Original Australian Daybill movie poster. Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale (stylised on posters and titles as Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tail Tale) is a 1986 New Zealand-Australian animated comedy film directed by Murray Ball, produced by John Barnett and Pat Cox with music by Dave Dobbyn (which charted in the top 40 in Australia) and written by Tom Scott and Murray Ball. It was based on cartoonist Murray Ball's comic strip Footrot Flats. The film features the voices of John Clarke, Peter Rowley, Rawiri Paratene, Fiona Samuel, Peter Hayden, Dorothy McKegg, Billy T. James, Brian Sergent, Marshall Napier and Michael Haigh. It was New Zealand's first feature-length animated film and was one of the most successful local films of the 1980s. In Australia it was also successful and today enjoys a huge cult following.