ReFrederator Blog

Today’s entry in our Occupational Hazard Week theme is a 1930 Ub Iwerks epic, “The Village Barber,” starring that piano plunking amphibian, Flip the Frog. Which, come to think of it, raises an interesting question; why would said village, a burg populated by many hirsute, anthropomorphized mammals, trust as their barber, the only completely hairless critter in town? Kinda makes you stop and go “huh?”

And speaking of things anthropomorphized, this is one of those crazy early thirties cartoons where inanimate objects suddenly have faces and intricately choreographed musical numbers. A pot bellied stove and some hair cutting clippers exhibit more charm and personality than most traditional bipedal cartoon characters. As to Flip, he certainly has personality, but I’m not so sure about the charm thing. In this, and other films of the period, he’s pretty cavalier about using other living animal’s body parts for his own professional needs — note [Read more…]

Occupational Hazard Week continues with “The Valiant Tailor,” a 1934 Ub Iwerks ComiColor cartoon. Two things here. First, all those wacky special effects! Iwerks may have been a slave to that loopy, 1930’s rubber hose and basketball style of character design, but films like this are full of visual whammies very advanced for their era. The use of color, water effects and, most impressively, multiplane backgrounds really enhance the cartoon and give the production a little extra oomph.

Which brings us to another point: isn’t it interesting how some early talkie cartoons (particularly Iwerks’ ComiColors) borrowed so many silent screen story telling techniques? This one hasn’t any real dialogue, but has no problem moving along a clean, well structured narrative with tactics like strategically chosen close ups of key visual details, and strong pantomime from the three lead characters. Of course that peppy music track doesn’t hurt either!

I wonder who decided to make the [Read more…]

Another day, another dollar here at ReFrederator, as we continue with our Occupational Hazard Week (except, of course, YOU’RE getting this stuff for free!) Way back in the day, it was standard procedure for movie funny men, from Chaplin to the Three Stooges, all to take at least one on-screen stint in a fire brigade. Why should cartoon comedians have been any different?

Today’s cartoon is called “A Fireman’s Life”, although it was originally released in 1933 as “Hook and Ladder Hokum” (and sometimes pops up under the title “Fire! Fire!” — are you still with us?) Anywho, it’s a snappy Van Beuren short that features the ever popular Tom and Jerry as inferno busters (No, no, not the cat and mouse ‘Tom and Jerry,’ but the other ones — the human ones with arms and legs that look and perform like well cooked pasta.) Our heroes play checkers, carry ladders, and, in [Read more…]

This week ReFrederator takes a look at the common, everyday working stiff, as we launch Occupational Hazard Week.

Our first vocation animation is the 1937 Max Fleischer epic, “The Paneless Window Washer”, which might have been alternately titled “Why It’s Maybe Not Such a Good Idea to Have Popeye and Bluto Do Your Windows.” Apparently, only Bluto seems to be in the actual business, but as usual, he’s somewhat ethically challenged (the guy spends the first part of the morning dirtying people’s windows) and when he does get down to cases, he pretty much does a crappy job of it. Naturally Popeye steps in to offer superior service to Olive Oil, and before you can say ‘corncob pipe,’ our boys are mixing it up over some snazzy forced perspective background art. It’s worth noting that Olive has a paying job here too — stenographer. One can only hope her accuracy is matched by [Read more…]

We put the plug in Underwater Week with today’s final installment, “Electric Earthquake” starring not a bird, nor a plane but, you guessed it, the amazing stranger from the planet Krypton, Superman. This time the big guy has to rescue our girl Lois from a watery fate, and spends most of his screen time submerged. For the first time this week, animated fish do not play a major role, but there are some serpentine electrical cables making a lively cameo.

Director Dave Fleischer and his writers seemed to knock themselves out trying to make every new mad scientist in this series a distinct and interesting character. The technologically advanced extortionist this time around is a very dignified Native American, uniquely civil as cartoon villains go. Modern audiences are bound to be more than a little sympathetic when he lays out his grievances against the current occupants of Manhattan Island, but, of course, [Read more…]

What better way to spend seven minutes of your day than to take a dip in Chuck Jones’ cartoon universe? Here’s a classic everyone remembers — 1943’s “Fin n’ Catty” — just terrific stuff!

This one is a great example of the complicated interpersonal relationships you find within the food chain as displayed in old Warner Brothers cartoons. On one hand we have the goldfish hero, a guy who knows no boundaries. He spends all day outside his fishbowl, scampering around the house, running on his tail fins, flaunting the laws of biology and physics, wearing a derby no less (even when he is underwater, the derby remains resolutely stuck on his head — doesn’t float away!) His pursuer is, conversely, enslaved by convention (”Cats don’t like water”) to a truly disturbing degree; if this obsessive compulsive feline gets so much as one teeny weeny bead of moisture on the tiniest tip [Read more…]

Underwater Week surges forward with another great cartoon classic here at ReFrederator. Our star of the day is a personality with at least nine cinematic lives — Felix the Cat! He was a big deal back in the days of the silent screen, dropped out of sight only to resurface in three extravagant Technicolor talkies, designed to reintroduce him to depression era audiences. Turns out the comeback was only temporary, but the cat came back — over and over, in comic strips, comic books, and eventually, in his own TV series.

“Neptune’s Nonsense” presents Felix with a voice and a hint of color (his muzzle is a pale yellow), and much of the old pizzazz (he even does that exclamation point thing with his tail, but you have to look fast, because it happens very, very quickly) He jumps into the drink to find a playmate for his goldfish, and like [Read more…]

Things are going swimmingly here in ReFrederator’s Underwater Week. Today’s stars are Tom and Jerry — not the cat and mouse ‘Tom and Jerry’, but the Mutt and Jeffish, humanoid, rubbery limbed duo sporting the same names. The title card reads “The Rocketeers,” which would suggest a trip to the stratosphere, but our heroes were the cartoon world’s premier under-acheivers , so its not surprising their intended lunar expedition would end up twenty fathoms deep.

It’s also not surprising, that after some decidedly weird sight gags, everything settles into a jaunty song and dance number. That was T&J’s standard routine during their animated career, and this 1932 installment is right on formula. Ya gotta love the way these guys could break into harmony, no matter how stressful the immediate situation would seem to be (like having to hold one’s breath indefinitely.) Seen here are some pretty wild looking sea fauna, including plenty [Read more…]

Blub, blub! Today ReFrederator takes the plunge with an all Underwater Week of classic cartoon goodies.

We dive right in with today’s wonderful offering “Small Fry,” a 1939 Color Classic from the Fleischer Brothers, Max and Dave. Like so many thirties cartoons, this one is named after and framed around a contemporary song, in this case a ditty written by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser, introduced in a Bing Crosby movie, “Sing You Sinners.” (Yeah, I know — Friday’s cartoon spotlighted a Crosby tune too. But, heck, conservatively speaking, 94 percent of all the song hits from the thirties and forties were introduced by Bing Crosby, so cut us some slack!)

A little short on story, but long on charm, this one tells the tale of a tough little fish, Tommy Cod, and his loving momma. The Fleischer team seems to take particular delight in the mundane, but unlikely underwater activities of their scaly [Read more…]

We say goodbye to Celebrity Imitation Week with a dandy from 1947, “A Bout with a Trout.” This is one of those great Little Lulu epics wherein our heroine: A. falls asleep, B. has a Technicolor dream of an imaginary place with fantastic denizens, followed by C. a big musical production number. Man, this happened to Lulu all the time!

The subject at hand is playing hooky and the song deemed appropriate is “Swinging on a Star.” Since this was a Bing Crosby hit, someone thought it would be cute to anthropomorphize said stars with the faces of Crosby, Bob Hope… and Jerry Colonna! Oddly enough, there are no drawn caricatures, but instead animated photographs are used for kind of a Monty Python/Conan O’Brien effect. Weird.

I. Sparber directed this lively little item, and I, for one, think it’s a pretty darn good cartoon. You can accuse Paramount Famous Studios of medicine coating the [Read more…]