Samson og Sally
Tags: psychedelic, dark

Plot synopsis:
The film revolves around a young albino male Sperm whale named Samson who strongly believes the legendary tales of Moby Dick. The legends say that Moby Dick was a hero for all whales, and that he will someday return. He meets Sally, a young black-and-white female sperm whale who is orphaned after her pod is slaughtered by whalers. Samson's pod adopts Sally and she befriends Samson even though she does not believe in Moby Dick. Samson and Sally together survive certain dangers, such as killer whales, a massive oil slick, radiation poisoning, and whaling ships, which they refer to as "iron beasts." Eventually Samson and Sally fall in love with each other. Samson's mother is later killed by the whalers, greatly upsetting Samson. Samson decides to leave Sally and his pod to search for Moby Dick and convince him to try to save whales from whalers and the "iron beasts." After nearly dying several times, due to humans causing water pollution, Samson finds Moby Dick in the underwater ruins of Atlantis, only to find that Moby Dick is senile, and too old to even forage for himself. Disappointed, Samson leaves to try to find his pod. After days of searching, he gives up all hope of finding his pod, just before seeing them on the horizon. The film ends with a scene set decades later, with Samson and Sally as adult whales, caring for a single son, whom Samson saves from a killer whale.

Review: delightful,thoughtful,sad.
This animated movie is one of the best ones I've seen.
Forget Disney movies - although the animation may not match that of Disney cartoons, this one has much more to offer otherwise: messages of love and unity, of loneliness and contentedness and much more.
It also points to man's folly of whale hunting and thus it somewhat resembles Melville's Moby Dick.
I recommend this to anyone and everyone..
Amazing!.
This animation based on the book, The Song of the Whale, is probably the greatest animation ever created.
Samson is a young whale with a serious personality disorder who, through his lack of friends (besides an annoying sea gull), becomes obsessed with the stories of Moby Dick told by his mother.
Basically the plot line is Samson searching for Moby Dick to help save the whales from the iron beasts (whalers).
It's a great story and takes us deep into the depths of the ocean where we learn about the fun and danger of being a whale.
From playing dead, to pestering polar bears, to oil spills, to a crazy walrus duo messed up on toxic waste doing a dance number and singing in gibberish.
This movie definitely gets an excellent review from me, and trust me it's not just a kids movie.
I first saw it at the age of 22 and I've loved it every since.
I recommend watching it with a good friend with a pure heart and a little green..
Looking back on my favorite movies from my childhood--this, The Brave Little Toaster, Little Nemo--I loved them all so much yet I found them all extremely disturbing.
As many other people have implied, this movie is a bit scary, and deals with some pretty heavy themes.
That's why it's a good movie.
That's why, seeing it many years later, it isn't just some crappy kid's movie--this movie and the others I have mentioned have stuck with me my whole life.
The fact that they are a bit disturbing is no reason to say that kid's shouldn't see them.
Because you know what?
Because you know what?
I wouldn't be the person that I am if I hadn't seen movies like this as a kid.
Movies like this challenge the kid in ways that things like the Care Bears never will, and in the long run, I think that is a good thing.That aside though, I really believe that this is a great, beautiful movie.
You can tell that the people who made it really wanted to make it--it wasn't just another movie in a long line of movies they were under contract to make, like Disney is today.
Even in Disney's glory day's none of their stories were original, and this story is extremely original.
I credit the makers of this movie much more than the makers of The Lion King.
The animation is quite good and has a very unique look to it, the story is very interesting and has more than one layer at work, the music is beautiful--the tone of the guitar in this movie's soundtrack has stuck with me all these years.
The weakest link, probably, is the voice acting, which is by no means BAD.
But this movie was in fact translated into English from Danish, so replacement voice crew often loses something.All in all, I think this is a wonderful movie.
This is the kind of movie I would want to show my kids, because even if its a little traumatizing, well, so is life.
To give your kids only some idealized world through harmless movies with little conflict is much more dangerous, in my opinion..
Beautiful and touching film..
I remember watching this film various times when I was aged around four years old.
The film impressed me very much, so much that I can still remember some parts of the film at this age, even though I haven't seen it for at least fourteen years.
The film is mostly sad (though it has a happy ending), and looking back on it, I think it's not all that suitable for four or five years old, because the theme that is death occurs a couple of times in the film, and that may be scary at times.
I vividly remember the death of Samson's mother and the few corpses of whales that he encountered after the oil disaster (which he prodded to see if they were still alive).
I think that says enough about the impact that the film would have on four to five year olds.
But for the rest it's an enjoyable and good film, quite intelligent as well (from what I can remember), but I wouldn't show it to children under the age of seven or eight..
A beautiful, touching movie.
I remember seeing this movie on TV when I was about 6-7 years old and how It moved me back then.
The love story is so cute!
The movie's similar to Watership Down in it's seriousness and environmentalist message....feels like they don't make movies like this anymore.
An intelligent movie.
However, there is just a little bit of humor too,albeit ironic and dark.
The walrus song in the middle is absolutely hilarious!
The animation may not be on par with Disney, sure, but hey, it's from Scandinavia.
Some parts containing music and performing crabs in the water felt similar to "under the sea" from The Little Mermaid(and this was before that movie).Parents, don't underestimate a kids intelligence.
I strongly recommend this movie..
The Greatest Animated Movie of All Time.
I was barely six years old when my mother found an old VHS copy of what seemed to be a cute little kid's cartoon in the local library in our neighborhood.
'Samson & Sally' certainly does have a cover that shows it to be a light-hearted cartoon; a pink sky, a shallow sea, cartoony walruses with musical instruments, a smiling pink octopus...
It goes on.
It seems almost like cotton candy material.The truth is very different.
Watching 'Samson & Sally' is more like being plunged into a dark, freezing ocean during a shipwreck at night than being tipped off a pool floatie at the beach.
It is a graphic, dark commentary about the cruelties of the whaling industry, about burning oil-slicks and underwater cities, about shipwrecks and killer whales, about death and life.
It is deep, thoughtful, and surreal.
So surreal, in fact, that it is almost like a Stanley Kubrick film, but animated, and from the perspective of marine life.
'Samson & Sally' is the story of two whales, whose names are obviously those in the title!
Samson is a white whale who has no real friends, boasts about himself, and doesn't eat octopuses.
I can't blame him for any of these, especially the octopus issue, since he is young.
As I've mentioned earlier, the VHS cover features a smiling pink octopus.
In the film, though, octopuses are portrayed as toothy, nasty buggers with some rather unfavorable attributes, such as a tendency to grab onto other unfortunate creatures, which happens twice to poor Samson.
From the beginning of the film, he is also teased by a seagull, one of the film's major protagonists and it's major source source of humor (which succeeds.) Samson's mother tells him stories of Moby Dick, the great white whale who had, long ago, protected whales from death at the hands of mankind.
Apparently, according to legend, Moby Dick will come back once again to protect whales, and Samson takes this aspect of the story to heart.Sally is a girl whale whose mother was killed and whose pod was ravaged by 'Steel Beasts', which is what whales call whaling vessels, and ships in general.
She meets Samson and his mother as she is hiding near the wreck of a 'Steel Beast'.
She is adopted by Samson's pod, and soon, the two are the best of friends.
Unfortunately, the two find out rather painfully that there is no such thing as safety in their world.
They are attacked by a pair of orcas and forced to hide within the shipwreck where they had met.
The attack, however, is repulsed by Samson's mother, who smashes the orcas with a blow of her tail (the crumpled paper noise that is made when the orcas are smashed still makes my stomach swim after all these years.) Later on, they find themselves within the sights of a 'Steel Beast's' harpoon gun.
The Seagull saves their lives when he decides to distract the ship's officer at the harpoon gun in a truly hilarious scene.
Unfortunately, this victory is soon overshadowed by the tragic death of one of Samson's pod-mates, who suffocates and drowns in an oil slick the pod is later forced to traverse when the 'Steel Beast' bears down on them.
This tragedy strengthens Samson's wish that Moby Dick would come back to help them.
Soon after, Samson & Sally are truly in love, and the scenes of romance are truly heartfelt.
But they face yet another tragedy when Samson's mother sacrifices her life to save him from a horrific death at the hands of the whalers.
Her loss wrecks Samson, who finally decides to go on a quest to find Moby Dick...I'm not going to describe anything else.
The final sequence of the film should be a surprise to those who see it.
I would like to tell you that this film does have a BLAM (Big Lipped Alligator Moment, that is, a random musical number that comes out of nowhere,) just about 20 minutes on in the film, that features two walruses who sing in scat-gibberish and dance around amidst the sunken wrecks of several vessels, including the Titanic.
But it's very short, thankfully, and actually very funny.For an animated feature made in the mid-1980s, 'Samson & Sally' is very modern indeed, although the animation might be considered primitive by today's standards.
The soundtrack, though, is perhaps the greatest in film history.
Although the main theme is very 80's, the rest is almost indescribably beautiful, perfectly fitted with the film's dark theme.
One of the greatest pieces, perhaps, is the romantic theme that plays twice in the film.
The rest is just as beautiful, and the film's moments of suspense are perfectly scored with some edgy, rough, and very synthesized music that fits in well with the decade.
The voice acting the the American/English dub released by Just For Kids Entertainment in 1991 and 1995 is alright, but there are some odd moments.
For the first 7 minutes of the film, for instance, Samson's mother has a male voice.
The original Danish version from 1984 is great, but the Swedish dub, released on the same day as the Danish, ranks at the top.
The film was directed by Jannik Hastrup, a very popular director of European animated movies, such as the hugely successful 'Benny's Bakadar' ('Benny's Bathtub') in 1971, 'Subway to Paradise' in 1987, and 'War of the Birds' 1990.
But his most popular film will always be 'Samson & Sally'.
I'm almost 16 now, and the film has lost none of it's wonder and power.
If I were to be stuck on a deserted island out in the middle of nowhere and allowed to choose only one film to watch, my choice would always be 'Samson & Sally'..
This is NOT for the young or faint of heart!.
Like a few of the other comment posters, I too saw this film when I was about 4 or 5 and it horrified me!
Along with "All Dogs go to Heaven", this movie gave me recurring, disturbing thoughts and freaked me out!
I distinctly remember the creepy, bubbly music that plays at the start of the movie and the nasty paper crumpling sound and appearance the orcas (killer whales) made when they where slammed by the adult whales defending the wayward calves.
I also remember the lifeless bodies of several whales, especially the eerily grinning oil-coated baleen whale that saved Samson at one point.
The scene I most vividly remember was when these humans in a lifeboat shoot Samson when he tries to help them in the mistaken belief that he is attacking them causing him to accidentally capsize their boat and drown them!I re-rented this video upon entering ninth grade and now have a much better appreciation of it.
It quite sobberingly portrays many realistic environmental issues and the very negative relation humans have with nature i.e., whaling, toxic waste disposal, oil spills.
This is definitely NOT a film of 7 years and under, I would possibly recommend it for 10 year olds and up (or to those with a macabre sense of entertainment.).
traumatizing..
traumatizing..
i was given this movie as a child and it gave me nightmares.
i would not recommend this movie to anyone with small children, unless you are are looking for something disturbing to watch or hate whales.
the music is horrifying, and the voice-overs are not pleasant.
it's a strained movie, containing themes far too heavy to be wrapped in the guise of a children's movie - murder, depression, paranoia, revenge.
deranged sailors harpoon writhing whales, filling the water with blood; one whale mentally snaps and becomes coated in spilled oil and suffocates; a young whale noses a dead one while it stares at him with empty, lifeless eyes.
perhaps this film would have been better suited to a more artsy genre, a la city of lost children or something else equal parts fantasy and disturbing imagery, instead of trying to gear it toward a young audience with a simply put script and a colorful, cartoony presentation.