The Iron Giant

As entertaining as it's intelligent, this delightful 'Scope animation from Warner Bros is adapted from Ted Hughes' anti-Cold War children's book. In a small town in Maine in 1957 (year of the Sputnik launch), young adventurer Hogarth, son of single mother and waitress Annie, is obsessed with things extra-terrestrial. Due in part to his school's nuclear-protection TV sessions, he's especially concerned about the Red Invader. He's the only one to take seriously a fisherman's frantic reports of the landing of a metal giant, and his search is rewarded by the sighting of a metal crunching, electricity-immune 50-footer in the forest. A friendship grows - the 'brain-damaged', perhaps war-oriented machine is educated by the boy like a 'wild child' - as government agents close in. Thank heaven, Hogarth's beatnik pal Dean runs the scrapyard and can provide, simultaneously, food and shelter - but for how long? This moral film effectively dramatises the war between imaginative, responsible solutions on the one hand, and gung ho, nuke 'em rule of force on the other, without losing sight of youngster friendly action-movie requirements.