Black Hearted Barney Blackfoot

A Perspective

By Annie Murray 15/04/2015

Black Hearted Barney Blackfoot is a trippy short film made for children. Shot cartoon-style in garish colours, BBB is a surreal tale about two children who feel disempowered by a bullying stepfather. BBB stars Ian Watkin  and Annie Whittle, and the script has no dialogue or narration. Shot in a unique soft sculpture set, it features a strikingly original musical score by composer Jack Body.

Two children, Lucy and Billy, have their world tipped upside down when their mother (played by a young, doll-like Whittle) marries Barney (Watkin). He is a bullying, axe-wielding beer drinker who torments the children with maths homework. The children try to keep their close relationship with their mum without upsetting Barney, which is not easy.

Barney is a threatening presence to the children. He moves in his own furniture — a large wardrobe and cuckoo clock — which come alive to spy on the children and their mother. He has a few beers then goes out to chop firewood, destroying the birds' playground in the process.

This film is shot with extreme high and low camera angles, and disconcerting close-ups. An unforgettable scene has Whittle hanging on a coat hanger in the wardrobe's pink, womb-like interior. The children enter through the mouth of a giant worm to find their mother. They are all showered with papers covered in maths equations.

Black Hearted Barney Blackfoot was an early directing project for Yvonne Mackay, after she left TVNZ. It was based on an unpublished story written by award-winning children's writer Jack Lasenby, who agreed to let Dave Gibson produce it. Gibson went on to become one of New Zealand's most prolific drama producers. Ian Mune (The Mad Dog Gang) adapted the story to the screen, and it was submitted into the NZ Television Awards for Best Screenplay. Awards officials bizarrely rejected the entry because it featured no dialogue. 

Australian cinematographer Peter James went on to shoot Academy Award-winning movie Driving Miss Daisy. Dean Cato and theatre designer Janet Williamson designed the impressive soft sculpture set. Theatre legend Tony Rabbit built the memorable wardrobe. The glove puppet in the cuckoo clock was played by Johnny Morris, who in later years became the Building Manager at the NZ Film Archive (now Ngā Taonga).

Black Hearted Barney Blackfoot was funded by TVNZ and the Department of Education, and screened in New Zealand schools as well as on television. Jack Body's musical score tied in with the primary school music curriculum. It was especially designed so that after one screening, it could be shown a second time without the percussion section of the soundtrack; children were then encouraged to use or make instruments to create percussion sounds to the film.

BBB debuted on channel one at 7.50pm on Sunday 28 December 1980. It was rejected by many international distributors, who were concerned about the implied threat of Barney wielding an axe. However it did sell to French TV network FR3.

- Annie Murray has commissioned children's and special interest programmes for TVNZ, and been Head of External Programming at Māori Television. In 2014 she became Senior Commissioner at Sky and Prime TV, and in 2003, Chief Executive of the NZ Film Commission.