Category Archives: THE CARTOON CRYPT

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Flip the Frog in Spooks (1932)

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THE CARTOON CRYPT

My two-year old daughter likes old cartoons as much as I do, I think… we don’t watch much teevee, but we watch about an hour of online cartoons a week. She has different standards for them than I do, though. Usually she asks for Betty Boop or Gumby cartoons (she has good taste), but her other favorite request (since Halloween) is for cartoons with “spookies.”* I know you’re thinking, yeah, sure, obviously the guy with the goofy skull at the top of his website has a daughter who likes creepy cartoons… but she came up with this all on her own, as far as I can tell. So we’ve been watching lots of cartoons with ghosts, skeletons & other spooks… Ub Iwerks’ Disney Silly Symphony Skeleton Dance (which I’ll post after this) and the Fleischer Brothers’ Snow White, Minnie the Moocher, Swing You Sinners and Bimbo’s Initiation were obvious choices… here is a fun Iwerks obscurity featuring the unjustly forgotten Ub Iwerks’ character Flip the Frog. Flip has my favorite cartoon intro sequence of all time (tied with Betty Boop).

Have any favorite cartoons with spookies in them? Are they online? Help! I need more for the kid! Please let me hear about them in the comments.

*We’ve also been devouring John Stanley Little Lulu comics thanks to Dark Horse Comics wonderful cheap reprint books, for which she also requests “let’s read a spooky one!” every time. In this case, a “spooky” one generally is qualified by either having Witch Hazel in it, having ghosts in it, or simply having a pitch dark panel in it with two eyes in the dark.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Bobby Bumps Starts a Lodge

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THE CARTOON CRYPT

An interesting cartoon from 1916 from Paramount-Bray Studios… pretty slick animation considering how early this cartoon is. Bimbo’s Initiation this ain’t, but it is fun.

Please note that this cartoon contains offensive racial depictions of the sort that were all over the place at the time this was made… if this sort of thing offends you, you probably won’t want to watch it.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Felix the Cat in Feline Follies (cartoon #1)

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THE CARTOON CRYPT

I’ve decided to start slowly making my way through the Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat cartoons that have been posted online that I can find in the order they were released. Here is Felix’s first cartoon, Feline Follies, from 1919. Technically, it isn’t even a Felix cartoon… he is referred to as “Master Tom” in this one. I don’t know if Messmer had much experience animating before this, but it sure looks like he must have. His proficiency for showing character in his characters is already apparent… look at “Master Tom’s” vanity as he checks himself out in the mirror. It is often noted that Felix was the first cartoon character with a well-defined personality. His personality is definitely what made him the most popular animated cartoon character of the twenties.

Besides the wonderful Felix animated cartoons, Messmer was a fantastic comic strip and comic book cartoonist. The ASIFA Animation Archive recently had a generous post of Felix Sunday newspaper comics which can be seen here. If you dig these comics, you won’t want to miss the excellent reprint book that came out from Fantagraphics a number of years ago, Nine Lives to Live.

I wish someone would do a huge reprint series of Messmer’s comic book work like the great Little Lulu books from Dark Horse… I can’t think of a better comic book to read to my almost 2-year-old daughter.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Ladislaw Starewicz’s The Mascot

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THE CARTOON CRYPT

Here is an excerpt from the fabulous, surreal Ladislaw Starewicz stop-motion animation short “The Mascot” from 1933… there is a lot more to this cartoon that is not shown, but unfortunately, this is the longest clip of it I’ve seen on the internet. Anyone out there know of a full version somewhere?

UPDATE: I have posted the full version here.

In any case, you can see the full version along with a lot of other amazing Starewicz cartoons on the The Cameraman’s Revenge and Other Fantastic Tales DVD. Starewicz was one of the earliest stop-motion animators.

You can read more about Starewicz here.

There are some short Starewicz videos, along with some other amazing eastern European stop motion animation examples that I ran across here.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: UGOKIE-KO-RI-NO-TATEHIKI (1933)

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Here’s a GREAT surreal Japanese cartoon by Ikuo Oishi from 1933… the more I watch it the more I like it. If the Fleischer Brothers had been Japanese this is what they might have made. Parts of this remind me of Jim Woodring as well. It really makes me want to see more early Japanese animation. Don’t miss this one!

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Monkey of the Week, March 30, 2007: Simon the Monk in Monkeydoodle

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Whoops, I thought I had published this on March 30th, but I just saved it… here it is now. Our monkey of the week for two weeks ago!

I knew nothing about this cartoon previous to finding it on youtube, but finding it is like finding lost pirate treasure. It is awfully bizarre and interesting, and it stars a monkey in a fez, so it is right up my alley. It’s pretty amazingly raunchy for the time period, too… monkey boobies are prominently featured. It’s made by Les Elton and is from 1931.

I’ve never heard of Mr. Elton previous to this cartoon. Googling for Mr. Elton brought me some interesting information about him at the Stripper’s Guide blog, and, even better, more lost pirate treasure… a series of pretty amazing comic strips he did called “Jack Daw’s Adventures.” Comics historian Allan Holtz, who is the guy who does the wonderful Stripper’s Guide blog, believes this strip is the very first syndicated adventure strip featuring a continuing character… and he has reprinted about 50 of them on his site. A panel sample can be seen below.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Ray Harryhausen’s Mother Goose

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This is a fun, early Ray Harryhausen cartoon… it is clunky compared to much of his later work (Harryhausen is probably most famous for the stop motion animation in The Clash of the Titans and the Sinbad movies), but very charming nonetheless. You can already see what a talented animator he is… he puts a lot of subtle detail into the characters’ movements.

He has some pretty interesting verses I hadn’t heard in there for Old Mother Hubbard.