Picha (Jean-Paul Walravens), is a Belgian comic artist and animator. After the international cult success of Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle, an animated adaptation of his adult comic, Le Chaînon manquant, known in English as either The Missing Link or BC Rock, was greenlit.
With a significantly larger budget than Tarzoon, Le Chaînon manquant is a significant upgrade when compared to its predecessor in almost every way:
- The animation is far superior.
- The music, composed by the late Roy Budd, is really quite beautiful at times.
- The songs, performed by Leo Sayer (Yes, THAT Leo Sayer) are pleasant and catchy.
- Some of the creature designs are actually quite creative and funny.
- The writing and story is actually quite good and paced well.
- Above all else, the story has heart; something lacking in Picha’s other works (in my humble opinion).
Honestly, Picha’s stuff is not what one would call high brow; despite his works often being labelled as “for mature audiences”, it’s generally of the, “HAHA that looks like a PENIS!” variety.
The Missing Link has some of that adolescent humour, but it’s elevated by its production design, creative flourishes and above all else, heart.
I first saw this in Australia, in 1989, when I was nine years old. Heartbroken that my parents didn’t allow me to rent Fritz The Cat, this film proved to be a lucky compromise, having been rated “M” in Australia. More of less, it’s the equivalent to an American PG-13 (Which this movie most definitely would *not* be rated in the USA). Kids could see “M” rated movies in the theatres without a parent as it was only recommended for mature audiences and not enforced unlike the dreaded “R” rating. For reference, films like Aliens, Predator, The Terminator were rated “M”. Commando was rated “R”. Distinction seems nebulous? The Australian ratings board agreed, and created the MA15+ rating (meaning you had to prove you were at least 15 when attending the theatre) several years later, for films containing content too extreme for an “M”, but not extreme enough for an “R”.
The Missing Link clearly struck a cord with me because I remember it fondly to this day. Unfortunately, it never achieved the success that Tarzoon did, nor did Picha’s post-apocalyptic comedy follow-up, The Big Bang, which, like Tarzoon, is nowhere near as good as this. For a while, it seemed that Picha’s stuff did attract a following mostly in PAL regions like Scandinavia, UK, Germany and Australia.
There were actually two English dubs for this film. The one I originally saw, which was a mostly faithful adaptation of the French version, and a dub for the US market, which was retitled as BC Rock. It featured significant re-writes and Roy Budd’s score and Leo Sayer’s songs were completely excised and replaced. The main character, “Oh” was rewritten as a kind of an American frat-boy and not the sweet monosyllabic individual he is in the original and more faithful dub. I heard a bit of BC Rock and hold absolutely no affection for it. Bill Murray voices the dragon in both versions, however.
In terms of commercial releases:
- It was released on DVD in France, Germany and Australia (Though I’m told that the Australian DVD release may be the BC Rock version, which is ponderous considering the original release in video rental stores in the 80’s was the more faithful dub)
- Scandinavia had a slightly better release with “The Picha Collection” with all three of his earlier films. Amazingly, these are all the English dubs, with no option for the original French language present.
Sadly, the video quality is severely lacking in all commercially released DVD versions of this film; with Sub-par audio quality, bad contrast and even worse ghosting problems abound. The version I found is a little bit better in the ghosting department but there’s discolouration in the “de-ghosted” areas. I suspect they attempted to de-ghost the shitty masters they were given.
I did what I could; upscaled it, and subtlety adjusted the colours and contrast. I can proudly say that this is the best the film has ever looked on home video. That’s not saying much, sadly. Despite claims of the audio being in stereo, I can’t see any difference between the left and right channels.
So, presented to you is the first English subtitled release of this film. As with all Bubby-Subs releases, I’m sure there are mistakes and occasional mis-translations. Some lines come across as gibberish because they quite literally are. Croak, the pterodactyl, is occasionally named as “Scratch” because the protagonist can barely string a grammatically coherent sentence together and is prone to mispronouncing and/or misnaming things.
I hope this film wiggles its way into your heart the way it did for me, all those years ago.
Bubby-Subs 
Un Sacré Amour