SWING YOU SINNERS! (1930)
Article 4819 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-11-2015
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Featuring the voice of Billy Murray
Country: USA
What it is: Weird cartoon

Bimbo, on the run for chicken thievery, takes refuge in a cemetery and gets trapped inside.

If there’s one thing you can say about the Fleischers and their cartoons during the early thirties, it’s that they weren’t afraid to unleash demented surrealism when the spirit took them, and it this cartoon, the spirit REALLY took them. The first half of the cartoon where Bimbo crosses swords with a chicken and a cop is relatively sedate; it’s only after Bimbo takes refuge in the cemetery and finds himself set upon ghosts, ghouls and talking tombstones that it kicks into high gear, with all these beasties accusing, condemning and chasing the poor guy, all to the beat of the jazzy/scary music playing. Some of the creatures are indescribable; they’re funny, scary and outlandish in equal parts. This one may be even stranger than BIMBO’S INITIATION.