087 A Little Soap and Water

 

Title: A Little Soap and Water
Studio: Fleischer
Date: 06/21/35
Credits:
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Animated by
Myron Waldman
and
Edward Nolan
Series: Betty Boop
Running time (of viewed version): 43:11-48:36:5:25
Commercial DVD Availability: 600d1, B C

Synopsis: Betty gives Pudgy a bath, and he isn't pleased about that. 

 

Comments: How did the bone get under the rug? Creepy "Audition" style Betty under the rug (it's creepier animated than in stills). Betty's really a horrible nag in '35. Bearded Betty. Coal dust without being a blackface gag, I think. Too many of these are taking place indoors with no interesting characters. There isn't much to say about them.

At this writing, I'm slightly more than four months ahead again.  

086 The Puppet Murder Case

 

Title: The Puppet Murder Case
Studio: Columbia
Date: 06/21/35
Credits: Story
Art Davis
Music
Joe De Nat
Animation
Sid Marcus
Series: Scrappy
Running time (of viewed version): 6:49
Commercial DVD Availability: -

Synopsis: Capitalist/socialist conflict. Both are vicious. Capitalist wins.

Comments: I just noticed Scrappy's hands in the credit title are really creepy looking. Cool real world title, sitting on top of wallpaper, I think. I wonder if it's the same design mind that put it behind the wood framed cels. Don't know why it doesn't keep with the genre and name this "Scrappy's Puppet Show". Maybe there'd already been one. Walter Winchell reference with Walter Windshield. Pretty strong sock in the face. Then three more. Revenge! Big haired musicians. Girl with big hair gag again. Bully shaves it tho. Puppets feel like caricatures, but it may just be puppet form. Apparently, kids in 1935 smoked lots of cigars. Shadow. Trial.  Most of the stuff happens in the first half. Kind of a terrifying Twilight Zone sentence to beating by puppet as a puppet. 

085 Summertime

 

Title: Summertime
Studio: Iwerks
Date: 06/15/35
Credits:
Produced by
UB IWERKS
Musical Score by
Carl Stalling
Series: ComiColor
Running time (of viewed version): 1:05:20-1:13:18: 7:58
Commercial DVD Availability: CTTFUICv1, B

Synopsis: Summer and Winter fight it out for supremacy. I suspect Winter's time will come again.

Comments: Blue winter demon. And a snow covered sun. Sun is hulking out. Snow man with a death march, revealing a demon faun. This is similar in many ways to the Lantz "Springtime Serenade" that came out about three weeks earlier. Sexy tree women silhouettes; dryads, I suppose. Centaur polo. A possible specific caricature on one of the centaurs; famous polo player? Ground hog reference, but no shadow issue. Wrongly named; the telegraph says it's springtime. There's the shadow reference. The Can Can plays. DId the fireflies actually go kamikaze? Actually a decent cartoon, if not spectacular. In some ways, it feels like a more effective (and less affected) Fantasia. I kind of wonder if C.S. Lewis based the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on this cartoon... 

084 King Looney XIV

 

Title: King Looney XIV
Studio: Terry
Date: 06/14/35
Credits: -
Series: Terrytoons
Running time (of viewed version): 5:07
Commercial DVD Availability:

Synopsis: The cat king is insane and has kidnapped a mouse girl.

Comments: Damn, the mouse villagers seem to be storming the cat castle. The king appears to be crazy, but this may have been set up more effectively in the full cartoon. I wonder why the cat forces didn't have a praetorian revolt against the mad king. Bondage mouse girl. Maybe the heroine was kidnapped at the beginning. Is that an actual king's head on a pike near the tower bridge?