Claws for Alarm (1954)
Article 5770 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-15-2020
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Looney Tunes

Porky decides to spend the night in a deserted hotel in a ghost town, but his cat Sylvester becomes aware that the other residents of the hotel are a gang of homicidal mice.

This is part of a short series of cartoons from Warner Brothers which are noteworthy for two reasons: 1) they are among the few cartoons where Sylvester is treated as a sympathetic character, and 2) they are perhaps the most horrific entries the animation department ever did. These mice aren’t just being mischievous; they’re sadistic and homicidal, which is part of the reason that they mostly remain shadowy figures. The humor is largely centered around Sylvester being the only one who knows of the threat, and his attempts to save Porky’s life are mistaken for madness or (even worse) attempts by himself on Porky’s life. It also serves as an example of how Chuck Jones could take a stock character from the company and rethink it to serve his own purposes; this is one of the very few times he ever used Sylvester (who mostly got a workout on the Tweety and Speedy Gonzalez cartoons, which were done by others), and he chose to make him non-speaking and with his nerves on edge every second. It’s also no surprise that he humor isn’t so much knee-slappingly funny as malicious and darkly ironic. This is why I suspect only a very small handful of these were made (I think there’s at least one other); my guess is that they were a little too strong for the studio.

A Christmas Dream (1946)
aka Vanocni sen
Article 5769 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-12-2020
Directed by Karel Zeman
Cast unknown
Country: Czechoslovakia
What it is: Christmas whimsy

Dazzled by a new set of toys sitting under her Christmas tree, a little girl tosses away her old ragged doll in favor of new toys. That night, Santa decides to help the discarded toy regain the love of the girl by having the girl have a dream about the doll.

From what I gather, the scenes with Santa Claus were not present in the original short, but he really plays only a minor role in the proceedings, and the true spirit of the short (the animated capering of the doll) is the main attraction here. And it is a delightful little short. Furthermore, it was the first work from Czech director Karel Zeman, who would give us some of the most magical special effects movies of the sixties, so that makes it of historical interest as well. Sure, it’s a bit slight, but for a directorial debut, it’s a triumph. My favorite moment is when the doll turns a fan on a picture of a ship on the ocean, which causes the ship to sail through a storm; it’s the kind of mixed special effect magic I’d expect from Zeman.

A Christmas Carol (1923)
aka Scrooge
Article 5768 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-12-2020
Directed by Edwin Greenwood
Featuring Russell Thorndike, Nina Vanna, Forbes Dawson
Country: UK
What it is: You already know

You know the story.

About six minutes into this adaptation of the Dickens classic, Scrooge runs outside and assaults a boy with a clipboard who was singing outside of Scrooge’s door. This left me the impression that our Scrooge this time was particularly vile, and out of curiosity I checked the running time of the movie, and was disappointed to find out that it ran a scant 27 minutes. Why did this disappoint me? I’ll explain. I’ve seen and reviewed so many versions of this story that I finally settled on some specific criteria that I would use to evaluate any further version I encountered. The main question I ask of any version of this story is this: Is Scrooge treated as a full-blooded human being, or is he treated as an icon of miserliness?

Let me elaborate. I’ve always held that the real meat of the story of “A Christmas Carol” takes place during the visits of the three ghosts who take Scrooge on a tour of his life story. It is only through reliving and experiencing these events that Scrooge is able to convincingly make the transformation that must occur for him to be the Scrooge he is at the end of the story. If a movie gives these sequences short shrift, it betrays the fact that it isn’t interested in Scrooge as a full-blooded character, but only as the icon of miserliness. And, true enough, the visits from the three ghosts barely register here; in fact, the Ghost of Christmas Present does little more than tell Scrooge he won’t be hanging around with him this holiday season. On the other hand, the movie uses the lion’s share of its running time having Scrooge play the miser.

No, it’s not the worst offender in this regard, but I’m always disappointed when an adaptation of this story makes that choice. Nor do I understand why this version so much time with Scrooge’s nephew’s family and completely ignores the character of Tiny Tim. This is not my favorite version of the story by a long shot.

Charlie Cuckoo (1939)
Article 5767 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-10-2020
Directed by Elmer Perkins
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Walter Lantz cartune

A cuckoo-clock bird discovers that congress has passed a bill for a 44 hour work week, and decides he’s been overworked. He quits, and tries to enter life as a real bird, but runs into problems…

I made a judgment call on this one. A talking cuckoo-clock bird doesn’t quite qualify as an anthropomorphic animal since he’s more of a figurine than an animal. Also, the bird’s employer seems to be father time, which puts forth a fantasy world underlying the story. Add to that the fact that our cuckoo bird seems to have multiple personalities (he talks himself into quitting with two different voices), and I think we’ve strayed far enough from normal cartoon convention for this cartoon to qualify as legitimately fantastic. Unfortunately, the cartoon then veers into a pretty ordinary cartoon situation, where the cuckoo bird finds himself a fish out of water in the real world, and he runs into a variety of perils; the most interesting foe he encounters is a woodpecker. I would rather have had the cartoon explore the fantasy world a bit further myself, but I’m not sure it would have been significantly more amusing whichever direction then went with it; the Lantz cartoons (or cartunes, as he would have it) weren’t particularly inspired at this point of time.

Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
Article 5766 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-10-2020
Directed by Norman Foster
Featuring Sidney Toler, Jean Rogers, Lionel Atwill
Country: USA
What it is: Charlie Chan movie

Charlie Chan works undercover in Panama trying to locate a saboteur/assassin named Ryner who has not been identified. One of eight people aboard a plane flight is the assassin, but which one?

The Lentz guides had a tendency to include whole movie series when only a few of the titles had real fantastic content; as a result, he includes all of the Charlie Chan movies. If I had to make the call, I’m not sure whether I’d include this one or not, but I will point out there are some touches of horror to the proceedings; in particular, there’s a visit to a creepy lab and to a creepy graveyard, and the plot includes rats carrying the plague and people trapped in a tomb. As for the movie itself, I must admit I never noticed if the Charlie Chan series had any wartime-themed entries (like the Sherlock Holmes series did) before, but this is definitely one with a war theme, as the plot also involves an American fleet trying to get through the Panama canal. It’s also a very entertaining entry in the series, though fans of Lionel Atwill should be warned that his deceptively high listing in the cast doesn’t reflect how sparingly he is used in this one. Much of the humor comes through the interactions between Toler and Victor Sen Yung as his number two son.

C’est l’aviron (1944)
Article 5765 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-9-2020
Directed by Norman McLaren
Voice cast unknown
Country: Canada
What it is: Early music video

As a French song is performed, we see images from the point of view of a boat sailing through the water juxtaposed with images from the song appearing in the clouds.

It’s Norman McLaren again. This one is less conspicuously abstract than his previous entries in this series; most of the images are clearly recognizable as objects and people, and it has the general feel of a music video rather than as the visual equivalent of music. The images in the clouds represent things described in the song, but as the song is in French, I couldn’t actually match them up. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed this one; for one thing, I just enjoy watching the landscapes rising up out of the horizon as the boat sails along. Still, because it’s less abstract than his other works, this feels even farther away from the realm of fantastic content, but the fact that the title was included in the Walt Lee guide guaranteed it a review.

Censored (1944)
Article 5764 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-8-2020
Directed by Frank Tashlin
Featuring the voices of Bea Benaderet, Mel Blanc, Sara Berner
Country: USA
What it is: Private Snafu cartoon

Private Snafu keeps trying to get letters through to his girlfriend, but the censors keep cutting them to ribbons. However, he does get one through…

I’m pretty sure I’ve covered at least one of the Private Snafu cartoons already, but if not, they were a series of cartoons made for our troops during WWII to raise awareness of their responsibilities as men of the armed services. Many of these were made by members of the Warner Brothers animation team, and some were even co-written by Dr. Seuss. Though the series had no anthropomorphic animals and much of the content can be filed under the heading of comic exaggeration, it does have one nod to the fantastic, and that is the existence of a character known as Technical Fairy – First Class who periodically appears to come to the aid of Private Snafu. He’s in this one, and he illustrates to Snafu the danger of passing classified information in his private communications. Overall, though, these cartoons play out like typical Warner Brothers cartoons, though they are a bit on the racy side. This one is an okay example of the series.

The Cave of the Silken Web (1967)
aka Pan si dong
Article 5763 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-8-2020
Directed by Meng Hua Ho
Featuring Chien Yu, Liang Hua Liu, Meng Tien
Country: Hong Kong
What it is: Oriental fantasy classic

When a monk is kidnapped by seven spider monsters, it is up to his three companions to rescue him before he is consumed.

I’m always delighted to rediscover a title I didn’t know I had. This is the third of a four-part movie series that adapts a classic Chinese tale called “Journey to the West”. I’ve not seen the other three, but I do know that I’ve encountered the four main characters in another movie; a monk, a warrior, a man-pig, and the monkey king. The spider monsters are disguised as beautiful women, and much of the plot revolves around the monkey king tricking them into turning against each other; several characters appear to have the ability to disguise themselves as others. It’s not quite satisfying on its own (possibly because it’s one of the middle chapters of a series, but it is colorful and energetic, and it does have its moments. At any rate, I’m always happy to see fantastic movies from other countries and explore other cultures.

Cat Feud (1958)
Article 5762 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-7-2020
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Looney Tunes cartoon

While on guard at a construction site, bulldog Marc Anthony ends up befriending a little kitten and gives the little guy a sausage. When a mangy alley cat tries to steal the sausage, Marc Anthony has his paws full trying to prevent him.

On my own judgment, I probably wouldn’t have covered this cartoon; outside of anthropomorphic animals, there is no real fantastic content here. Even the anthropomorphism is on the lighter side; none of the animals speak, and outside of occasionally standing on their hind legs and operating machinery, they’re more animal than human. However, I once again bow to its listing in the Walt Lee guide, and review it.

This one is something of a sequel to one of Chuck Jones’ finest cartoons, FEED THE KITTY, a cartoon that manages to be utterly hilarious and completely heartbreaking at the same time. In comparison, this one falls short; it borrows a couple of elements of FEED THE KITTY, but here the focus is on a slapstick duel between Marc Anthony the bulldog and Claude the Cat, and it’s obviously just going for laughs. Some sequences are pretty funny; they have a lot of fun with the giant overhead magnet, and the moment Claude gets beaned by a girder and mistakes it for an attack from the kitten is memorable. Nevertheless, this one is more standard issue from the company and nothing special.

The Cat and the Canary (1978)
Article 5761 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-7-2020
Directed by Radley Metzger
Featuring Honor Blackman, Michael Callan, Edward Fox
Country: UK
What it is: A remade old dark house

When a family gathers for a reading of the will, a single heiress is chosen, but she must survive the night and not be insane; otherwise, the fortune will go to the next on the list…

If you’re going to make an old dark house movie in the late seventies, you might as well do a remake of one of the cornerstones of the genre rather than just offering a variant that borrows many of the original’s cliches. There are a number of well-known faces in the cast, and the acting is generally acceptable; some of them do their best to add some fun to the proceedings. It’s a little bloodier and nastier than some of the original versions, but with a PG rating, it’s not really too bloody. But when you come right down to it, this version is a bit slow, rather dreary, and ultimately it’s not much fun. The thing I liked best is the whimsical way it handles the final credits. But if I wanted to see this story again, I’d opt for one of the two earlier versions.