The Little Ark

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🎙️ EPISODE 243: 07.08.20 The Little Ark is one of those movies that shouldn't exist, and the passage of time seems to be actively trying to make that the case. And thus begins our first foray into the World of #TrueRandom, a new series wherein I will be using a devious-looking website to generate a completely random film title from the last 120+ years for my viewing... um, pleasure? The only rule: If I can track it down, and I have to watch it.

So The Little Ark is kind of the perfect choice to start things off. Because I was only able to find it via this website (currently defunct, again, due to copyright issues) which exists existed (?) solely to salvage films from their final death: full erasure from the collective consciousness, the avoidance of this cursed list. The version uploaded to "Russian YouTube" (ok.ru) was from a bad VHS transfer and the first five minutes are a tracking disaster. This is real art folks. Bask in the delight of the opening credits featuring Oscar-nominated (!) song "Come Follow, Follow Me" ...


Imagine, if you will, me, in my home office/gym, attempting to exercise (stepping on and off a plastic stool I got at IKEA) while staring at the oldest flat screen TV in the house playing that scrambled 1972 children's film. That's my life, folks.

The rest of the file (and film) isn't much better. It's hard to make out some of the audio. Toward the very end, it randomly rewinds twenty seconds and repeats a sequence. In Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, he gave the film three stars and wrote, "Another good children's film from producer Robert Radnitz; this one concerns two Dutch youngsters who try to find their father after being separated from him during a flood." The movie, in fact, makes a big to-do that it was filmed on location in Holland, though any beauty is lost in the transfer. The flood scenes also take on a surreal quality due to the poor quality...


It was difficult to decipher if they were commendable or vice versa, or how exactly it was shot; the screen, a pixelated blue, my body going up and down, hand on the smartphone taking note of what bad dialogue I could decipher.

And there's plenty of that to go around.

The film concerns two war orphans who have been taken in by a priest: an asshole boy and a girl of "foreign" origins who is subsequently referred to as "Queen of Sheba" by the gruff fisherman who takes them in after the flood. This scene where the idiot asshole boy makes her clean up her snot using the page of a hymnal sums up this movie's attitudes toward gender nicely...

They make their way to a houseboat that is honestly pretty chill looking and even has a functional organ on board...

("God is Muzick")

Then they are rescued by the aforementioned gruff fisherman, who–believe it or not–has his heart warmed by the two little ones over the course of the movie and slowly becomes their friend and learns a little bit about love in the process. But mainly the only interesting parts are how much of a dick this little kid is to both his "sister" and the handful of animals they rescue (Ark, remember?), especially the chicken named Old Prince who he absolutely despises for some reason ...

I really can't understate how creepy this kid is...

Anyway, some boring crap happens etc etc. The fisherman really hates the Navy for some reason (?) and the little kid likes the smell of old men, and I've combined those clips here because: laziness...

About halfway through there is a totally random animation sequence that tells the story of some mermaid or something and it's not related to the story of the movie at all. My best guess is that the company responsible for this had the rights to it and shoehorned it into the film to pad out the running time. The animation was actually kinda lovely...


The comedic climax of the picture is undoubtedly when the asshole tells the girl "piss off you old bloodsucker or I'll smash ya," a classic line from a classic children's film...

For a movie called The Little Ark, it's pretty funny how little this is actually about the animals. They are often around and mentioned in passing, but they are not the focus. Nor are there any clear parallels to Noah etc. When they eventually make landfall, the plot truly goes off the rails. I found this interaction with a random dude with a cow to be extremely funny for some reason...

Seriously, the last twenty minutes are such an incoherent mess. There is a sequence where they rescue a guy and his kid from (another?) flood, and when they bring him back on shore a bunch of photographers spook the guy and he stabs another guy with a pitchfork.

(I'm as lost as you are.)

The last few minutes are devoted to a funeral procession for the guy who got stabbed with the pitchfork and then the kids are reunited with their adopted priest dad who I had assumed had definitely died, but... nope.

The Little Ark is unfathomably bad, but the outdated + offensive dialogue and total randomness of the plot is worth a chuckle or a scoff or a guffaw or some other type of response (my opinions are not universal!). I absolutely don't recommend you watching it and now that that rare film website got taken down, you probably won't be able to! I might be one of just a handful of people in possession of a copy, digital or otherwise. And that's special. Even if it's also unbelievably stupid. Unlike this boutique baby shop in Oklahoma City.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 272 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 274A ⫸

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