Bluebeard’s Brother (1932)
Article 5741 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-16-2020
Directed by Frank Moser
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Early Terrytoons Talkie

A spouse-murdering spider sets his sights on another victim, a female acrobat at the circus.

The early thirties wasn’t the best time for animation, but it certainly was one of the weirdest, and if there’s anything this cartoon illustrates, it was that it could be almost as weird as a Fleischer cartoon from the era. This one is pretty high on the horror content; with the main villain being what appears to be a spider (though he only has six legs) which can command a legion of flying bats to do his bidding, there’s enough fantastic content to make it qualify. There are also other touches, such as two-headed giraffes, flying unicorns and leopard spots being used as machine-gun ammunition, which will make you scratch your head. It’s more jaw-dropping than funny or exciting, but maybe that’s what it was trying for. At any rate, it’s a lot more entertaining than most of what I’ve seen from the studio.