History WesternAnimation / LaBalladeDesDalton

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''La Ballade des Dalton'' ("''The Ballad of the Daltons''") is the second animated film adaptation of the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' series, after 1971's ''[[WesternAnimation/LuckyLukeDaisyTown Daisy Town]]''. The film was released in 1978 by Studios Idéfix, the same company that made ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'' with a script written by Creator/ReneGoscinny (who wrote the best known ''Lucky Luke'' stories), which also explains why the plot is kind of similar. Like its predecessor, it also has a very good animation quality (though due to financial restrictions the film doesn't contain any "animation effects" like the ghosts of ''The Twelve Tasks''). Studios Idéfix was closed down in April 1978 after the death of Goscinny.

The Daltons are informed that their uncle has died. They will inherit his fortune if they murder the judge and all the jury members that sentenced him to the gallows. To make sure that they fulfill this, they will be accompanied by Lucky Luke, seeing that he is the only honest man that he has ever known. If they fail their mission all the money will go to charity.

The people they have to kill are (in order of appearance):

1. Ming Li Foo – A Chinese laundryman. Luke motivates the Daltons to wash their clothes first. While they are in the nude, Ming Li Foo flees out of the store. Since they are naked they ask Luke to chase Ming for them. After a martial arts fight sequence, Luke is able to get Ming to fake his own death before the Daltons are back.

2. Thadeus Collins – A jail warden, whose entire prison population tunneled out to freedom. The Daltons tunnel into the prison and blow it up, not knowing that the warden has already left using one of the tunnels.

3. Snake Feather – A Native American witch doctor. He gives the Daltons some magic mushrooms, causing them to hallucinate a bizarre dream sequence. When they awake, Luke informs them that they have already killed him.

4. Dr. Aldous Smith – A traveling quack doctor whom the Daltons force to drink what they think is poison. It's just the cactus alcohol he's fond off, and he's faking it.

5. Tom O'Connor – An old timer who supposedly disappeared into his gold mine. Luke meets him beforehand and explains the situation. The Daltons search from him in a mine-cart leading to a chase scene that resembles a rollercoaster ride. When they find the old timer, he acts like a ghost and convinces them that he has been dead for some time.

6. Sam Game – A former gambler who saw the light and became a clergyman (even though he still uses and references gambling terms in his sermons). He is killed in a game of Russian roulette, which, of course, turns out to be faked.

7. Bud Bugman – A train driver. The Daltons try to kill him by derailing the train he is riding on to a different direction. Bugman hides in the tender car while his assistant tells the Daltons that he was killed and the body fell off the train during the derailing.

8. Mathias Bones – An undertaker, accompanied by a vulture. The Daltons ambush him by shooting him dead from his carriage (they actually shoot a dummy).

9. Judge Grudy – The judge. The Daltons plan to kill him at the party he holds after a rodeo, but Luke uses a fake newspaper to fool them.

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!!''La Ballade des Dalton'' provides examples of:

* OneDimensionalThinking: Rantanplan flees before a derailed train for a quite lengthy sequence. He could have easily swerved at any time, but of course he's too stupid to ever think of that.
* AllChinesePeopleKnowKungFu: Ming Li-Foo.
* ArtisticLicenseLaw:
** Inheritance conditions mandating murder or any other illegal or immoral acts are utterly void and null as offending law or public policy.
** The victim of a crime or attempted crime cannot serve as judge or jury for a trial about said crime.
** Juries for capital felonies generally have twelve jurors, not eight. (This is understandable from a Doylist perspective -- thirteen targets instead of nine would have added at least another half an hour to the movie.)
* AsianBuckTeeth: Ming Li-Foo has huge front teeth.
* AsianSpeekeeEngrish: Ming Li-Foo.
* BackFromTheDead: The Daltons assume they have killed all the people on their list, but all of them are in fact still alive.
* BalladOfX: "The Ballad of the Daltons".
* BallisticDiscount: A gun salesman gives a pair of loaded guns to each one of the Dalton Brothers before collecting and they, of course, don't pay.
* BarBrawl: Lucky Luke teaches Rantanplan to pick up dropped cards. Later on, he does this in a bar, revealing that one of the people present was cheating at poker, which starts a fight.
* TheBard: The banjo player and singer who tells the whole story in a saloon.
* BloodlessCarnage: Even if we ignore the age rating, this was likely done to keep the FakingTheDead scenes simple. The Daltons are always fooled when people who were supposedly shot have no signs of such injury. Sam Game in particular still manages to fool the brothers despite having no wounds after pretending to [[PrettyLittleHeadshots shoot himself in the head]] ''in front of them''.
* BreakingTheFourthWall:
** The Daltons poke their tongues out at the viewers when the narrator explains how evil they are.
** While in the desert, Rantanplan assumes the Daltons stole the scenery.
* BusbyBerkeleyNumber: The Daltons' dream sequence has a direct shout-out to the famous diving scene.
* ButtMonkey: Tobias Wills. No matter what he's trying to sell, it's always something the Daltons need to steal.
* ChineseLaunderer: Ming Li-Foo.
* ComicBookFantasyCasting: Dr. Aldous Smith is a caricature of Creator/WCFields.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Tobias Wills keeps trying to sell something that the Daltons need, and keeps running into the Daltons shortly after they realize that they need it.
* CrossingTheDesert: The Daltons have to cross a very hot desert in order to find a Native American.
* CurbStompBattle: After the Daltons learn that they've been had and all their targets are still alive, Lucky Luke takes them all down so quickly that it's obvious he could have recaptured them and shipped them back to prison at any time, from the moment he said he agreed to the plan and was given his gun back. He was probably just playing along with their scheme so that they could be seen to have failed and get the money sent to the orphanage.
* DisneyAcidSequence: The Daltons are given magic mushrooms by a Native American and thus have a wonderful dream sequence where they imagine themselves to be Hollywood musical stars.
* DoubleMeaningTitle: The title alludes to the FramingDevice of the narrator singing a {{Ballad}} about the Dalton brothers, but in French its homophone "''Balade''" means "taking a stroll", which is more or less what the Daltons are doing -- taking a stroll out of jail before being dragged back.
* DueToTheDead: The prison staff give Rantanplan a eulogy after he's presumed dead with the Daltons after they accidentally blow up the gunpowder storage during their escape attempt.
* EnemyMine: Lucky Luke spends most of the movie working together with the Daltons, who secretly plan to [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness dispose of him as soon as he gives his testimony]], [[GuileHero unaware that he's the one playing them for chumps]].
* EverybodyLives: For a film where many characters apparently get murdered or commit suicide, there's only one real death and it happens off-screen before the story got started: the Daltons' uncle.
* ExactWords: When the Daltons and Lucky Luke go to the lawyer's office so Luke can give the required testimony regarding the condition they had to fulfill to inherit Henry Dalton's fortune, Luke says everything went as planned. He just didn't say whose plans he's talking about.
* ExtraExtraReadAllAboutIt: A kid sells to the Daltons the extra edition of the newspaper announcing the murder of Judge Grudy by one "Averell Smith". Of course, the newspaper is a fake dictated by Lucky Luke, and the kid winks at him.
* FailedASpotCheck: Thadeus Collins somehow managed to miss one of the prisoners successfully digging an escape tunnel out of ''his own office''.
* FakingTheDead: Lucky Luke helps all the Daltons' victims to fake their own death in order to have them escape.
* TheGamblingAddict: Sam Game, a former gambler who became a clergyman, but still references gambling terms in his sermons, and runs a crooked bingo game during the service.
* GrumpyOldMan: Tom O'Connor the gold digger.
* HatsOffToTheDead: The prison warden takes off his sleeping bonnet when giving his eulogy to Rantanplan.
* InheritanceMurder: Henry Dalton's nephews will inherit his fortune [[OnOneCondition if they kill the judge and the jury who sentenced him to death by hanging]].
* InterruptedBath: When the Daltons reach Snake Feather's tepee and order him out, they hear him complains that he's his bath... in the middle of a ThirstyDesert with no water for miles. He comes out wearing a towel. The shaman can apparently do the RainDance whenever he needs it, so water isn't a problem for him.
* LawfulStupid: From what little we see of the lawyer in charge of executing Henry Dalton's will, he is perfectly okay with a man ordering nine assassinations from beyond the grave because it was written on a will and only hands the money to Lucky Luke in the end because the Daltons couldn't perform the will's conditions.
* LongerThanLifeSentence: The Daltons are serving a 4200-years hard labor sentence.
* MagicalNativeAmerican: Snake Feather, who has magic mushrooms and apparently has a mushroom cellar below his tipi.
* MatchlightDangerRevelation: The Daltons dig a tunnel to escape and end up in the dynamite storage building, where they unbeknownst strike a match. They do it again while looking for the dropped fuse when trying to blow up Collins' prison.
* MushroomSamba: A Native American gives the Daltons peyote/magic mushrooms, causing them to all have a dream sequence.
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: The Daltons strip naked while waiting for their clothes to be washed.
* {{Narrator}}: Introduced as a singer in a saloon in the opening, the narrator then sings "The Ballad of the Daltons" as a voice-over throughout the movie, introducing key elements with his lyrics.
* NationalStereotypes:
** Ming Li-Foo is a short, yellow Chinese man with an imbecilic grin, long pony tail, who speaks {{Engrish}} and is a proprietor of laundry who happens to know kung-fu. He is even referred to as a "Chinaman".
** Snake Feather is a MagicalNativeAmerican[=/=]NobleSavage who speaks in TontoTalk.
* NonFatalExplosions: For all the StuffBlowingUp in this film, nobody dies.
* ObsessiveCompulsiveBarkeeping: The bartender giving the Daltons the whereabouts of Sam Game never stops cleaning the same glass.
* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: When Lucky Luke is asked to witness the Daltons fulfilling the condition required to inherit their Uncle's money, he's told he'll be killed if he refuses. And since they are not the best at negotiations they somehow think that offering him a share (a setup of course) is going to be the deciding factor.
* OnOneCondition: The will of Henry Dalton has the condition that his nephews must avenge his death and kill the people who sentenced him to hang before they can have his money.
* OurFounder: At the end, a statue of the late Henry Dalton is seen next to the orphanage that was built thanks to his money. More specifically, it's a statue of Henry Dalton on a horse ''and about to be hanged''.
* PlayAlongPrisoner: Lucky Luke could have taken the Daltons down the moment he got his gun back, but plays along with their scheme so that Henry Dalton's estate would end up going to the orphanage. Plus he is having fun.
* PrettyLittleHeadshots: Both {{Exaggerated|Trope}} and {{Averted|Trope}}. Exaggerated in that the Daltons are fooled by Sam Game pretending to shoot himself in the head in front of them, despite ''[[BloodlessCarnage clearly]]'' not having suffered any kind of injury. Averted in that the man didn't actually use bullets.
* RageAgainstTheLegalSystem: Henry Dalton wants his nephews to kill the judge and the jury who convicted him.
* RollercoasterMine: The Daltons try to find an old timer by climbing into a mine-cart and have a rollercoaster ride. Also note that this is six years before ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom'' (1984) made it a trope!
* RunningGag: The Daltons meet Tobias Wills every time [[ContrivedCoincidence they need something he's selling]]. After the BallisticDiscount they get from their first meeting, he runs away from them in fear every subsequent time, allowing them to get free horses, clothes, dynamite and shovels.
* RussianRoulette: Sam Game chooses to play this game. Every chamber is loaded with blanks.
* ScarecrowSolution: One of the many tricks utilized by Lucky Luke to save one of the Daltons' targets is having the miner make use of the atmosphere of his dark, gloomy mine to disguise himself as his own ghost.
* SnakeOilSalesman: The fourth victim seems to be one of these, "diagnosing" the Daltons with a multitude of illnesses and praising his elixir as the cure they need.
* SpoofingInTheRain: During the Daltons' dream, they have a sing-and-dance routine where they spoof ''Film/SinginInTheRain'', while wearing raincoats and dancing in the rain.
* SuicideAsComedy: Sam Game decides to play a game of Russian roulette.
* TalkingAnimal: Compared to the previous ''Lucky Luke'' movie ''[[WesternAnimation/LuckyLukeDaisyTown Daisy Town]]'', Jolly Jumper and Rantanplan are now talking animals, though they only talk to other animals or the audience.
* ThatPoorCat: During the Daltons' initial encounter with Luke, he's holding Rantanplan and has to drop him to raise his arms, with the appropriate cry of panic from the dog.
* ThirstyDesert: The Daltons cross one, called "The Desert of Thirst", which is also a SeaOfSand.
* TrackTrouble: One of the people who the Dalton brothers are trying to kill is a train driver, and they decide to accomplish it by derailing his train.
* UncannyFamilyResemblance: The Daltons are physically identical apart from their height. The late Henry Dalton also had the same face, except his hair was white.
* {{Undertaker}}: Mathias Bones is the typical caricature found in the comics, with green skin, a vulture pet, and ready to take the measurement of any newcomer in town.
* UnexpectedInheritance: The Daltons will receive Uncle Henry's fortune OnOneCondition: that they murder the jury and judge who sentenced him to death by hanging. If they fail, the fortune will go to charity.
* VillainProtagonist: As the title implies, this is very much the Daltons' movie, and the story is largely told from their point of view.
* WardensAreEvil: Inverted. Thadeus Collins was actually too nice to his prisoners, causing them to leave his jail.
* WhyAreYouLookingAtMeLikeThat: Said by Averell when his brothers decide he'll be the one to participate in the rodeo, after they see the mustangs ''demolishing'' every cowboy trying to ride them.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: The Daltons plan to kill Lucky Luke once they no longer need him to collect Henry Dalton's estate.
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* TalkingAnimal: Compared to the previous ''Lucky Luke'' movie ''WesternAnimation/DaisyTown'' (1971), Jolly Jumper and Rantanplan are now talking animals, though they only talk to other animals or the audience.

''La Ballade des Dalton'' ("''The Ballad of the Daltons''") is the second animated film adaptation of the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' series, after 1971 ''[[WesternAnimation/LuckyLukeDaisyTown Daisy Town]]''. The film was released in 1978 by Studios Idéfix, the same company that made ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'' with a script written by Creator/ReneGoscinny (who wrote the best known ''Lucky Luke'' stories), which also explains why the plot is kind of similar. Like its predecessor, it also has a very good animation quality (though due to financial restrictions the film doesn't contain any "animation effects" like the ghosts of ''The Twelve Tasks''). Studios Idéfix was closed down in April 1978 after the death of Goscinny.

''La Ballade des Dalton'' ("''The Ballad of the Daltons''") is the second animated film adaptation of the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' series, after ''Daisy Town'' (1971). The film was released in 1978 by Studios Idéfix, the same company that made ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'' with a script written by Creator/ReneGoscinny (who wrote the best known ''Lucky Luke'' stories), which also explains why the plot is kind of similar. Like its predecessor, it also has a very good animation quality (though due to financial restrictions the film doesn't contain any "animation effects" like the ghosts of ''The Twelve Tasks''). Studios Idéfix was closed down in April 1978 after the death of Goscinny.

The Daltons are informed that their uncle has died. They will inherit his fortune if they murder the judge and all the jury members that sentenced him to the gallows. To make sure that they fulfill this they will be accompanied by Lucky Luke, seeing that he is the only honest man that he has ever known. If they fail their mission all the money will go to charity.

1. Ming Li Foo – A Chinese laundryman. Luke motivates the Daltons to wash their clothes first. While they are in the nude Ming Li Foo flees out of the store. Since they are naked they ask Luke to chase Ming for them. After a martial arts fight sequence Luke is able to get Ming to fake his own death before the Daltons are back.

2. Thadeus Collins – A jail warden, whose entire prison population tunneled out to freedom. The Daltons tunnel into the prison and blow it up, not knowing that the warden had already left using one of the tunnels.

3. Snake Feather – A Native American witch doctor. He gives the Daltons some magic mushrooms, causing them to hallucinate a bizarre dream sequence. When they awake Luke informs them that they have already killed him.

9. Judge Grudy – A judge. The Daltons plan to kill him at the party he holds after a rodeo, but Luke uses a fake newspaper to fool them.

* PrettyLittleHeadshots: Both [[ExaggeratedTrope Exaggerated]] and [[AvertedTrope Averted]]. Exaggerated in that the Daltons are fooled by Sam Game pretending to shoot himself in the head in front of them, despite ''[[BloodlessCarnage clearly]]'' not having suffered any kind of injury. Averted in that the man didn't actually use bullets.

* BloodlessCarnage: Even if we ignore the age rating, this was likely done to keep the FakingTheDeath scenes simple. The Daltons are always fooled when people who were supposedly shot have no signs of such injury. Sam Game in particular still manages to fool the brothers despite having no wounds after pretending to [[PrettyLittleHeadshots shoot himself in the head]] ''in front of them''.

The Daltons are informed that their uncle has died. They will inherit his fortune if they murder the judge and all the jury members that sentenced him to the gallows. To make sure that they fulfill this will they will be accompanied by Lucky Luke, seeing that he is the only honest man that he has ever known. If they fail their mission all the money will go to charity.

* DoubleMeaningTitle: The title alludes to the FramingDevice of the narrator singing a {{Ballad}} about the Dalton brothers, but in French "''Ballade''" also means "taking a stroll", which is more or less what the Daltons are doing -- taking a stroll out of jail before being dragged back.

* CoolPet: The undertaker owns a vulture.

** Snake Feather is a MagicalNativeAmerican[=/=]NobleSavage who speaks in TontoTalk and has an AwesomeMcCoolname.

5. Tom O' Connor – An old timer who supposedly disappeared into his gold mine. Luke meets him beforehand and explains the situation. The Daltons search from him in a mine-cart leading to a chase scene that resembles a rollercoaster ride. When they find the old timer, he acts like a ghost and convinces them that he has been dead for some time.

* EnemyMine: Lucky Luke spends most of the movie working together with the Daltons, who secretly plan to [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness dispose of him as soon as he gives his testimony]], [[GuileHero unaware that he’s the one playing them for chumps]].

* GrumpyOldMan: Tom O' Connor the gold digger.

* RollercoasterMine: The Daltons try to find an old-timer by climbing into a mine-cart and have a rollercoaster ride. Also note that this is six years before ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom'' (1984) made it a trope!

* VillainProtagonist: As the title implies, this is very much the Daltons’ movie, and the story is largely told from their point of view.

* SpiritualSuccessor: Of ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'', directed by the same animation studio and again with Creator/ReneGoscinny as the script writer. Just like Asterix and Obelix, the Daltons have to fulfill several tasks to obtain a certain goal. [[spoiler: And, unlike Asterix and Obelix, of course they fail.]]

* ScarecrowSolution: One of the many tricks utilised by Lucky Luke to save one of the Daltons targets, is having the miner make use of the atmosphere of his dark, gloomy mine to disguise himself as his own ghost.

* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: When Lucky Luke is asked to witness the Daltons fulfilling the condition required to inherit their Uncle's money, he's told he'll be killed if he refuses.

* SpiritualSuccessor: Of ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'', directed by the same animation studio and again with Creator/ReneGoscinny as the script writer. Just like Asterix and Obelix, the Daltons have to fulfill several tasks to obtain a certain goal.

* {{Undertaker}}: Thadeus Bones is the typical caricature found in the comics, with green skin, a vulture pet, and ready to take the measurement of any newcomer in town.

* WardensAreEvil: Averted. Thadeus Collins was actually too nice to his prisoners, causing them to leave his jail.

''La Ballade des Dalton'' ("''The Ballad of the Daltons''") is the second animated film adaptation of the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' series, after ''Daisy Town'' (1971). The film was released in 1978 by the same company that made ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'' (1976), which also explains why the plot is kind of similar. Like its predecessor, it also has a very good animation quality (though due to financial restrictions the film doesn't contain any "animation effects" like the ghosts of ''The Twelve Tasks'').

* ThirstyDesert: The Daltons cross one, called "The Desert of Thirst".

''La Ballade des Dalton'' ("''The Ballad of the Daltons''") is the second animated adaptation in the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' series, after ''Daisy Town'' (1971). The film was released in 1978 by the same company that made ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'' (1976), which also explains why the plot is kind of similar. Like its predecessor, it also has a very good animation quality (though due to financial restrictions the film doesn't contain any "animation effects" like the ghosts of ''The Twelve Tasks'').

6. Sam Game – A former gambler who saw the light and became a clergyman (even though he still uses and references gambling terms in his sermons.). He is killed in a game of Russian roulette, which, of course, turns out to be faked.

** Juries for capital felonies generally have twelve jurors, not eight (This is understandable from a Doylist perspective -- thirteen targets instead of nine would have added at least another half an hour to the movie).

* CurbStompBattle: After the Daltons learn that they've been had and all their targets are still alive, Lucky Luke takes them all down so quickly that it's obvious that he could have recaptured them and shipped them back to prison at any time, from the moment he said he agreed to the plan and was given his gun back. He was probably just playing along with their scheme so that they could be seen to have failed and get the money sent to the orphanage.

* EverybodyLives: For a film where many characters get murdered or commit suicide there's only one real death in this movie and it happens off-screen before the story got started: the Daltons' uncle.

** Ming Li-Foo is a short, yellow Chinese man with an imbecilic grin, long pony tail who speaks {{Engrish}} and is a proprietor of laundry who happens to know kung-fu. He is even referred to as a "Chinaman".

* PlayAlongPrisoner: Lucky Luke could have taken the Daltons down the moment he got his gun back, but played along with their scheme so that Henry Dalton's estate would end up going to the orphanage. Plus he was having fun.

* RussianRoulette: Sam Game chooses to play this game. Every chamber was loaded with blanks.

* ThatPoorCat: The Daltons' initial encounter with Luke, he's holding Rantanplan, and has to drop him to raise his arms, with the appropriate cry of panic from the dog.

* OneDimensionalThinking: Rantanplan flees before a derailed for a quite lengthy sequence. He could have easily swerved at any time, but of course he's too stupid to ever think of that.