The Sandman's Secret Weapon

The Sandman's Secret Weapon is a 1989 Canadian-Japanese animated horror-fantasy film written and directed by Ethan Gauthier (co-founder of Cinemator) in his solo directorial debut after co-directing Wolfsbane the Savage.

The film was a co-production between Cinemator Artworks Company and OttawArts Inc. (the latter would eventually be renamed as Cinemator's satellite studio in the Ottawa-Gatineau area) along with funds from Studio Axel (who otherwise played no role in the art department nor the animation) and Fuji Television.

It film was originally planned for theatrical release in the US and Canada but it was cancelled and premiered as a TV special in the holiday season of 1989 on HBO and CBC respectively, with further showings in the following months. It was, however, released at movie theaters in various countries.

Summary
Archie begins a year at a boarding school where he and other children live under the thumb of strict and hard-hearted teacher Master Beaufort, who has a habit of intimidating his students with threats (among other things). This is especially true at night when he invokes the Bogeyman as a punitive force.

One night, the Sandman visiting the school accidentally gets noticed by Archie who turns out to be just the miserable yet daring and good heart necessary to help make the Secret Weapon, in time for the Bogeyman's eventual appearance in five nights.

Production
Cinemator had this as their second feature on the pipeline (funded in part by box office returns from the success of Wolfsbane), with plans to release it sometime in 1989.

Gauthier found the work necessary to complete Wolfsbane was hard (even with work outsourced to the Far East) and sought to think of a means to keep a similar production pipeline to Disney without risking poor quality or burnout of animators. After a while, contact was established with OttawArts elsewhere in Ontario, who agreed to share production and animation responsibilities while Hanho Heung-Up and Wang Film Productions were assigned subcontracted ink-and-paint duties. Overall, the film took 13 months to complete from August 1988 to September 1989.

Upon learning of Cinemator and their upcoming project (as well as attending a pre-release showing of Wolfsbane the Savage), Studio Axel founder Toshihiro Chiba offered to fund the production (when a request to aid with the animation was politely declined) as well as promote the movie to Japanese audiences.

Though the movie was in a contract with Cannon in exchange for the rights to distribute Wolfsbane in theaters worldwide, the studio eventually backed out of distributing Sandman due to finance issues leaving the film without any interested parties for a North American theatrical release. Cinemator was then forced to cut their losses (and avoid risking an overspending of budget) and offer the film for a TV premiere instead. According to Gauthier, it was "just right for Home Box Office" and "perfectly Canadian for the CBC... that was all they really cared about".

Release
The film premiered on CBC (with French-language counterpart Télévision de Radio-Canada airing simultaneously) on November 24 1989 at 7 PM as a special presentation and the following evening on HBO. Since it was sold to distributors in other territories, many of them secured theatrical showings.

It was later released on VHS on February 19, 1990 in Canada by Alliance Releasing and MCA Home Video, with HBO Home Video's release in the US occurring a week later on the 26th. The video proved to be a moderate hit in the rental market coupled with an otherwise tepid retail performance, though new unsold copies were later made available on auction sites and in discount/resale stores.

Alliance Video re-released the film on VHS in 1996 in Canada, in large part prompted by the success of Cinemator's then-more recent films New York Cats and 9 Lives, as the packaging referenced both as a selling point. This edition came with an offer for a $5 mail-in rebate in conjunction with Kellogg's cereals and Nutri-Grain bars.