Vykrutasy ("Frills", sometimes also referred to as "The Coiling Prankster") is a 1988 animated short film (9 minutes) from the Soviet Union, directed by Garri Bardin, produced by Soyuzmultfilm.
It is a stop-motion animated short using nothing but a coil of steel wire. A coil of steel wire suddenly comes to life, with the end uncoiling itself, detaching from the rest of the coil, and bending itself into the shape of a man. After taking stock of his surroundings the man decides to improve them. He takes more lengths of wire and bends them into fruit trees and crops of vegetables, and he takes more wire and makes himself a house. He also bends wire into the shape of a dog, and finally he crafts himself a woman.
But there's a problem. Unseen visitors keep barging into his garden; one time he sees what look like the prints of an animal and another time he sees tire prints. The man protects his home and garden by crafting a wire fence, but the fence can't keep all intruders out—and he only has a finite amount of wire.
Tropes:
- Angry Guard Dog: The man creates a dog out of wire to protect his little homestead. When the barking dog bites him in the face, temporarily mushing the wire, the man hurriedly creates a bone, which he gives to the dog.
- Chekhov's Gun: The film shows that, after creating the woman, the man is out of wire. That sets up the denouement where he has to destroy not only his garden, but also his house, his dog, and his wife, to make enough wire to surround the property.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: When the man first takes form he sees his penis—represented by a kink in the wire, of course—he is startled and tries to cover his crotch with his hands. Afterwards he relaxes and forgets about it.
- Hartman Hips: Played for a gag. When the man crafts a woman out of the wire, she is a full head taller than he is. He thinks better of it and makes her shorter by putting his hands on the top of her head and pushing down, thus making her shorter and also making her plump out at the hips.
- Silence Is Golden: No dialogue other than angry gibberish from the man.
- Speaking Simlish: The man starts yelling angry gibberish in the latter portion of the cartoon, as he gets angrier and angrier about intrusions into his home.
- Spiteful Spit: The man spits at whatever it was—the offscreen noises suggest pigs—that trampled his garden.
- Stop Motion: A whole cartoon made by bending and manipulating steel wire.
- Sudden Downer Ending: The tone of most of the cartoon is whimsical, as steel wire forms itself into the shape of a man, who uses more wire to create a vegetable garden, fruit trees, a house, a dog, and a wife. Even when the man gets more and more agitated about intrusions into his garden, the tone remains comic. But in the last minute things turn dark. After trains start passing by the man, who has been using more and more wire to reinforce his walls, freaks out. He kills his dog, using the wire to reinforce the wall. He kills his wife, using her wire to make the walls thicker still. Then he totally destroys his house, and his garden, using all of that wire to thicken up the walls. The cartoon then ends with the man cowering in a bare patch of ground with walls all around...as a plane zooms overhead.
