TV REVIEW : ‘Comedy’ Only Marginally Amusing

“Will Vinton’s Claymation Comedy of Horrors,” a marginally amusing animated special airing at 8:30 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, is a Halloween comedy-adventure that CBS seems to have accidentally scheduled five months early.

On Halloween night, Wilshire Pig and his sidekick, Sheldon Snail, set off to find the lost monster of Dr. Frankenswine. Following a map inadvertently printed on Sheldon’s tongue, the pair arrive at a standard haunted castle, populated by odd ghouls who recall the campy cast of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The ghouls chase Wilshire and Sheldon around the castle until they stumble onto the missing monster, who grows to enormous size and scares off the other creatures.

It soon becomes obvious that “Comedy” has no real story, just a loosely connected string of gags--only a few of which are funny. In light of recent events, introducing a quartet of spectral figures as “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--Famine, War, Pestilence and Denture Stains” seems not only lame, but tasteless.

Co-writer/director Barry Bruce does little to shore up the deficiencies of the plot, and has paced the entire special like a commercial. Watching so much continuous, jittery motion soon tries the viewer’s patience.

The characters seem to have been designed with an eye toward merchandising: It’s easy to imagine Wilshire Pig dolls, sets of jolly little ghouls as premiums in fast-food restaurants, etc. But the greedy and obnoxious Wilshire is utterly devoid of appeal, and Sheldon looks like a rewarmed version of the Noid from the Domino’s Pizza commercials.

Will Vinton has reigned as the unchallenged master of clay animation since his first film, “Closed Mondays,” won an Academy Award in 1975. But “Creature Comforts,” this year’s Oscar winner, demonstrated that artists at the British studio, Aardman Animations, are doing subtler, more imaginative work with clay figures. If Vinton hopes to maintain his position at the forefront of the medium, his studio will have to produce more satisfying programs than “Comedy of Horrors.”