Snow-White

Everything about this short is fantastic! The music is perfect, the animation is superb and quite darkly creepy in spots, the story is excellent and everything fits together like a seamless jigsaw puzzle. When Koko (voiced by Cab Calloway) sings "St. James Infirmary Blues", watch his movements. The animators captured Cab Calloway's movements perfectly here. Cab Calloway is caricatured in cartoons frequently in cartoons from others studios and is quite easily recognizable as Cab Calloway in them, but this is something completely different. The character is Koko, but the walk is Calloway and it works completely. Anyone who is a fan of both Koko and Cab Calloway (I may be the only one, although I hope not) will see both characters in one place at one time, a perfect blend without either dominating. That's hard to do under any circumstance. I bow humbly to genius. You have got to see this if you love cartoons! In print and available. The tape is worth it for this one short alone (although it's excellent and there are other great shorts here as well) and is most highly recommended!!!!!! A shot from the other end of the court at the buzzer and nothing but net!!

Most of this cartoon is top-notch Fleischer fare and definitely worth watching, but there's one part that makes it absolutely stand out: the darkly hypnotic scene where Koko the Clown sings an elegy in Cab Calloway's voice in the underworld while Betty Boop is marched down in her glass coffin by pallbearers. The first time I saw it, it was literally breathtaking; all conversation in the room stopped as soon as Calloway started singing, and we watched, hypnotized, as Koko turns into a skeleton and dances with Calloway's moves in Hell while skeleton fish fly through the air and skeleton humans play poker deep in the background. As good as cartoons get.

When the Simpsons or other modern animations try to create the "old style" cartoons from the 20's or 30's they tend to do it by having black and white figures constantly bopping around in motion even when standing on the spot not doing anything. That is the style that is here in this 1933 version of Snow White. The plot is essentially an evil stepmother seeks to kill Snow White when her magic mirror turns its affections to the younger woman but from here we have some variety in the telling as the dwarfs are hardly in it and instead we spend a lot of time with a ghost singing a Cab Calloway song in some sort of hellish underground mine.

As a version of the story is not where you want to go for the story, but as a cartoon it is very enjoyable because it is creative and fluid in what it does. The first half is pretty good and I liked it for its old style animation and sense of character but the second half is much better when the song starts and we focus on this ghost character changing shape etc in time to the words and music. This continues with the bizarre way to deal with the evil stepmother and I liked the image of her transformed and then flipped inside out by one of the characters. The animation does have this great vision to it – as another IMDb writer here has said, if this was done in the 1960's we would have said the guy was stoned but that it was a real trip; it does say a lot that this cartoon from the 1930's fitted in so easily with the style in the 60's and 70's.

It is worth seeing because although it not a hilarious cartoon it is creative with the animation and all has a very nice flow to it – and the addition of Cab Calloway singing just adds to the appeal.

This is a classic example of cool animation. you can not get animation like this anymore, apparently it scares children, but how i do long for the sight of Betty Boop being carried in a frozen coffin by 7 dwarfs into a tunnel. it just works! for many, the Fleischer's aren't their cup of tea (not making sense, not the best animation, creepy) but for me, the animation is fun and inventive and is far more intelligent than Disney's work which i find un-stimulating at times and can drag. fair enough, they embellish the story a tad but, to be fair, they only had ten minutes and they still managed to produce innovations (the dancing, singing, transformed coco the clown has his dancemoves roto-scoped from Cab Calloway's dancing, roto-scoping was invented by them).

But, what i believe sets this out as a true gem among gems is Cab Calloway. A man with a voice that just blows me away and adds real depth to an almost over-covered song. the music is enthralling, the animation entertaining and the end product, magical. please, find this on you tube.

This is a wonderful short humorous cartoon, predating the Disney feature inspired by the same folk-tale.

The Wicked Witch/Queen is jealous of Betty Boop's beauty, and orders Boop's execution. Guards Bimbo and Koko are too kind hearted to carry it out. As in "Minnie The Moocher", the scene shifts to a spooky cave where we are serenaded by the voice of Cab Calloway.

The music and action mesh beautifully, keeping the momentum strong throughout. Watch carefully for a plethora of visual jokes to the sides and behind the action.

Unfortunately, most copies of this cartoon on video were taken from 1950s television prints, which cut off part of the frame.

This is perhaps as close to perfection as the Fleischer Studios achieved. A gem.