The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb is a British 1993 animated short dystopian/horror/science-fiction/fantasy film by Dave Borthwick.
The plot is a dystopian re-imagining of the fairytale of Tom Thumb, in which Tom is abducted from loving parents and taken to a laboratory for study, from which he must escape. The film features themes of rebirth, tolerance, ethics in science, and experimentation on humans and animals.
The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb features examples of:
- Barbarian Tribe: Tom encounters a tribe of miniature, primitive people who murder his friend because of its hideous appearance.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The human characters are seeing interacting with, killing, and eating giant insects and spiders, eat plates of live fish and what appear to be live slugs or leeches, and everything is covered with flies.
- Crucified Hero Shot: Several Christian motifs appear throughout the film, mostly in the form of pictures or other wall ornaments, possibly intended as allegory or satire. One of them is a sculpture of Father Christmas being crucified.
- Fetus Terrible: In a twisted take on the fairytale, Tom's appearance seems to be modelled on a foetus.
- The Grotesque: None of the characters seem to be intended as attractive, but the most repulsive is a creature made from electrical components and a flayed rat's skull encountered by Tom in the lab. The creature turns out to be a kindly ally who aids his escape, but is tragically murdered by an intolerant mob revolted by its appearance.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Tom's birth, the horrific experiments, society in general in a dystopian world.
- Killed Offscreen: Tom's mother.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: Tom is abducted from his parents and taken to one to be studied.
- Mercy Kill: Dissected specimens, human body parts, and amorphous monsters in glassware helplessly indicate a switch they want Tom to operate. When he does as they ask, it cuts off the power supply keeping them alive.
- Noble Savage: A miniature warrior man with a Neanderthal appearance befriends Tom after Tom's friend from the lab is killed by other members of his tribe.
- Reset Button: The ending involves Tom and his companion destroying an object which apparently functions as a cosmic reset, allowing him to be reborn as a normal child to his original parents, in a setting that looks more hygienic, but is still infested with flies.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Tom's father is reunited with him, but subsequently dies pointlessly in a brawl.
- Silent Movie: Largely so, with occasional spoken words.
- Stop Motion: Filmed using a combination of Plasticene and pixilation.
