In 1933, New Zealander sculptor, animator, and puppeteer Len Lye made "The Peanut Vendor"/"Experimental Animation", a short film featuring a singing spider monkey puppet. It was something to show prospective investors as he tried to raise money to produce a feature-length puppet/stop-motion animation film.
Lye's efforts were in vain, and his puppet movie was never made... but a little bit of his dream survives to this day, for us to smile and marvel at.
The version embedded below is perhaps the highest quality and most complete one that's available for easy viewing. I've seen some commentators describe it as "creepy". Personally. I think it's rather cute.
But why don't you check it out and judge for yourself. Let me know if you, too, find it creepy... or if it perhaps filled a spider monkey-shaped void in your life that didn't even know was there until today.
But wait! There's more music with Len Lye's monkey!
One of the joys of this digital age we live in is that all sorts of fun, weird stuff is available in obscure corners of even the most well-known sites. Take for example this funky video where someone took Lye's spider monkey puppet film and replaced the soundtrack with that of the Beatles warming up (or just goofing off) during a recording session.
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