ReFrederator Blog

I haven’t finished the research yet, but I’m pretty sure the FDR administration pushed through some kind of WPA type legislation requiring all animation studios to produce a guaranteed quota of insect cartoons each year. At least, it looks that way to me… bugs, bugs, bugs! Just a carload of toons with cute little antennaed heros and heroines, and more than a few hairy black spider villains.

Thus, ReFrederator continues “Insect Infestation Week” with the 1940 Max Fleischer Color Classic “Ants in the Plants.” A happy little colony of tiny beasties is ruled by a wise and squeaky voiced queen, who warns her subjects about the dreaded anteater. The big galoot does, in fact, show up but —SPOILER— he doesn’t manage to consume even one tiny citizen. Oh, yeah… the bugs sing —A LOT!

Just one year later, the Fleischers produced an entire feature all about a bug community, “Mr. Bug [Read more…]

Oops! ReFrederator’s “Insect Infestation Week” has me a bit buggy — I posted some comments earlier on the wrong cartoon! What I meant to say was… ummm… today’s film is “Joe Glow.” Early Chuck Jones goodie. Very Disney like. Made before Jones got down to the job of being flat out hilarious every six and a half minutes. The big deal here is scale — an ongoing theme in Jones’ stuff — little, tiny character juxtaposed with ordinary household items blown up to enormous proportions. Very small children often think the punchline to this cartoon is screamingly funny.

Dave Kirwan

“Crazy Town” wraps up our “Nice Place to Visit but I Wouldn’t Want to Live There Week” here at ReFrederator. Betty Boop and Bimbo take a trolley ride to what turns out to be the Max Fleischer’s version of Bizzaro World; fish fly, birds swim, animals make all the wrong noises and a guy walks around with hats on his feet and a shoe on his head. It was 1932, and that “weird for weird’s sake” thing was pretty commonplace in cartoons — apparently, the average animator was expected to unfetter his id on his way in the studio gate!

The times were a lot more tolerant towards inter-species romance among cartoon characters, too! Betty’s and Bimbo’s much publicized on-screen fling kinda reached its peak around this time — they’re all over each other in this film (yeah, I know Betty started out her movie career looking a little pooch-like herself, but by [Read more…]

Hey, is everybody else crazy about the 1930’s version of space travel, too? I just love the chubby little football shaped rocket ships depression-era audiences demanded in their comic strips, movie serials and, of course, animated cartoons.

In “Dancing on the Moon” (1935), a bunch of honeymooning animals take a midnight excursion on one such vehicle, and the thing sputters through the stratosphere to the strains of the catchy title tune (another triumph by those animated hit makers, Charlie Tobias and Murray Mencher.) Since this is a Max Fleischer Color Classic, there are plenty of great 3-D special effects — and and a little vinegar mixed into the oh-so-cute cartoon ambience. It seems to me the nominal hero and heroine, a he-cat and she-cat, might have considered a trip to couples counseling before any inter-steller planet hopping.

ReFrederator. Your daily trip to cartoonland.

“Wackiki Wabbit!” This is the one about two castaways stuck on a tropical atoll with that Oscar winning rabbit. They spend almost as much time chasing our buddy Bugs, as imagining each other, in true cartoon tradition, as different, beautifully rendered, items of food. Vintage Chuck Jones material, most of it, roll-out-of-your-chair hilarious— so funny, you won’t notice the exquisite character animation. A genuine riot.

But dig that crazy island! For the most part, Warner Brothers was just beginning to experiment with stylized scenics in 1943. But suddenly Jones unleashed the background boys, letting ‘em go nuts, and the results look like bargain day at a Polynesian fabric store! Even when the studio did embrace less realistic layouts, they were usually used to simplify things graphically. Here the melange of print designs and floral patterns create insanely complex compositions — once or twice it looks like the undernourished characters are about to be [Read more…]

It’s only appropriate that we celebrate our “Nice Place to Visit… Week” with an episode starring one of Toondom’s foremost travelers, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Many of his early talkies simply had one word destination-type titles (”Mexico,” “Africa,” “Alaska,” “Mars,” etc.)

Today he’s “In Wonderland,” but you won’t find much Lewis Carroll material here (although there is an ogre who looks like he could have inspired Maurice Sendak and “Where the Wild Things Are.”) What we have is a revised 1931 version of “Jack and the Beanstalk” juiced up with some grotesque touches, not the least of which is the family cow who walks around with a detachable head BEFORE she gets enchanted by the neighborhood witch. Directorial credit is given to Walter Lantz and Bill Nolan (or “Bill” Nolan as the actual title card would have it.) I think they both might have popped some magic beans before cooking this [Read more…]

Talk about your fragile ecosystem! “Balloonland” imagines a weird community of inflated balloon people, who happily bounce off each other all day, until a mass murderer called the Pincushion Man crashes town and starts randomly popping off much of the population! There’s a little balloon boy and a little balloon girl for romantic interest, but I doubt if their relationship will lead to anything very steamy — Balloonland reproduction is achieved via some gooey rubber trees, a waffle iron and lots of Rube Goldbergian machinery.

Man! Even by the very elastic standards of Ub Iwerks cartoons, this one is just plain nuts! The floating, bulbous cast of good citizens is a kick, but the ingenious and somewhat demented character design of the Pincushion Guy gave me nightmares as a kid. And he eliminates half the cast just for the hell of it!

We’re starting a “Nice Place to Visit” week here at [Read more…]

Today, ReFrederator salutes one last ‘Great Director’ — Chuck Jones. Our cartoon is “Inki and the Mynah Bird” from 1943, one of a handful of films that popped up over an eleven year span starring a little African boy and a strange magical, hopping bird. In later years, Jones would expound on the conceptual underpinnings of most of his creations, but when it came to the “Inky” series, he kinda admitted even he didn’t exactly know what the heck was going on. See, there’s always this kid, who usually is trying to hunt, then periodically we hear this crazy music (Fingal’s Cave Overture by Felix Mendelsson) and this weird bird shows up — he has great strength, or supernatural powers, or something — then the bird leaves, and we do a little more of the story — but after a while there’s the music again, and the bird again — [Read more…]

ReFrederator! Great Directors Week! Dave Fleischer!

So, what we have here is “Betty Boop’s Crazy Inventions” (1933) which leads us to an unassailable axiom for animation appreciation: ANY Fleischer cartoon that has ANY thing to do with inventions is worth watching… ANY time. Director Dave and his producer brother Max just had a way with crack brain gadgets, and many of their best films feature mechanical marvels that defy logic and all practicality (they usually treat the laws of physics more like suggestions.) This time around, Betty and her bud Bimbo deal with all sorts of crazy creations, including a sewing machine that could have been imagined by Rod Serling — a common household item that spreads terror and destruction by performing its basic function… way, way too well!

Tomorrow a Jones named Chuck takes over with a jungle story about a great hunter (but YOU have to decide who’s hunting who.)

Dave Kirwan

Wednesday’s auteur du jour during ReFrederator’s “Great Directors Week” is Frank Tashlin, a guy who made cartoons using feature film technique and live action movies using cartoon tricks! Watch today’s flick and just try to keep track of the fast cut edits and crazy camera angles — pretty ritzy for 1937!

All those trains zooming back and forth keep “Porky’s Railroad” pretty darn energized, and it’s a good thing too! The title Pig is at his chunkiest, stutteringest, kinda slow movingest here, and he needs all the help he can get to keep things peppy. But having said that, I be thinkin’ this early version of Mr.Porky is very appealing; all circles with really, really big eyes that make him look very cute, if a trifle buzzed.

P.C. warning! There’s a quick throwaway sight gag playing on a very old, very racist colloquialism — it happens so fast, you’ll miss it if you [Read more…]