Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves

A POPEYE Cartoon.

After crashing his plane in the Sahara, POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS ALI BABA'S FORTY THIEVES when brigand Abu Hassan loots the desert village where the old spinach muncher has found respite. With Olive Oyl captured as a slave for the Thieves, it's time for our hero to come to the rescue...

This was the second in a series of 3 excellent two-reel cartoons, created by Max Fleischer, in which Popeye & his friends are interpolated into the classic stories of The Arabian Nights. They feature great animation - notice the fascinating 3-D backgrounds - and taut, fast-moving plots. Meant to be shown in movie theaters, they are miles ahead of their Saturday Morning counterparts. Jack Mercer is the voice of Popeye; Mae Questel does the honors for Olive Oyl.

First of all, I've seen this cartoon twice and what a difference! The first look was on a generic DVD collection of cartoons and a was a cheap buy. This second look was on the "Popeye The Sailor Man 1933-1938 Volume One" DVD set" with a "restored" picture and it looks stunning. The colors are rich and bold, the contrast great and it almost like something made in recent years.

The story pits "Abu Hassan" (Bluto) against Popeye, the Coast Guard man (along with Olive Oyl and Wimpy). The radio announces Hassan and his 40 thieves have just committed some crime so Popeye takes off in his flying ultra-modern-looking boat. (The radio then changes shape, reaches out and snatches Wimpy's hamburger from his mouth!)

As cool as the plane-boat is, however, it conks out and crash lands in the desert. Our good guys look like Moses and Hebrews crossing the long desert. Only Popeye seems to be holding up and then figures out a clever way to get all three of them to a place where they can get food and water, and then go looking for the bandit. By now, he doesn't have much further to go. They are there in that Casablanca-like city

Rather than going into all the details in this special, 17-minute Technicolor cartoon, suffice to say it was not only interesting but very clever (especially Popeye's butchering of words) and a real hoot to see in that "restored" cut of it.

This cartoon features the normal Popeye humor and heroics, all packaged in one beautiful- looking animated short!

Max Fleischer is the man responsible for the blossoming American animation film industry and he inspired the likes of Walt Disney, Walter Lantz and even Leon Schlesinger. Popeye became the most popular short-film series in the United States when Fleischer bought the film rights to the character, thus resulting in classics like 'Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves' and so forth.

These early Popeye shorts employed what is commonly referred to as 'rubber hose animation' where the characters lacked any specific points of articulation making their arms and legs look 'bendy'. I love these shorts because of the surreal charm they still have eighty years on. They're not trying to pretend that its animation is perfect, they just want to entertain the audience with its fast-paced and ridiculous animation.

I really do like these cartoons' they're lovely time capsules in spite some of the inherent racism that was unfortunately prominent in the 30s. With that said, these cartoons were never made with the intent of offending anyone through any inappropriate characters, they were just products of the time which we can thankfully look beyond now.

Popeye is still a beloved cartoon icon around the world and for good reason; he made the United States and the world happier during the Great Depression, and for that he's become a real superhero in his own right.

1937 was a big year for the animation industry. So many milestones and shifts took place. Cartoons were becoming more and more sophisticated.

At the Fleischer studio, a second Popeye epic was released. This time Bluto plays the role of Ali Baba, but he identifies himself as Abu Hassan in his theme song. As with Sinbad, Popeye and Abu have a hilarious exchange of smack talk and showing off their wits and strength.

Sinbad is my favorite of the three Technicolor two-reel specials, but this is the superior one. The production value, pacing, and overall execution feels like a feature, and it should have been made as one. One can only wonder what animation history would have been like if the Fleischer studio made this as a feature to compete with Disney's Snow White as the first animated features.

It does feel like a missed opportunity, since Popeye was such a popular character at the time, and being a sailor, he lent himself to endless possibilities for epic adventure films.

While the use of Arab stereotypes may not sit well with contemporary audiences, this is a classic one cannot miss. One of Popeye's greatest films of all time.

The song of Abu Hassan and his 40 thieves is the axis of this charming short adaptation of classic story, great for the humor, fight scenes and for the admirable Wimpy serving in exemplary manner his interest. So, an admirable short film, remembering the emotions of childhood and giving a precious gift of adventures and songs and humor and wise use of cliches.