HAVE YOU GOT ANY CASTLES? (1938)
Article 5231 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-17-2016
Directed by Frank Tashlin and Friz Freleng
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc, the Four Blackbirds, Delos Jewkes
Country: USA
What it is: Warner Brothers musical cartoon

Books come to life and perform swingin’ musical numbers.

I think Warner Brothers tried this concept several times; books come to life (usually in punning ways) and perform musical numbers. It’s definitely a fantasy concept, but it does get some extra horror credentials right off the bat when we get Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, the Phantom of the Opera and the Frankenstein monster performing a rinky-dink little dance that includes playing patty-cake with each other. Books that have been adapted into movies will often feature caricatures of the performers; Charles Laughton appears in “Mutiny on the Bounty”, William Powell shows up in “The Thin Man”, etc. It may be minor Warner Brothers animation, but it’s still a bit of fun. I’ve had public domain versions of this one for years, but for this one, I chose to watch the version released in one of the Warner Brothers cartoon collections and discovered that there’s extra footage missing from the others; namely, opening and closing sequence involving a Town Crier.