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Trouble starts when the queen's magic mirror says Betty Boop is fairest. Cab Calloway sings "St. James Infirmary Blues." The part of the cartoon with the Snow White story is pretty decent, though nothing really all that amazing, either. It has the distinction, I believe, of beating Walt Disney to the story, though this film does not nearly do what Disney did.

I love how when Cab Calloway appears in Betty Boop cartoons, it is always weird and sort of spooky. Now, the one with "Minnie the Moocher" is by far the stranger of these two, but this has plenty of odd moments itself. There is another Cab Calloway cartoon, and I suspect he is every bit as weird in that.

Betty Boop was the signature of surrealism in her time. Here she goes to visit her evil stepmother/queen, who is caught up in asking her mirror who the fairest is. She is really quite ugly, but with no competition, the mirror pretty much caters to her vanity. Then Betty Boop shows up. The stepmother tells her minions to chop off her head. They pretend to but send her off to the dwarfs. Then all kinds of weird stuff begins to happen. The Queen is able to morph into all kinds of things and also has power over the transformation of others. Betty must depend on the forest animals and other creatures to keep her safe. Eventually the evil queen pursues with very strange results. What a mind to come up with some of this stuff.

Another of the Fleischer Studios' "Betty Boop" cartoons, here putting their mark on a beloved fairy-tale 4 years before this was immortalized by the rival Walt Disney Productions, which would be chosen for the company's first feature-length venture. Though we still get to hear Cab Calloway sing a tune (through the usually silent Koko!), thankfully, the idea that an animated short basically serve as a promo for the current musical hit was on its way out by this stage.

Here, Betty obviously fills the title role – arriving at the castle to visit her stepmother, the Evil Queen; when the latter's proverbial mirror states that the heroine is truly the fairest in the land, the older woman orders her beheading (taking a leaf out of "Alice In Wonderland"!). Incidentally, the Seven Dwarfs barely figure into this at all: Snow-White turns up on their doorstep already encased in ice! On the other hand, the Queen does get to dress up as an old hag…and, yet, the climax – as has become apparent from a number of Betty's 'vehicles' I checked out in quick succession – is typically set in a netherworld of sorts.

You can't do much better in terms of pure, clever cinematic fun, than revisit these Betty Boops, the ones that mix Cab Calloway, ghouls and sexy Betty cavorting with demons. Hallucinogens, jazz, sex.

This isn't my favorite. I count that as "Old Man of the Mountain" of this same year. That one has more spooks, more sex (an attempted rape) and more jazz. This is much more complex, mixing in Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, all of which would be mined by Disney later.

What brought me back to this was seeing "Corpse Bride." It was brilliant, I thought, and drew heavily from the two "Skeleton Dance" cartoons and this little window into the underworld given to us by the Fleischers.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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.

In 1937, Disney produced the ground-breaking full-length cartoon, SNOW WHITE. Four years earlier, Fleischer Studios made a short version of this classic tale and it starred, of all characters, Betty Boop. Now, for the average Betty Boop cartoon, SNOW-WHITE is a pretty good cartoon--but I would never confuse Betty Boop with great art! The animation, while decent for 1934, is incredibly poor compared to the Disney effort--yet miraculously the overall score for this short is higher than the great Disney film--even though SNOW WHITE is one of the best and most important films in animation history! The very cartoony black and white artwork is passable but shows little artistic flair and,...well,...it's only Betty Boop! About the only really interesting thing is a musical number performed by Koko the Clown and is actually sung by the great Cab Calloway.

An oddity, of course...but NOT in the same league as the Disney classic.

This is another of those Betty Boop cartoons that feature two things: music and an insane storyline with wild visuals where crazy things happen one after the other. Back in the late '60s, we would have thought the cartoonists who made this had to be stoned. I say that because this is not any Snow White story you've ever seen. It's so strange, and it's almost hard to describe.

In one fairly long scene, we hear the voice of the great Cab Calloway while some ghostly spirit-like figure dances through some Dante's Infero/hello underground. It's really bizarre!

Earlier, we get the ugly queen talking several times to her "looking glass" (mirror) with dialog such as, "Am I the fairest in the place?"

The mirror answers, " If I was you, I'd hide my face!"

I'm telling you; these guys MUST have been on acid who wrote and drew some of these early Betty Boop cartoons! They are so wild, it's unbelievable.

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.

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!!

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.

The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. The charm, sensuality and adorability factors are here and she's fun to watch. Koko is hilarious with some really imaginatively strange moments, while Cab Calloway's involvement proves to be a masterstroke.

'Snow-White' is for me up there with Betty Boop's best cartoons, the story of 'Snow White' is told at its most wonderfully weird and a case of that done to great advantage. It's so rich in imagination, never less than entertaining and is up there as one of Betty's boldest.

Furthermore, the black and white animation is extremely good, smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn with the black and white not looking too primitive. A lot of it is actually very imaginative as well, some of the most inventive and eye-popping of the early Betty Boop cartoons to me. Even better is the music, which is rousing, catchy and unquestionably accessible to anybody who loves or is familiar with the composition style.

Overall, outstanding cartoon and up there among Betty Boop's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This is a great cartoon, a masterpiece in its own right among the many very old animations of yore. The lack of colour at the time only add to its magic. There's an old animated short for just about anything you could think of, but this is the fevered dream of a madman one! It must have been quite the animation wizard to have created everything that is seen all by himself, although to look at it a sorcerer seems more likely to have have dreamed up this animated dark wonder! This is one incredibly uncanny little vision here, it's a veritable melting-pot of creepy off kilter sights, ideas and atmosphere that is altogether not so much any real kind of take on Snow White, but more of a revolving carnival sideshow of phantasmagorical imagery gone wild - There's things leaping and bounding, morphing and sprouting into and out of other things, all falling into spirals of cackling witches and beautiful menacing skull- faced backgrounds, and all this goes along to sinister musical merriment that together, creates a work that's really totally indescribable, you've got to see it for yourself! It's almost like it's alive, it has a beat, so wonderful! Twisted and eerie are taken to new heights when Koko the clown transforms into something that kind of resembles one of the Mome Raths from Alice in Wonderland with an amazing soulful voice... I found the animation impressive when Betty trips and her big butt rolls all the way down the snowy mountain! It's a very primitive style of animation now, but not to me, that's all part of the charm in how I look at it. The oddball combinations and mind-boggling scenery all made for something greatly appealing to me. It's awesome and disturbing all at once, and absolute nonsense from start to finish, but ever so much wicked fun to watch - a surreal triumph of early animation and a visual feast, one that every fan of great vintage animation needs to check out! A little crazy but charmingly wonderful and timeless x

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.

Imaginative, provocative, seductive. And fair mix of jazz, fairy tales and crumbs of ghost story. The ice coffin is the beautiful detail and the bad queen , from the narcissism to prehistory is just great.

A nice short animation, admirable for the nostalgia proposed to viewer first, surprising modern and courageous and funny at whole.

Cab Calloway's soundtrack seems out of place, yet still fits in perfectly. Does that make sense? If not, don't worry. Just enjoy. This is one of the great cartoons of all time.

Fantastic and dark humored version of Snow White tale by Fleischer Studio, animated by Roland Crandall. Here, Snow White, who is Betty Boop, goes to the castle to see her stepmother, the evil Queen. Furious after listening her magic mirror telling her Betty Snow White Boop is "the fairest in the land", the Queen orders not a hunter to kill her, but her guards Koko the clown and Bimbo. They spare her life, but afterwards there is a very psychodelic trip of life and death in the frozen river and deep in the dwarfs' mystery cave, probably the Hell, involving all characters, magic metamorphosis, dance and Saint James Infirmary Blues in the voice of Cab Calloway. It is a masterwork among nonsense cartoons.

As the enforcement of the Hay's Censor office in mid-1934 came into effect, Betty Boop's cartoons were forced to tamp down Betty's sex appeal and racy plots. Before that happened, Betty appeared in a number of fairy tale cartoons, the best being March 1933's "Snow White," the first animation of the Brothers Grimm tale. Bette pays a visit to her mean step-mom, The Queen, who's furious when her mirror informs her Betty is the fairest one of them all. The Queens' guards, Bimbo and Ko Ko the Clown, are ordered to execute her and she ends up encased in a block of ice.

Roland Crandall, a talented artist with the Fleischers for years who became the lead animator for the Popeye series, was granted his wish to create the "Snow White" cartoon. Crandall drew most of the seven-minute short, which took six months to complete. His work has been recognized in a poll by members who make a living in the animation field by voting "Snow White" as #19 in the Greatest 50 Cartoons of All-Time.

This cartoon starring Betty Boop as Snow White, also with elements from 'Sleeping Beauty', is funny from start to finish. It shows how the queen is no longer the fairest in the land, but Betty Boop. Even the mirror falls in love with her so Betty's head must be cut off. We know that it is not going to happen. This is where the part from 'Sleeping Beauty' arrives since she ends up in a block of ice, sliding right into the house of the seven dwarfs. They lift her up in her bed of ice and take her into a cave where the story gets the happy ending.

The whole things is put on music that sounds very familiar. It is great to watch. Not only funny but with nice animation as well, this is one of the better cartoons I have seen.