Boo Moon (1954)
Article 5744 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-19-2020
Directed by Izzy Sparber and Seymour Kneitel
Country: USA
What it is: Caspar cartoon

Lonely Caspar goes to the moon because it looks friendly. He is captured by miniature moon men.

It’s a bit ironic that one of my least favorite cartoon franchises is one with guaranteed fantastic content; after all, Caspar is a ghost. Well, I’ll give them credit for varying the routine, at least; this one basically lifts the premise of “Gulliver’s Travels” with Caspar in the Gulliver role. As to be expected, the moon men are too scared of Caspar to make friends with him (though they consider him a monster rather than a ghost) until he saves them from an attacking horde of giant moon tree men. I couldn’t help notice that the character designs for the moon men are very similar to those of the Fleischer GULLIVER’S TRAVELS feature. The extra fantastic content adds a little bit to the cartoon, but it’s still rather weak.

The Bookworm (1939)
Article 5743 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-19-2020
Directed by Friz Freleng and Hugh Harman
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc, Frank Elmquist, Martha Wentworth
Country: USA
What it is: “Books Come to Life” cartoon

In a bookstore, the witches from “MacBeth” send the title character from “The Raven” out to catch them a worm to add to their witches’ brew. However, the bookworm the raven encounters proves difficult to catch.

You can probably get a good idea which books were popular and well-known in the late thirties/early forties just by watching the several cartoons of the era in which books come to life. Here’s another one, and it’s a bit heavier in the horror department, as several characters from the scarier books of the era pop up. Like the others, it’s fairly amusing, but it does engage in some unfortunate racial stereotypes (always watch out when the book “Black Beauty” gets referenced). Most of the ones I’ve seen previously have been from Warner Brothers, but this one is from MGM.

Bomba, the Jungle Boy (1949)
Article 5742 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-18-2020
Directed by Ford Beebe
Featuring Johnny Sheffield, Peggy Ann Garner, Onslow Stevens
Country: USA
What it is: Double-Stuffed Safari-O

A man and his daughter are on safari in a studio jungle set. The daughter gets separated and finds herself in peril from stock footage. Can Bomba save her and return her to her father?

The Lentz guide includes this title, but I’ve come to accept that that does not necessarily mean anything, and given my own choice on the matter, I’d probably skip this one for its lack of real fantastic content. It was the first of a series of jungle shorts to star the former Boy of the Tarzan series, Johnny Sheffield, and given the way this sodden lump of a movie just sits there and lets its ghost of a plot unwind, I’m surprised that they even bothered with the sequels. This lethargic and uninspired movie may be one of the dreariest examples of the jungle flick; I suspect they only made a lot of them because the convenience of standing jungle sets plus the existence of a cornucopia of stock footage made them cost-effective entertainment. When the best thing you can say about a movie is that some of the scenes are in slow motion, you’re not in a good place. For jungle movie completists only.

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.

Blinkity Blank (1955)
Article 5740 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-12-2020
Directed by Norman McLaren
No cast
Country: Canada
What it is: Abstract animation… sort of

The story of a conflict between a bird and its cage.

The plot description is from the one on IMDB, and though that’s not quite what I had in mind while watching, it’s as good of a plot description (if an abstract film of this sort can really have a plot) as any. I’ve got a five-DVD set of McLaren’s work, and I’m just starting to delve into it, and it appears that the introductory screen to each short features an enlightening quote from McLaren. For this one, the quote reflects that he would often try to make a purely abstract short, but he would realize that the audience would be bored so he would add a certain amount of representational animation to the mix (such as things that resemble birds). And he does; there are clearly some bird-like images throughout this short, and with the addition of representation comes the hint of something resembling a “plot” (bird vs. cage?) as well.

Well, whatever his conscious intention, the end result is fairly engaging and fun. I don’t know if the music used here was made specifically for the short, or if McLaren built his short around the music, bit it does add to the flavor quite a bit; it’s somewhere in a realm between Igor Stravinsky and Carl Stalling. At any rate, I’m beginning to look forward to seeing more of McLaren’s work, and I’ll review the ones that have listings in the Walt Lee guide.

Black Cobra (1976)
aka Black Cobra Woman, Eva nera
Article 5739 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-11-2020
Directed by Joe D’Amato
Featuring Jack Palance, Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti
Country: Italy
What it is: Laura Gemser doing what she usually does

A woman who performs a snake dance moves in with two brothers, one of whom keeps a snake collection. Her lesbian lovers begin dying from snake attacks…

I have this one on a collection called “Killer Snakes”, and was a little surprised that I generally did not find the title in many of my genre books. Yet I can’t really say I’m surprised; though it does have some similarity to any number of films where humans use animals to kill other people, it’s primarily an exploitation flick where Laura Gemser goes naked most of the time and makes love to several people; in these types of movies, the horror elements are the throwaway. If you go into this one expecting a horror movie, you’ll mostly be bored, though there is at least one truly horrific moment involving the fate of one of the brothers. I found it mostly a snoozer.

Bird Man (1935)
Article 5738 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-10-2020
Directed by Manny Gould and Ben Harrison
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Columbia cartoon

Krazy Kat straps wooden planks to his arms in order to fly. Though he eventually gets airborne, he finds it hard to be accepted by the birds.

Technically, he’d be a “bird cat”, but that’s neither here nor there. But since the whole story revolves around a non-flying character learning to fly, it qualifies in terms of fantastic content, so I’m covering it. Krazy Kat was originally a character in a George Herriman comic strip, and they’d been making animated cartoons featuring the character for years before this one, but I suspect the later cartoons had little to do with the comic strip. Most of the humor in this one seems to involve other birds making fun of Krazy Kat, and the song centerpiece only has one line of lyric, “I am the bird man.” Overall, this one is so-so.

The Big Build-Up (1942)
Article 5737 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-7-2020
Directed by Mannie Davis
No voice cast
Country: USA
What it is: Terrytoons cartoon

Puddy Pup tries to get rid of a cat who has moved into the house with him.

The cat and dog may be slightly anthropomorphized, but they’re the type of cartoon animals that are best described as slightly-exaggerated real animals (think Pluto). This adds a certain level of charm to this Terrytoons offering, and it’s certainly one of the more enjoyable cartoons I’ve seen from the studio. By eschewing big, wild laughs, it concentrates on character comedy, and though it is a bit derivative, it generally works. The fantastic content consists of the dog mistaking the flour-covered cat for a ghost at one point.

Big Boy Rides Again (1935)
Article 5736 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-7-2020
Directed by Albert Herman
Featuring Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, Constance Bergen, Charles K. French
Country: USA
What it is: Weird western

When his father is killed by a mysterious masked figure, an estranged son investigates.

Yes, the horror elements are pretty light, but they’re there. There’s the death of an old man who has left a will, secret passages, a masked killer, and a fair amount of lurking. But since it’s a western, we get rodeo stock footage, fist fights, lot’s of horse-riding, stiff acting, and a fight scene on the back of a moving horse-drawn cart. The plot barely registers because it’s barely there, but what do you expect from a b western of the mid thirties? It’s certainly nothing special, but if you like this sort of thing, this will pass muster.

Be Patient, Patient (1944)
Article 5735 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-5-2020
Directed by Bob Wickersham
Featuring the voice of Frank Graham
Country: USA
What it is: Columbia cartoon

Fox orders a banquet delivered to his mansion. Crow decides he can get the banquet for himself if he convinces Fox that he’s sick.

I’ve seen several cartoons that end with a character appearing as an angel in the final moments, and usually this isn’t enough for me to classify it as fantastic. This one has a whole sequence in which Crow convinces Fox that he is dead and an angel in heaven, and the fact that this is actually part of the plot rather than a single gag, I decided that gave me enough fantastic content to cover it, even if the content is faked. I’ve never heard of Fox and Crow as a cartoon series, but it appears to be one of the better ones to come from Columbia; I thought the premise was rather amusing, and the cartoon makes some fun use of it. It’s no classic, but it’s definitely one of the better cartoons I found from Columbia in this era.