La Ballade des Dalton
| La Ballade des Dalton | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by |
René Goscinny Henri Gruel Morris Pierre Watrin Martin Rosen (English) |
| Produced by | Martin Rosen (English) |
| Written by | Martin Rosen (English) |
| Based on | Lucky Luke by Morris and René Goscinny |
| Starring | Beth Porter |
| Music by |
Angela Morley Malcolm Williamson |
| Edited by | Terry Rawlings |
| Distributed by | Avco Embassy Pictures (1978 U.S.) |
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Release date
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November 1978 |
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Running time
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82 min |
| Country | France |
| Language | English |
La Ballade des Dalton is a 1978 French animated film written and directed by René Goscinny, Morris, Henri Gruel and Pierre Watrin starring the comic book character Lucky Luke. Two different adaptations of the film in book form were both published in French in 1978. The first, adapted by Guy Vidal, was in text form rather than comic strip, and was accompanied by images from the film. The second was a comic strip adaptation by an uncredited Pascal Dabère and formed part of the book, La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires (The Ballad of the Daltons and Other Stories).
The story opens in a Western saloon, where a young musician with a banjo begins to tell a tale of Lucky Luke and his sworn enemies the Dalton brothers: Joe, William, Jack and Averell. Luke has, once again, as he has done many times before, thrown the four outlaws into jail. The prison is also the abode of a guard dog named Rin Tin Can (Rantanplan in the original French language version).
No sooner have the Daltons entered the jail than they are met by a lawyer named Augustus Betting. Betting informs the brothers that their Uncle Henry Dalton has died by hanging. However, over the course of his criminal career, Henry Dalton amassed quite a fortune, and has chosen to leave it all to his nephews on the condition that they kill the judge and jury who sentenced him to death. To make sure that the task is completed, Henry Dalton states in his will that his nephews must be accompanied by the only honest man that he has ever known, Lucky Luke. If the task is not successfully completed, the entire fortune will instead be given to charity.
The brothers then decide to tunnel out of the jail, but end up digging into the dynamite storage building. When Averell lights a match, the building blows up. The Daltons, along with Rin Tin Can, are blown far away from the remains of the jail. Their disappearance along with Rin Tin Can leads the prison officers to believe the Daltons are now dead.
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Wikipedia