FELIX THE CAT SWITCHES WITCHES (1927)
Article 2670 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-17-2008
Posting Date: 12-4-2008
Directed by Otto Messmer
No cast – Silent animated film
Country: USA

Felix takes some time off of his Halloween pranks to consult an owl fortune teller, who predicts romance and marriage in his future. Felix is understandably less than thrilled when his predicted love turns out to be a witch.

The “Felix the Cat” cartoons are some of the most entertaining from the silent era, largely because of Felix’s talent for bending reality to his own purposes. He only partakes of this ability a little here, when he plays pranks by switching the heads of a chicken and a dog, and when he replaces a horse’s back end with a bicycle wheel (a prank that backfires when the horse’s back end seeks revenge). The rest of the time he is the victim of pranks, but fortunately for Felix, it all ends happily. There’s a little dated humor here when Felix uses a pumpkin head to scare a black man. Actually, this one is pretty conventional for a Felix cartoon, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.