The Contraption
The Contraption
| 22 February 1978 (USA)
The Contraption Trailers

A man toils at building an elaborate contraption. But to what end?

Reviews
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Bonehead-XL A stalwart feature on Saturday Nightmares, this seven minute short film stars Richard O'Brien, of "Rocky Horror" fame, as a man building… Something. I honestly can't talk about it much without spoiling it. I'll just say the film is all about the build-up to the climatic visual punch line and it does so fantastic.As for the presentation, the short is very well shot. In close angles, we see the man working with his tools. A saw rushed into our eyes, wires and steel rods assembled from odd angles. The construction is intentionally show so that we aren't entirely sure what we're looking at. This short's success rides a great deal on its excellent sound design. In the heavily shadow room, all we here is a distant leaky pipe and the clanking and grinding of the man at work. This is another fantastic short and it's great that the internet and streaming video sites make it so easy now to revisit this types of film, stuff we'd otherwise would never see again.
FieCrier Happily, I was able to view this award-winning short online.A man constructs a contraption while surrounded by pitch black darkness. A musical saw wavers out a tune on the soundtrack. Contrary to one description I've read, I did not see or hear his wife berating him while he was doing this. The end might come as a surprise, but probably not. The one line of dialog at the end suggests why the contraption might have been built, but for the most part we are left wondering who the characters were and what their lives were like and why it ended this way.I wonder what Dearden's other short films are like?
HyperPup ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I don't know much about who, what or why this was produced but it was cool. A small bit of drama, short (I think 15 minutes) and concise. Richard O'Brien whiles away his time at bulding a rather complex device, cutting and planing wood, drilling, bending metal pipes and such, and all for what? Well, I believe this little gem is lost in the annals of videoland, so it will probably never air again so I'll tell ya. He completes the device and we see a large and menacing mousetrap, just the right size for...him. And with that he lays himself down on the trigger and snaps his neck in the trap. Cold, chilling, and quick. I believe this was part of a group of shorts, but I cannot remember as it aired on HBO and a few other cable channels before it became completely lost to time.
Rick Stump (otherRic) This almost wordless short is visually gripping. It is, effectively, a 5 minute one-man play that will leave you stunned.
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