Month: June 2021

A Lecture on Camouflage (1944)

A Lecture on Camouflage (1944)
Article 5907 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-20-2020
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Robert C. Bruce
Country: USA
What it is: Private Snafu short

Technical Fairy First Class illustrates camouflage techniques using Private Snafu as an example.

The only reason most of the Private Snafu cartoons get included in this series is the presence of mystical character Technical Fairy First Class, who here takes place front and center to illustrate the theme. However, I was tempted to pass this one by because, outside of a couple of minor moments, he doesn’t really use his powers much. However, since the short ends with him consorting with mermaids, I gave in and reviewed it. There’s not really a whole lot to review here; all in all, it’s not one of the more interesting Snafu cartoons, with the best moment being one in which Snafu has to contend with a tree that keeps moving its shadow. This is a minor entry in the series.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Yawner (1907)

The Yawner (1907)
aka Le bailleur
Article 5906 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-20-2020
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: catching

An incessant yawner goes about his daily business and infects everyone he meets with his ailment.

I guess I’m not really surprised that someone made a short movie about the contagiousness of yawning, and the silent era was just the time to address it. This short take on the subject does find some variety with the concept, and it lapses into the fantastic at one point when a pair of paintings come to life and start yawning as well. I would have consigned this fantastic content to the “humorous exaggeration” category hadn’t it been for the fact that people overtly react to seeing the paintings come to life. At any rate, the short is slight, but mildly entertaining, just as I suspected it would be.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Last Straw (1934)

The Last Straw (1934)
Article 5905 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-18-2020
Directed by Frank Moser and Paul Terry
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Terrytoons

When a crabby patriarch refuses to accept a baby delivered by the stork, the baby has to find a way to win the patriarch’s good graces.

It’s beginning to occur to me just how weird a lot of the Terrytoon cartoons were. There’s an occasional clever idea; I like in this one that the coming of the storks is not considered a happy event, but rather a disaster to be avoided. However, the execution is not up to the ideas, and the story arcs are pretty contrived; the cartoon tosses in the LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD story about half way through in order to find a way for the baby to get hold of a roasted turkey. In the end, my response to the cartoon as a whole is a confused shrug. It’s another Terrytoon that doesn’t really work.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Land of the Lost Jewels (1950)

Land of the Lost Jewels (1950)
Article 5904 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-16-2020
Directed by Izzy Sparber and Myron Waldman
Featuring the voices of Jackson Beck, Mae Questal, Cecil Roy
Country: USA
What it is: So-so fantasy adventure

Two children encounter a talking fish who takes them to the underwater Land of the Lost so the girl can discover what happened to her missing lucky pin.

This Famous Studios cartoon has a few cute moments in it. It’s mostly about the aforementioned pin who objects to being stuck in a museum when he’d rather be in Toyland, and he has to pass a test to see where he belongs. Oddly enough, the two children and the talking fish play no part in the story; they show up and watch the story play out, and they leave when it’s over. It made me wonder if the movie was a recycling of an earlier cartoon, but I wasn’t able to find any proof of that. Still, all in all, this one isn’t very memorable.

1 CommentLeave a comment

La lecon de musique (1909)

La lecon de musique (1909)
Article 5903 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-16-2020
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Special effects short about music

A manic conductor finds a way to illustrate the music he conducts.

I remember Georges Melies had a similar short called THE MELOMANIAC where he threw up copies of his head to form notes on a musical staff. This one is in the same vein, but fortunately the tricks are different, so this isn’t just a copy. The opening bit is the best; the heads of the seated singers are place in a stock, and as they sing their heads raise up into the air on extended necks, and those necks then turn into the bodies of dancing stick figures. The remaining special effects use straightforward animation, as various time signatures are illustrated on a staff, and after the music has been built, we have more dancing stick figures; the latter effect starts to get old as it’s repeated three times with different time signature and dancing figures. Still, it is entertaining to see how Chomon would come up with variations to Melies’s work.

2 CommentsLeave a comment

Kyberneticka babicka (1962)

Kyberneticka babicka (1962)
Article 5902 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-13-2020
Directed by Jiri Trnka
Voice cast unknown
Country: Czechoslovakia
What it is: Frightening and sad vision of the future

A young girl is taken from her loving grandmother’s side to be raised by a robot in a futuristic household.

Here’s another fascinating puppet animation work from Jiri Trnka. There are no English subtitles, but the first half of the film is mostly without dialogue, and the animation makes it clear how the non-speaking young girl feels about her situation, which is the important thing here. Though the puppet’s faces don’t really express emotion, their body language, their actions, and the way they are framed tells us what we need to know. It’s an evocative and moving short about losing touch with our humanity; we feel strongly about how the little girl has her few possessions (a red ball and photographs of her past life) stripped from her. Here’s another one I highly recommend.

2 CommentsLeave a comment

Ko-Ko the Kop (1927)

Ko-Ko the Kop (1927)
Article 5901 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-12-2020
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Featuring Max Fleischer
Country: USA
What it is: Ko-Ko Kartoon

Ko-Ko is a kop who matches wits with an animated dog.

All the early Ko-Ko cartoons had him interacting with his live-action creator, so the shorts always had this slightly surreal air about them. This one actually does less along those lines, but an extended chase scene between the kop and the dog takes the reality-bending to Tex Avery extremes, where the external realities are often revealed to be facades that could be shifted, moved aside, and replaced by other ones. As a result, this is one of the most entertaining entries in the series. This one is recommended.

1 CommentLeave a comment

King Tut’s Tomb (1950)

King Tut’s Tomb (1950)
Article 5900 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-11-2020
Directed by Mannie Davis
Featuring the voices of Dayton Allen and Ned Sparks
Country: USA
What it is: Heckle and Jeckle cartoon

Despite the fact that it’s strictly forbidden, Heckle and Jeckle decide to dig up King Tut’s tomb… but they have to face the consequences.

I’ve not seen fit to review any Heckle and Jeckle cartoons yet as most of what I’ve encountered from them is lacking any notable fantastic content. This one is a major exception; between the magpies’ flying carpet (which, being magpies, they don’t need), a sphinx that comes to life, ghosts, mummies, skeletons, and the Frankenstein monster (don’t ask me what he’s doing there). There’s also a swarm of flying termites which not only eat wood, but anything else as well. This one is actually fitfully amusing; it’s not a classic, but it’s one of the better ones from Terrytoons.

1 CommentLeave a comment

The King’s Daughter (1934)

The King’s Daughter (1934)
Article 5899
Date: 12-11-2020
Directed by Frank Moser and Paul Terry
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Damsel in operatic distress

A knight in the king’s service sets out to rescue the princess from the clutches of a dragon and a giant, and then they can all sing.

My first thought upon watching this one is that maybe it isn’t surprising the Mighty Mouse cartoons went operatic; it seems as if Paul Terry had a yen for the form long before that. My second thought was that if you take this cartoon in reference to the time it was made, most of the other cartoon companies were also emphasizing music in their output, but whereas most of them were were working in pop/jazz/swing modes, Terrytoons was doing operettas. And, you know, I can admire this; he was marching to the beat of his own drummer, and even if there is an air of crankiness about it, it avoids being trendy. At any rate, I feel the need to give Paul Terry his due; he’d been making cartoons for longer than Disney or any of his competitors by this point, and he deserves to be recognized as a true pioneer in the industry. And if many of those cartoons seem subpar, so be it. As for this one, as corny as it is, I think both the dragon and the giant look pretty good to these eyes.

1 CommentLeave a comment

King Midas, Junior (1942)

King Midas, Junior (1942)
Article 5898 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-8-2020
Directed by John Hubley and Paul Sommer
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Columbia Color Rhapsody

King Midas the 13th has come of age, and is supposed to get the golden touch. However, the sprites that deliver it mistakenly give him the rubber touch instead. Hilarity ensues.

Considering how King Midas ended up, I’m a little surprised that this line would continue for thirteen generations, especially as each of his ancestors inherited the same touch. Still, it should be said that the rubber touch has the same drawbacks as the golden touch had, only far less glamorous and far more surreal. Those who’ve taken note of the year this was made and keep in mind some facts about rubber in that time may catch the twist ending before it happens. The cartoon works well enough; it gets about as much mileage out of the idea as it can. The three sprites may not look the parts, but I suspect they were modeled off the Three Stooges. A moderately entertaining cartoon.

1 CommentLeave a comment