GINGER NUTT’S FOREST DRAGON (1950)
Article 5180 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-10-2016
Directed by Bert Felstead
Voice cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Cartoon

Squirrel Ginger Nutt tries to impress his girlfriend by promising to defend her from a forest monster, but when some of Ginger’s animal friends dress up as a monster…

After having watched this short, I was wondering which of the American cartoon production companies made it. For some reason, it never occurred to me that another country might be also putting out series animated shorts like these, though I don’t know why that should surprise me. At any rate, this is part of a British series of shorts by David Hand known as his “Animaland” series, and on top of the anthropomorphic animals, we have some of them dressing up as a dragon to enhance the fantastic content. It has a bit of the feel of a Warner Brothers cartoon, thanks largely to the fact that musical director Henry Reed uses the same style as Carl Stalling in writing his scores. The story is well written and fun, and the cartoon is solidly animated. It’s not great, but it makes for a fun introduction to this series.