Westward Whoa

Wow, this is an oldie, and sometimes it looks it. It was my first look, actually, at a Mutt and Jeff cartoon but I remember reading them in comic fashion as a kid for many years.

Anyway, they are cowboys and apparently a team in entertaining folks, perhaps, in a rodeo because we see them practicing their act. Mutt is a little rough on Jeff, making his dance by shooting the ground and then whipping him!

I didn't find much humor is this cartoon, and I hope other Mutt and Jeff's are better than this. I realize it was silent movie era but the noises the two guys made in place of talking (whistles and hoots) was a little annoying. I'd rather they used title cards or "balloons with words" than those dumb incoherent noises.

The color in this movie is fair, about what you'd expect for something re- released in the 1930s under the "Kromcolor" process. The artwork is pretty primitive but, hey, it's 80 years old!

Although this film might appear very, very dated, back in 1926 it was a rather advanced cartoon. Now I do not know if the Kromocolor (an early two- color process) was used back in 1926 or it was added later, and researching on the internet didn't make this clear. The same would go for the sound---a real rarity for 1926. Again, it could have been added later, though not much later because the sound was very primitive--with music and sound effects as well as some bizarro sound effects instead of voices for Mutt or Jeff. If this IS the way the film appeared in 1926, then it was way ahead of its time.

As for the cartoon itself, it's modestly entertaining by 1926 standpoints but pretty dull today. Mutt and Jeff are working on a ranch and need to brand the cows. One is NOT happy and calls in cow reinforcements but in the end, Mutt has his way with all of them...including Jeff.

If anyone knows more about the color and sound used in the film, let me know. IMDb says it was a black & white film as well as a silent--but I have found the site to be mistaken in a few of the early films.

I found this to be a really funny cartoon. Made in the 1920s and later reimaged in color with sound effects, I prefer the newer 1930 version. For those wondering why they are using whistle effects for the voices, why not? It worked for Peanuts decades later for the adult's voices. Besides, Mutt and Jeff shorts were also remade in the 1970s with voices using the silent film versions and colorizing them or using the 1930 color version and adding voices and splicing it together as a feature film. One of the voice actors has been in dozens of films as a character actor short guy type (Robert Weil). The voices added nothing to the cartoons and I think hurt them more then helped. BTW, a really crazy movie of Mutt and Jeff with a exotic dancer spliced in, perhaps it was for the adult film circuit but my Mom dropped me off to watch it on a Sunday morning and I fell asleep, it was so bad (called The Weird Adventures of Mutt & Jeff and Bugoff). Back to this film, I have seen both the black and white and colorized version, the gags are great. I don't know who would win, Popeye the Sailor or Jeff in a fight. Popeye would definitely need his spinach to take on Jeff, lol. I would imagine a fight between them as like when Popeye is trying to catch Eugene the Jeep. The animation wasn't Disney from the 1930s, (but looking at Disney animation for the 1920s, when this was made, this was actually better, and it wasn't Hannah Barbera 1958 TV show bad quality either). 10 of 10, any Mutt and Jeff fan would agree!

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