Second Class Mail is a 1985 animated short film (4 minutes) directed by Alison Snowden.
An old lady toddles off to the mailbox and sends off a letter. She toddles back to the home where she clearly lives alone. This becomes relevant when she receives a package, which turns out to be a blow-up doll. Not a sex doll, but rather a blow-up doll of an old man.
Alison Snowden's first film, made when she was a student at The National Film and Television School. Nick Park, also a student there, was an animator on the short.
Tropes:
- Black Comedy: The old lady has a pet bird. The pet bird swings on its little swing, tweets a little, then falls off its perch and dies.
- Companion Cube: The old woman inflates an old man to be her rubber companion. Unfortunately she gets too affectionate.
- Downer Ending: It's played for laughs, but still, it's an old lady who's so lonely she gets a blowup doll for a companion, and then she pops it.
- Limited Animation: As one might expect for a student film. The screen generally shows only what the viewer needs to see, on a plain white background. The last scene has the house, one trash can, and one tree, and the rest is plain white.
- Line Boil: Seen throughout the film, as it's a hand-drawn student film.
- Silence Is Golden: No dialogue in the film.
- Visual Pun: At one point when the woman is inflating the doll, what appears to be a pair of pendulous breasts appears. Then the "nipples" expand into feet, and the breasts are revealed to be the doll's lower legs.
