User:Anthony Man Docando

		This article contains spoilers! Please be advised that the following article contains spoilers for the screamer mentioned in the title or description. If you have not yet experienced the material and wish to avoid spoilers, we recommend that you proceed with caution or refrain from reading until you have done so.

File:The short's title card..png

The short film's title card.

Love & Theft is a German surreal adult animated short film created and animated by German animator Andreas Hykade, produced by German animation studio Film Bilder, with music and sounds by German musician and composer Heiko Maile. Released in 2010, it is named after the 2001 Bob Dylan album of the same name, which has been a part of Hykade's childhood. However, unlike the album itself, it was released 10 years later, and it's also entirely different. It also has two screamers, and it surprisingly gained a cult following online like Hykade's other films.

The film begins with a white background, and on screen, animated text in Hykade's font appears, and there's only three of them. One of Film Bilder presenting it, one of the film's title, and finally, one of Hykade being the film's creator. Three of them are all accompanied by soft music, and after the last one, the white background goes still, lasting for two seconds. After two seconds, an oval appears, growing by itself until it pops like a bubble, accompanied by what sounded like a bit of static. The oval reappears, doing it again, albeit with eyes. Soft music's heard in the background as the oval with eyes keeps doing this over and over again while briefly having a large frowny mouth reminiscent of the Aaugh! pose from Peanuts. After a while, the music changes to what sounded like cartoonish music. At the 0:51 mark, the oval stops doing it and starts morphing into the faces of various random characters, including cartoon characters, animators, historical figures, religious symbols, and many others. They include:

• Charlie Brown.
• Hello Kitty.
• Mickey Mouse.
• What appears to be either Goofy (by the mouth) or Bimbo (by the ears).
• Spider-Man.
• A one-eyed monster (possibly Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc.).
• One of the gaunt puppets from the 1986 British horror stop-motion short film Street of Crocodiles.
• A Phil Mulloy character (presumably one from the Intolerance series, that being the main character in the second and third films known as Ade).
• SpongeBob SquarePants.
• Bert.
• Tweety Bird.
• A Powerpuff Girl (possibly either Blossom or Bunny).
• A black-haired little girl (possibly Kai-Lan from Ni Hao, Kai-Lan).
• Betty Boop.
• The Joker.
• Ryan Larkin (as he appears in Chris Landreth's 2004 animated short film Ryan).
• Harvie Krumpet.
• Gromit.
• A bulldog (possibly either Hector the Bulldog or Spike from Tom & Jerry).
• Droopy.
• A robot (possibly Bender from Futurama).
• Koko the Clown.
• Pink Panther (albeit drawn with only one eye).
• Bill Plympton.
• A penis with eyes.
• The exotic dancer from Michèle Cournoyer's 1999 animated short film The Hat.
• Che Guevara.
• Mao Zedong.
• Karl Marx.
• The Illuminati (which is actually the All-Seeing Eye symbol, which is associated with it).
• Yin-Yang.
• A deformed Mickey Mouse caricature with bat-like ears, a long mouth and fly-like eyes.
• Adolf Hitler.
• Two of the oval's altered forms from the prologue.

Colored in black and white, three by three of those faces form groups where they morph into each other, accompanied by any type of music or sound, including an electric guitar, a music box, maracas, a dog's barks, and more. In fact, the oval seems to be the first face of the whole situation. All these 12 groups appear one by one, each morphing for four times, and after the last one, it goes again, now with each two of the 12 groups merged together to make a six-group as the faces are shown to get closer while more music plays. After that, the music speed gets faster, with more music playing as all the 12 groups merge together into a 12-group, with the faces now much closer. Suddenly, the oval with black oval splits into two deformed Mickey heads, now with angry-looking eyes, as they morph into a Mickey Mouse-Adolf Hitler hybrid with fangs and the bulldog. The two bulldog heads then merge to morph into a three-eyed deformed Betty Boop head as it morphs into Karl Marx, Bill Plympton, Joker, Koko, Bert, Gromit, and Spider-Man (now with polka dots on his face), with all of them looking angry as well. Spider-Man then quickly morphs into SpongeBob, Che, Ade, Mao, Tweety, the Goofy lookalike, Pink Panther, Hitler, Yin-Yang (now with eyes instead of its dots), Hello Kitty, Charlie Brown, and the oval, with all of them having frowns and their eyes closed in an angry way, with Kitty, Charlie and the oval being entirely black. Accompanying this was a loud deep boom overlapped with dramatic music as the faces shrink. After that, the oval suddenly morphs into a blue-colored, sharp-toothed, altered version of what could be the Goofy lookalike, with his eyes (now yellow and bloodshot) popping out, accompanied by an ominous dramatic boom. As it progressed, the eyes multiply and disappear and the Goofy lookalike morphs into Charlie Brown screaming with his hair flying away, still blue, while different music plays after Charlie morphs back into the oval as his hair morphs into the Illuminati and disappears.

The faces reappear, now much closer and separated into six-groups again due to each six of them interrupted by a colorized animation of what will happen next, with a few more characters introduced, including what looks like Venom, Donald Duck and Pluto. After that, because of this, the background changes to yellow, and the colors become blue (with red briefly appearing), starting a trippy sequence with more different music, which is accompanying the colorized animations from earlier. Also, most character faces have been altered in a sinister way due to the scene, with Hello Kitty resembling Thomas the Tank Engine's memetic shocked face with fangs and her tongue sticking out, most character faces having frowns, the monster having two eyes, Tweety being eyeless, and Droopy being mouthless. Also, three more characters are introduced, including Feathers McGraw from The Wrong Trousers, Ruth Lingford and Barbapapa. The animations shown include spinning heads, having a blown out brain, vomiting Venom's body, unmasking another by itself, and more. Suddenly, after that sequence, we get to meet a screamer, which is a different depiction of the Mickey-Hitler hybrid screaming loudly while slowly morphing into a face with bulging blue eyes, Joker's mouth and Gromit's ears and nose, with the background slowly changing from red to orange-yellow. Disturbing music plays as the screamer morphs into Spider-Man with a huge body with muscles, slowly unzooming to have his body morph into the bulldog, also having a visible body with nipples. After that, the music changes to a different one as the camera unzooms every time to see a different character with a naked body evolved from the body of the previous one, going from Marx to Ruth, followed by Venom, the monster, Betty, Plympton, Ade, the dancer, the titular character of Jim Woodring's Frank (who briefly appears and is never seen again), Hitler, and the oval.

After the oval, his body suddenly morphs and splits into two giant Betty Boops, each with blue eyes and a dog-like snout. They then morph into SpongeBob, followed by Marx as their tongues appear, touching each other. As the tongues progressed, the two Marxs morph into Plympton, the doll (both now with dark-blue wavy hair), Spider-Man, Mickey, Mao, Che, Donald, and Ade, showing us a graphic depiction of a French kiss. Also, the heads fly away from the bodies, leaving disembodied. Beautiful music plays, briefly followed by a duck quacking three times. Suddenly, the two Ade heads morphs into Plympton again, now with bloodshot eyes, blue sclera and a screaming mouth. The tongues are now tied together as the Plympton heads began disfiguring with their eyes shut, accompanied by more dramatic music. During this, the tongues are connected by what look like rotund blobs with single eyes as they all quickly mix together to make a brain with a shocked face. Rock music plays as the brain begins morphing into deformed versions of most character faces, doing it in three different ways while morphing twice. After that, the brain reappears, now with Koko's hat and ears, resembling a Smurf. This is where another screamer appears, where the camera zooms into its eyes as the music extends, zooming to Karl Marx mixed with Pink Panther, an altered Ruth Lingford, the dancer with the penis' top, a cyclops with Betty Boop's head shape, a semi-realistic row of teeth, Bert with Che Guevara's hat, "mouth" and beard, Betty Boop mixed with The Joker, the Mickey-Hitler hybrid from earlier, SpongeBob with fangs and the girl's eyes, Ade with Mickey Mouse's ears, Donald Duck with Mao Zedong's eyes and hair, the brain's eyes, and an altered Illuminati with a yellow-and-red eye. After the camera zooms into its pupil, the screen cuts to black as the music stops, ending the screamer. In the background, animations with a light-blue outline of Ryan Larkin, bubbles, Edvard Munch's The Scream, nudity, and others appear, accompanied by soft music. After this sequence, we get to meet a peaceful, yellow-and-brown scene of various surreal situations, with new characters appearing, such as Chris Robinson, a lot of American singers (including Elvis Presley) and most of Hykade's characters, including Tom from Tom and the Slice of Bread with Strawberry Jam and Honey. The film ends with a yellow version of the oval shrinking and closing his eyes, followed by the credits rolling, also in Hykade's font, accompanied by quiet static.

Trivia

• This is the only time Andreas Hykade made a film about screamers.
• Due to having a cult following online, many people started making parodies or versions out of it with either the same footage or different or more characters.
• The second screamer might predict the bootlegged toons from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers when it comes to mixing cartoon characters with others.
• It is considered both trippy and scary.
• In 2009, one year before the film itself, Brazilian animation festival Anima Mundi collaborated with Andreas Hykade to create Anima Mundi 2009, which not only features all the faces from the film, but also a few absent ones like Batman, Bugs Bunny, Jiminy Cricket, Wallace, Daffy Duck, Felix the Cat, Shrek, Bambi, Bob Dylan, Snowy, and more. Also, it's revealed that Hykade named the penis Federico Martín. It also had a trailer with the film's footage.

Links

NOTE: The following animation contains two screamers!

• youtube.com/watch?v=rEUxlwb2uFI&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5tD
• https://vimeo.com/16245334