and a booklet with essays by Jennifer Lynde Barker and Walter Chaw.

Volume two shifts gears to pure fantasy with the films of Lev Atamanov including his legendary The Snow Queen, a familiar title among animation fans as the favorite of Hiyao Miyazaki and one that inspired him to keep going in his chosen career. The film is one of the earliest adaptations of the famous Hans Christian Andersen, which was later redone many times and served as the inspiration for Frozen before undergoing a major script overhaul. In the works for two years, the film earned some of the widest international distribution for a Soviet animated film and was usually dubbed with high-profile voice artists from each region (with Sandra Dee and Tommy Kirk recruited for the heavily reworked U.S. version, later redone for home video with Kathleen Turner and others). In this version, a little old elf tells the story of Kai and Gerda, inseparable children who like to pass time growing roses. In the dead of winter, Gerda's grandmother tells them about the Snow Queen, provoking Kai to make a nasty remark that angers the mystical ruler. She puts a spell on the boy via two ice shards and takes him to her ice palace, with Gerda in pursuit and gaining new mystical friends including a raven and a reindeer to get him back. There's definitely a touch of Disney here (especially Snow White), but the inventive animation has a personality all its own with particularly vivid use of snow flurries and the striking Queen herself standing out in particular.

Video releases of highly varying quality of this film have been around since the VHS era (not to mention lots of TV broadcast), and a full-scale restoration of the original Russian-language version was undertaken in 2020 with several high-profile screenings. That version touted its complete scrubbing of any film grain, which thankfully isn't the case with the restoration here from Deaf Crocodile with a scan credited to Gosfilmonfond film archive for Soyuzmultfilm. It looks lovely and nicely textured without any crazy noise reduction, and natural film grain is visible throughout. As usual you get the original Russian audio (2.0 DTS-HD mono) with English or English SDH subtitles. It's worth noting that the initial U.S. theatrical version runs about five minutes longer since it adds a Christmas prologue with Art Linklater (and slaps on a bunch of forgettable songs). A detailed commentary by Rolf Giesen covers pretty much everything you could want to know about the film and its development by the director and his team, including the color process involved, the influences on Soviet animation after World War II, and international artists who also had an impact.

Also here is Atamanov's earlier, groundbreaking The Scarlet Flower from 1952, a 42-minute musical version of the Russian variant of "Beauty and the Beast." The gist is the same here as young Nastenka dreams of a beautiful scarlet flower and asks her traveling shipping merchant father to bring one back if he ever comes across it. Of course he does at a remote castle owned by a towering beast who offers to swap the flower for Nastenka. Interestingly, the film's human characters are almost entirely rotoscoped -- a technique used sparingly by Disney but later employed extensively by Ralph Bakshi, whose characters look a lot like these. Given its length, this was usually released on home video or shown theatrically with other films, often as part of a fairy tale series; no matter how you see it, this is quite the enchanting and effective rendering with a very Russian flavor. Again the restoration of the original Russian-language version, immaculately restored and featuring a commentary by Giesen outlining the "eclair" process of using live actors to adapt to animation, the desire to make a truly national form of artistic entertainment, and the Russian literary source with its tweaks to the more familiar French-based one we all know.

Finally 1961's The Key is a very oddball hour-long parable with a radically different, stripped-down caricature style as it presents three hard-partying fairies who bless a newborn boy with a magic ball of string and a promise of a fulfilling life. With the child growing at an accelerated rate, his grandfather protests the easy path he's been given ("Those who do not work, do not eat!") and embarks on a quest to the Land of Happiness where he and the boy learn the cost of laziness and indulgence. Also, there's a four-headed dragon and a lot of robots and sentient tools. Propaganda in fairy tales is hardly unique, and this one pushes it in a crazy direction with the increasingly exasperated grandpa navigating fanciful obstacles galore to get to the lesson of the story -- all with a very stylized look common to what you'd see in the 1960s. Again the restoration of the Russian-language film is immaculate, with Giesen delivering another commentary laying out the climate of the time that produced this, Atamanov's status as a premiere name in state entertainment by this point, the state of Soyuzmultfilm by this point, and the market for medium-length projects like this. On the video extras front, Chester's visual essay "Written with Ice Crystals:  Master Soviet Animator Lev Atamanov and The Snow Queen" (19m5s) surveys the maestro's career, his transitional status in Soviet animation history, the basic principles guiding his work, and the key films along the way. In "Innocence & Cynicism:  The Snow Queen and Hayao Miyazaki" (10m48s), John Adkins of Animation Obsessive hones in on the fairy tale film's importance to the Japanese animation legend, the impact of its release in Japan, the resonance of Gerda's character, and the lingering effects its screening in the mid-'60s had on the younger director's work throughout his career. This one is also available as a standard version or a limited edition, the latter featuring a slipcase with art by Haleigh Buck and a booklet with essays by Giesen (who delivers a very thorough, extensive breakdown of Atamanov's career and early Soviet animation) and Walter Chaw analyzing the themes and fairy tale elements of all three films.

Reviewed on October 2, 2025