October 1, 1971 –
The comedy-variety sketch series, The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, starring, Marty Feldman, Spike Milligan, John Junkin, Hugh Paddick, Frances de la Tour, and Barry Levinson, was released in the UK on this date.
Terry Gilliam’s animation contributions for this series were the opening and closing credits. The opening was a production line making identical looking mannequins/men, one eventually gets Marty’s head, and is ejected into a rubbish bin. (This sequence appears in Gilliam’s Animations of Mortality book.). The closing credits were various people saying “Good Bye!” and having horrible things happen to them. (i.e. A train conductor pulls a level and gets run over by a train, Mickey Mouse-type thingy gets smashed in a rat trap, etc… )
