Boos in the Night

Famous Studio revived the Fleischer Scree Songs with their bouncing ball in the late 1940s, and adopted the technique of ofering a gag-filled vignette, followed by the featured song. Here, however, the formula has gone off the rails, with a ghost town full of ghosts behaving in a mildly amusing manner, followed by the song "Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag".

Huh? I am not sure what they were thinking. Were they trying to do a Hallowe'en cartoon, maybe something with Casper the Friendly Ghost, changed courses in mid -production, and tacked on whatever song they had the rights to? While the titles of Hallowe'en-appropriate songs in not long, this random collision isn't particularly good.

Halloween is a very familiar setting in animation, almost every animation studio or animated theatrrical series (major and not so much on both counts) to exist did it at least once. That doesn't matter, because it is such a great occasion and setting, that is both scary and nostalgic, and has leant itself brilliantly to animation many times. Was not sure as to how the Famous Studios Screen Song series would handle it though, as it is such a different subject for the series and one that potentially could have felt out of place.

While not a perfect cartoon or an animated masterpiece, 'Boos in the Night' in my view was wildly entertaining and made the most of its Halloween setting. As far as the Screen Song series goes, 'Boos in the Night' is in the top four (the others being 'Little Brown Jug', 'Toys Will be Toys', 'The Big Flame Up' and 'Snow Foolin'), although it is let down a good deal by one crucial portion everything else is so well executed that it is impossible to be too hard on it.

'Boos in the Night' story is very slight, but that was not unexpected as even the best cartoons in the series had this.

The only major problem actually is the singalong portion itself. It goes on for too long and is very unimaginatively done, pretty cutesy and stuck in the time. The song "Packing Up Your Troubles" is great and very catchy, but it just felt irrelevant to the theme (just don't know how it relates to Halloween and ghosts) and would have been better suited to a cartoon about disastrous moving days.

As said though, everything else is so good that it is hard to be too hard on 'Boos in the Night'. As ever with the Screen Song series, the animation and the music are the best things. It is beautifully animated. The colours are vibrant and there is meticulous attention to detail in the backgrounds, the setting is deliciously ominous and haunting and the there is some creative animation on the ghostly character animation.

If there was one aspect that was consistently good in Famous Studios' 1940s and 1950s output, it was the music scoring and it is outstanding here in 'Boos in the Night'. The orchestration has a lot of energy and there are some truly luscious sounds throughout. "Packing Up Your Troubles" is beautifully performed and orchestrated and is great as a standalone, to me it just didn't fit within the cartoon.

Furthermore, we are not short changed when it comes to the gags and while there isn't anything really original they are amusing and well timed. Loved the genuinely spooky atmosphere throughout, the first two minutes particularly, and the cartoon never feels dull thanks to the full to the brim energy. The ghosts are a lively lot and the cartoon doesn't become too cute a vast majority of the time, apart from the singalong portion which is only two minutes or so of a just over 6 minute cartoon. The ending is a scream and it is always worth seeing Peter Lorre caricatured.

Overall, well worth watching. 8/10.