ReFrederator Blog

We say goodbye to Just Plain Weird Week with something called “The Devil’s Ball”, which is actually a fragment from a much longer French film called “The Mascot” created by the great Russian animator Ladislas Starevish. Don’t look for any plot — most of that has been edited away in this version (although, for the record, the original is about a toy dog saving a little girl from scurvy, so rest assured this clip is just the tip of the iceberg as far as refined oddness goes.)

If the elegant creepiness of the animated puppets seems eerily familiar, you may be a child of the eighties. This same clip was rerun relentlessly on the old cable TV standby “Night Flight” (does anyone else remember that weekend goulash of rock videos, documentaries and stock footage?)

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Hanging on my wall is this piece of original Ub Iwerks production artwork — my kids gave it to me a while back. It’s unidentified, and I couldn’t quite place the film with which it was connected. Reviewing today’s cartoon “Funny Face,” I think I made a discovery.

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Today we witness the tragic spectacle of Flip the Frog denying his noble amphibian heritage. By time he made “Funny Face,” one of his last films, the once proud puddle jumper had all frog references in his movie credits removed — now he was just plain Flip (”Flip” — how catchy! How trendy! How sad!) Then he underwent excruciating cosmetic surgery to have a talking Halloween mask of a human boy attached to his own God given slimy head — all in pursuit of a forbidden inter-species romance with a little girl. Oh, call me old fashioned, but this whole affair makes me r-e-a-l-l-y uncomfortable. And besides, by this point, it’s not like he was looking all that much like a frog in the first place!

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Just Plain Weird Week trundles on at ReFrederator with “The Snowman,” a 1932 classic from Ted Eshbaugh. This is the cheerful story of a jolly little boy and his jolly pet seal who live above the jolly arctic circle, having a jolly old time with all the other jolly animals until one day when they build a snowman who comes to life AND BECOMES A HIDEOUS, FLESH EATING MONSTER WHO WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND DEVOUR YOU ALIVE EVEN IF YOU HIDE IN A CHURCH, BECAUSE HE’S EVIL!!! EVIL, I TELL YOU!!!

Yeah, well, this is the same Eshbaugh who gave us “The Sunshine Makers”, so you knew the ride was gonna be a little twisted. No telling how many baby boomers sought therapy in their middle years as a direct result of multiple childhood veiwings of this golden oldie.

And things just get weirder tomorrow.

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Seems as if we had some internet gremlins gum up our scheduled cartoon with some technical glitches earlier this morning. Sorry about that! If you never downloaded the defective version of today’s cartoon, just charge ahead as usual. If you have already downloaded the incomplete version, go here.

Anyway, the Just Plain Weird Week installment you were supposed to see, “It’s A Bird,” comes direct from our Wotthehell Department. It’s the story of a guy looking for a metal eating bird, using a worm dipped in aluminum paint as bait. Sounds plausible.

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We’ve jumped all around Popeye’s film career this week while ReFrederator has been featuring its Popeye-a-thon. Which brings up the issue of the sailor man’s later, post-Max Fleischer cartoons. Okay, okay, okay — everyone agrees the early weird-ass Fleischer entries are, on the whole, better — BUT — I kinda like the slick Paramount Famous Cartoon Studio installments too. Don’t hate me.

For good or bad, Popeye is more of an everyman in these later films. He has an astounding array of occupations. He has many ordinary homeowner-type concerns. He has a nice suburban house.

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Our ReFrederator Popeye-a-thon rocks on with “Patriotic Popeye” one of the very last theatrical shorts in the long running series. And it’s actually not bad, although Popeye seems to be on the receiving end of an awful lot of uncle abuse at the tiny hands of his nephews — his TWO nephews. The 1940’s started out with four identical nephews for the sailor man, then we saw their number reduced to three by the early fifties. Now we’re down to a dangerous duo.

I’ve harped on the subject of animated relatives before, but there are still some nagging questions here. What happens to downsized cartoon nephews? Were they offered a money-up-front retirement package, or were they unceremoniously kicked out the studio gates? What kind of employment opportunities are there for pint sized characters bearing an uncanny resemblance to world famous cartoon stars? And who’s missing — Poopeye? Pipeye? Pupeye? Peepeye? [Read more…]