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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Kilink in Istanbul (1967)

Kilink in Istanbul (1967)
aka Kilink Istanbul’da
Article 5897 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-5-2020
Directed by Yilmaz Atadeniz
Featuring Irfan Atasoy, Pervin Par, Muzaffer Tema
Country: Turkey
What it is: supervillain/superhero antics

When his father is killed by the notorious villain Kilink, a man is visited by a mystical being and given superhuman powers he can use to take vengeance.

I don’t mind the opening titles sequence being abrupt and incoherent; they are just the opening titles. But when the opening scenes of the movie itself are abrupt and incoherent, either your copy of the movie is not in the best of shape or editing is still a somewhat primitive art in the region from which the movie harkens. Still, this movie is a sight to behold; the story borrows from Italian anti-hero/supervillain movies (Kilink is assuredly not the hero) crossed with American superhero culture; our hero can gain superpowers in the same way Captain Marvel does, and his outfit looks like a cross between the ones of Superman and Batman. But in style, the movie feels like a cross between silent movies, feature versions of serials, and Mexican wrestling movies. Our superhero is called Superhero, but that may be a choice on the part of those who did the subtitles; I hear a more direct translation is “Superman”. But all in all it’s pretty much a series of fight scenes, kidnappings, tortures, superhero scenes, all feeling like it was cut to ribbons in the editing room. And if the ending seems strange for this sort of thing, it’s best to remember that the title is KILINK IN ISTANBUL and not SUPERHERO IN ISTANBUL; that should clue you in on who the main character is. It’s a mess, but in its own way, delightful.

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Cruel Ghost Legend (1968)

Cruel Ghost Legend (1968)
aka Kaidan zankoku monogatari
Article 5896 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-3-2020
Directed by Kazuo Hase
Featuring Masumi Harukawa, Nobue Kaneko, Saeda Kawaguchi
Country: Japan
What it is: Bloody curse story

When a down-on-his-luck samurai kills a blind man for his money, a curse is set upon him and his family.

Despite a title which promises a ghost, that isn’t quite what we get here; at least I don’t recall the blind man’s ghost taking any active role in the proceedings. However, the curse is very much real, as each of the members of the family suffers for the crime committed in the opening reels. It is, however, one of those movies that unfolds in a very confusing manner, and until the final reel it feels more like an exercise in exploitation than a horror movie per se; there is a lot of sex, a lot of disgusting behavior, and a lot of grotesque blood-letting. It’s also not very much fun; I don’t think there’s a single likable character in the whole movie. The ending does clarify a number of plot points, but I’m glad I saw the 88 minute version rather than the one that ran two hours; I suspect that one has an extra half-hour of confusion. All in all, I think the good points of this one slightly outweigh the bad, but it is one of those movies that I don’t feel motivated to give a second try.

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Ghost-Cat of the Cursed Swamp (1968)

Ghost-Cat of the Cursed Swamp (1968)
aka Kaibyo nori no numa
Article 5895 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-2-2020
Directed by Yoshihiro Ishikawa
Featuring Ryohei Uchida, Kotaro Satomi, Kyoko Mikage
Country: Japan
What it is: Ghost-cat movie


A pair of lovers find themselves in peril when the lord of the area takes a fancy to a woman. They run away to the cursed swamp…


This is perhaps the best ghost-cat movie I’ve seen to date, and there may be several reasons. One is this is one of the few that I’ve seen that actually have English subtitles, so I don’t have to guess what’s going on in the elaborate set-up that takes place before the scary stuff finally springs into action. A second reason is that this is the latest chronologically I’ve seen; those made during the fifties had this churned-out feel that this one avoids. But perhaps the biggest reason is that it has a nice, moody visual style, and it feels like a real effort was made to make this one stand out. This is a good thing, because the story itself is really pretty par for the course; it follows the basic template that I’ve found in place for almost all the ghost-cat movies I’ve seen. The one thing that is missing is the bizarre gymnastic theme; in most of the other movies, we have a scene in which the ghost-cat controls another character and makes them do gymnastic stunts; there’s no equivalent scene here. But for those looking for a solid and effective example of the genre, this is a good choice.

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Jumpin’ Jupiter (1955)

Jumpin’ Jupiter (1955)
Article 5894 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-30-2020
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Looney Tune

While camping out in the desert, Porky and Sylvester are shanghaied by a flying saucer from Jupiter.

Here’s another of that series of cartoons Chuck Jones made where Sylvester played a non-speaking but easily terrified cat who was a pet to the unflappable Porky Pig, who doesn’t understand Sylvester’s warnings in the least. In the earlier cartoon they were under attack by a group of homicidal mice; in here, the threat is one of those green birds that occasionally worked for Marvin the Martian. Though it’s fun to see the science fiction touches, this one is rather disappointing, and the reason for that is that threat this time isn’t really a threat; the bird is more curious than threatening and is easily confused. Without the threat being real, the premise loses its steam, and the cartoon has the air of just going through the motions. The best moment has Porky mistaking the bird for a Navajo Indian.

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