Hypothese Beta is a 1967 animated short film (seven minutes) from France, directed by Jean-Charles Meunier.
The entirety of the film centers around a punch card in a computer mainframe (1967, everybody). Signals, represented by what look like little balls of electricity, run through the circuit wires of the computer until they get to the punch card. Each signal in turn creates what sounds like a Morse Code message as it passes through the punch card, beeping with every punch hole.
The only problem is the single punch hole at the end. That one hole seems to be bored. It swallows the signal dots, laughs, stretches, and dances. It wanders around the punch card bothering the other holes, seemingly bent on causing as much chaos as possible. Finally, the first hole in the punch card, who seems to act as a drill sergeant, rallies all the other holes to take care of the troublemaker.
For another film from the time period with a similar conceit, see late-era Looney Tunes cartoon, "High Note".
Tropes:
- Animate Inanimate Object: Punch card holes moving around on a punch card.
- Art Shift: The last minute switches to live action, as an alarm sounds and a hand flips a switch on a control panel.
- The End: The camera zooms out from a "FIN" that ends the cartoon, one that has double meaning, as the sound of a missile launch that accompanies the "FIN" indicates that the world is ending in nuclear holocaust.
- Limited Animation: Just punch holes moving around on a card, and dots traveling along lines in a circuit. For much of the film it's only the one dot that moves around, but near the end, all the dots are moving as they team up against the one misfit.
- A Nuclear Error: One goofy punch card hole moving around unpredictably winds up triggering a nuclear war.
- The Reveal: The punch card? It apparently is part of some country's nuclear missile launch system.
- Speaking Simlish: The various dots jabber in speech-sounding gibberish.
- Sudden Downer Ending: The punch card controls a computer that controls some nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. The altered signal caused by the re-arranged holes in the card sounds an alarm that leads to someone firing off nuclear missiles and presumably starting World War III.
- The Trickster: The one prankster hole, who zips around the punch card annoying other holes and playing pranks, until they all gang up against him.
- Twist Ending: The punch card is in a computer that controls some country's nuclear arsenal, and that one goofy hole's mischief starts a nuclear war.
