It was this really dark animated feature that plays as a sequel to the legendary collodi story but very original as it was made by Filmation (The dudes who did the other Ghostbusters in both live-action and animation, He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestarr, Fat Albert, Star Trek animated etc.) and New World Pictures. It took five years in the making and it premiered on Christmas 1987 as it underperformed at the box-office, got mixed reviews and to this day a cult following.

It's set a year after Pinocchio became human, a creepy mysterious carnival is in town and Pinocchio just had his first birthday. He has to deliver an jewelbox to the mayor in town for a good price. He makes a dope of himself once again as he gives the box to a con-artist raccoon and his monkey assistant for a wortheless fake ruby as it pisses his dad off so much that Pinoch decides to run away to join the carnival. At night at the carnival after a puppet show, he falls for a lovely girl puppet that seduces him as he falls in love with gets tricked by an evil puppeteer who is the minion of the title villain as he turns Pinocchio back into a puppet. Later he gets rescued by his fairy godmother to be human again as he escapes to try to find the two scumbags that swindled him earlier for that fake ruby as he discovers by the two that the box has been sold to the carnival as they go after it only to end up in the hellish nightmarish realm of the empire of the night conducted by the evil Emperor who wants his soul.

It's quite dark and well made with suprisingly good animation from Filmation that improves over their other animated efforts as it has true animation instead of stock animation. This one has a solid cast like James Earl Jones, Ed Asner, Don Knotts, Scott Grimes, Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Bosley, Frank Welker and Jonathan Harris and has some geniune moments of terror, creepiness and atmosphere plus it's fun too. I saw this movie back in 1987 in a theater when i was 6 after christmas and saw it at a St. Louis mall theater and it scared me crapless even with that horrifying scene where Puppetino turns pinocchio slowly and tortures him back into a puppet.

It's a lot of fun revisiting this on Youtube.com

Definitely nightmare inducing. This was up there with the Secret of the Nymph. I certainly miss the darker animated movies and series of the 80's, as well as the live action fantasy films. An era definitely overlooked by most. Many just remember the teen films of the 80's.

Then there was this movie called Ghostbusters that no one remembers either.

WOW that's amazing you remember it, this is sort of a cult movie.

Quite amazing the guys who did He-Man, She-Ra, the original Ghostbusters, Bravestarr, Fat Albert, the Star Trek cartoon and others did a dark animated movie?

Here's the link to the movie on youtube if you want to revisit this movie for nostalgic sake and also subscribe to the owner of the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9MtQgR4lk

Well the 80's had dark kids movies and not-so-kids animated movies such as this, Black Cauldron, Heavy Metal, Wicked City, Urotsukidoji, Akira, Land Before Time, American Tail, The Dark Crystal, Return to Oz, Making Contact (a.k.a. Joey), Fire and Ice, Professional: Golgo 13, Nausicca Valley of the Wind and others were.

One of my favorites is “Starchaser: The Legend of Orin”. It's pretty much the Twisted Metal vesion of Star Wars. They pretty much put all three Star Wars films together in it, plus a few others. It was important because it was the first 3-D full length animated film in theaters.

What about the other movies i mentioned including Urotsukidoji?

Starchaser was a great one, very nice Heavy Metal and Rock and Rule meets Star Wars movie.

For the record: reading the original, un-bastardized/Disneyfied version of just “Pinocchio” was frightening enough. Pinocchio was a little wooden bastard in that one and the events in it were pretty messed up for a young'un like me to read.

Well Crimson this version is more true to the books compared to Disney's version and just as dark and disturbing.

as a child , i always felt insulted by the patronising moral messages at the end of Filmation shows, and it left me with a profound dislike of the studio as a result.

this film does however actually look quite promising

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Well Crimson this version is more true to the books compared to Disney's version and just as dark and disturbing.

Ohjesuschrist, there's no way in hell I'm watching it then.

Wait until you see part 5 of this movie on youtube.com it has the most unpleasant and disturbing scene in th movie and one of animation's most scariest moments.

This one is more like Ralph Bakshi then Filmation actually, oh another dark cartoon movie from the 80's i forgot to mention was The Last Unicorn.