The Electric Piper (found Nickelodeon animated TV film; 2003)

Title card.

Status: Found

Date found: 9 Aug 2016

Found by: Anonymous & StewartIsMe

The Electric Piper is an animated TV adaptation of The Pied Piper that aired on Nickelodeon in February 2003. ^[1] The film was directed by Raymie Muzquiz and written by Bill Burnett, the creator of ChalkZone. Voice cast included Rodney Dangerfield, Rob Schneider, and George Segal.^[2]

Plot

Set in the late 1960s, it's about a guitarist named Sly (modelled after Jimi Hendrix) who uses his music to get rid of rats who are invading a suburban town called Hamlin. When the mayor doesn't give Sly his reward, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, he takes his revenge by convincing the children of the town to run away and join him in a mountain.

Availability

The movie hasn't been seen since its few initial airings on Nickelodeon, and it was never released on VHS or DVD. Only three clips of it have resurfaced onto the internet, one of which has since been taken down. The film has not resurfaced anywhere else, and no complete TV recordings are known to exist.

Legal status

However, the director Raymie Muzquiz confirmed he has a copy but that he isn't allowed to release it. He hopes to one day find a way to release it online but has confirmed that Nickelodeon's legal department decided that it did not have enough documentation on the music rights to re-release the movie safely. He also added that before the original movie airing, they had to re-record some of the music because Nickelodeon's legal department at the time thought the movie's songs were too close to the other songs that they were referencing.

Finding

On August 9th, 2016 an Anonymous user contacted someone who had worked on the film and received a copy of the tape to release. On August 20th, 2016 user "StewartIsMe" got an interlaced DVD copy; it was uploaded onto YouTube after using a deinterlacing software.