Mellow Manor Productions, Inc. was founded by Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble, known as "Spike & Mike," in
Riverside, California in the 1970s to promote rock bands and special screenings of horror films and movie classics. It was named after Riverside's notorious Victorian house, "The Manor," where Spike, Mike, and many others lived in a communal set. The Manor was the original flagship and production house of the Festival. After spending mid-1977 giving out flyers for the
Fantastic Animation Festival, they focused on presenting a flight of animated films and booking the Festival of Animation in venues across the country, which eventually becoming a 50 city tour. The Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation began in 1990 at Wheeler Auditorium at UC Berkeley. This is an unrated, adult version of the regular program, featuring mainly satirical, nonsensical, and gross-out cartoons. In the Festival's early days, Spike and Mike took the stage, introducing the films in ringmaster style. balloons were volleyed into fan seating before showtime to burn off street energy. The reel header was flanked by a bagpipe-and-drum battle march over a cartoon of Spike's Scottish Terrier on screen, wreaking havoc on the titles. The dog took the stage and was driven to shred objects. Before the Festival of Animation, it was difficult to see independent, experimental, and foreign animation. Spike and Mike went on yearly worldwide film hunting expeditions. They signed on animation from the National Film Board of Canada, CalArts, Sheridan, Royal College of Art, Annecy, Zagreb, Hiroshima, Ottawa, and select studios active among the art-house scene that did not have a public venue. In the 1990s, Spike and Mike screened early films from animators including
Nick Park,
Marv Newland,
Tim Burton,
Barry Purves,
John Lasseter,
Andrew Stanton,
Pete Docter and
Will Vinton. The shows have toured in theaters, film festivals (such as Cannes, Sundance, Annecy), college campuses, and dynamic events such as the Vans Warped Tour, the Winter X Games, ComiCon, and with the nu-metal band
Korn. Initially, Spike and Mike produced the Classic Festival, and later both the Classic and Sick and Twisted simultaneously. But by the early 2000s, the Classic Festival of Animation was put on hiatus in favor of the Sick and Twisted Festival. Spike and Mike's New Gen Show was created in place of the Classic Festival to show films that did not fit the "sick and twisted" category. A select set of the short films in the festival was produced at Mellow Manor, some partially and others in full. Artists' conceptualized or unfinished elements were often accepted for financial and pipeline assistance in completing production. Some stages of an artist's production were contracted out for specialized work. Mike Gribble died of cancer in August 1994, and Spike would continue to produce touring theatrical festivals of animated short films. On November 4, 2023,
Skybound Entertainment announced that it had acquired the festival and has plans to revitalize it. ==Contributors==