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Bearskin,
Hansel & Gretel, and Frog King, together

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Bearskin, or The Man Who Didn't Wash for Seven Years
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Robert Westenberg and
Richard Bauer

A tale of endurance and spiritual transformation through suffering. After making a pact with the devil, a former Civil War soldier is given unlimited riches, but he will lose his soul unless he wears a bearskin and goes without a bath, haircut, shave, or manicure for seven years. Bearskin grows a repulsive seven-year accumulation of hair, grime, and fingernails, and is cut off from human society. But when his heart opens to the suffering of another, he wins the hand of a kind and beautiful girl, and the devil is obliged to give him a bath.

(20 min., ages 8-adult)

"(Bearskin) has the pungently bleak and chilly look of The Conqueror Worm or The Wicker Man or one of those other bleaky-chilly British horror pictures...but it's playfully creepy rather than horrific...except for one or two abrupt exits, it is a model of short filmmaking, suitable for imaginative children and not so innocuous as to bore adults."
– Tom Shales, The Washington Post June 30, 1984

Awards
  • • CINE Golden Eagle winner
  • • American Film Festival – Blue ribbon
  • • San Francisco International Film Festival – Best Educational Film
  • • The American Library Association – Notable Children's Film
  • Bearskin and his betrothed The Devil