Sing, sing, sing

Have You Got Any Castles? (1938)

*** (out of 4)

Extremely entertaining Merrie Melodies short has a familiar plot but it's taken to the limit here. The animated film pretty much takes place on a book shelf as various forms of literature comes to life. We get various stories including Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The House of Seven "Gables", So Big, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Little Women, The Thin Man, The Good Earth and countless others. The animation is quite good throughout this short with a lot of great attention to various details. There are a few Hollywood celebs who make appearances here including W.C. Fields and a funny spoof with Clark Gable. Mel Blanc does fine work in the form of several of the characters but we'd come to expect nothing less. What really makes this film stand apart from countless others that tried the same story is the actual music, which is incredibly entertaining. Carl W. Stalling and Milt Franklyn hit all the right notes and really keep the action moving. Everything mixed together makes this one of the better ways to tell this familiar stories so fans of animation or any of the books mentioned should have a grand time.

This is the kind of cartoon that would have influenced Chuck Jones.

Books come to life with its title characters.

So Dr Jekyll, Fu Manchu, The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein start it off with a little song and dance routine.

The Thin Man shows up. Later it is the turn of The Invisible Man and Topper.

You have to be familiar with the 1930s references. So The Informer look like Victor McLaglen. Heidi sings a song in the style of Cab Calloway. The House of the Seven Gables are Clark Gable.

It is rather clever and amusing although some of the references are of its time.

I absolutely love this cartoon. It is engaging, it is colourful and it is extremely clever. It is enormous fun spotting all the literary references such as Heidi (who does sing like Cab Calloway), The Three Musketeers and The Thin Man, references to Frankenstein, Fu Manchu, Mr Hyde and Phantom of the Opera(the beginning was hilarious, it isn't everyday when you see monsters such as Fu Manchu dancing to Gossec's Gavotte) and the caricatures of Charles Laughton, William Powell, Greta Garbo and Paul Muni. The animation is spotless, the music is fabulous and the voice work is top notch. The gags and puns come fast and the cartoon is loaded to the brim with them. Who cares whether it is plot less, it is amazing to look at, it is entertaining and very clever. 10/10 Bethany Cox

The "town crier" inside a warm house on a snowy winter night dazzles us with his vocabulary, introducing us to various literature characters who come to life in this home's big library.

Most of the characters were people seen on screen in the mid '30s, actors like Paul Muni (The Story of Louis Pasteur) or Williams Powell (Nick Charles of The Thin Man fame) or, well.....there are so many I'm not going to list them all. It starts with four horror stories: Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein and runs the game to Topper, the Invisible Man, The Good Earth, The 39 Steps, on and on and on. We see dancers and singers like Bill Robinson and Cab Calloway represent some of the titles.

With all the jokes and sight gags poured into this, you get a lot of silly, stupid, clever and funny, some of it depending on how familiar you are with the characters, and how much you enjoy puns.

My personal opinion would involve three "c words" - clever, cute and colorful. Having seen almost all of those classic films, I thought this was a lot of fun to watch.

Just rewatched this Merrie Melodies cartoon on the Varsity Show DVD. It has the characters on the book covers in a big shelf full of them coming to life, often in the caricatures of the film actors that portrayed them. It also had some black characters portrayed with big lips which is considered offensive today so kudos to Warner Bros. for including a disclaimer to that effect. Quite musically pleasing and a bit funny in some scenes concerning the film stars being drawn. Frank Tashlin was one of the most creative animation directors at the time and he's done well with something like this. So on that note, I recommend Have You Got Any Castles?