Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves

I love Fleischer's take on Popeye the Sailor better than all the other versions of the character. This cartoon and "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" are favorites from Popeye's colorful "Arabian Nights" trilogy.

I enjoy the desert scene in which Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Wimpy walk through the sand. Wimpy's mirage of a feast and the "tank roll" scene are also highlights for me. I also love the scene at the cafe when Popeye snatches Abu Hassen/Bluto's underwear off him without removing his clothes. One final moment that I enjoy is when Olive kisses Popeye while pacing back and forth on the pier while on duty.

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.

He always-innovative Fleischer Studios had its own version of the multiplane camera called the 'Stereoptical Process,' 'The Slide,' or better known as the 'setback' camera. Its system was further refined in the studio's second 'Popeye Color Special,' the two-reeler cartoon November 1937 "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves." Popeye is in the Coast Guard. The sailorman, Olive Oyl and J. Wellington Wimpy respond to a call in Arabia to thwart the Forty Thieves while their attacking a desert town. Throughout all the chaos, Popeye confronts Abu Hassan in an effort to stop his band's destructive actions. A can of spinach enables Popeye to take on the gang.

The Fleischers departed from the vertical camera Disney had designed and built an horizontal one instead. Theirs was situated on a stage, with miniature sets and artwork placed in layers on a huge turntable to capture both background and foreground images. The drawn cels complete with characters were filmed within this framework, with the camera moving forward and backward. In "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves" its final scene shows Popeye and Olive riding in a wagon illustrated by a three-dimensional effect. Miraculously, the camera pans to Abu and his companions in the normal two-dimensional setting while pulling the wagon. By this time in late 1937 the designers of animated cartoons were pressing the latest technological advancements, most which would still be in use until computers entered the scene in the late 20th century.

In a vast Abrabian desert there's a group of thieves lead by Bruno(Ali Baba) and the 40 thieves. As they rob and steal everything in site. Popeye, Olive, and Wimpy run a coast guard post. When they got word to be on the watch for thieves. Which takes them on an air travel towards the Abrabian desert. After traveling for many days and nights, they finally made it to civilization which is one of the sites that Ali Baba has set his eyes on. And it's up to Popeye to fight and take down this aggressive thief.

Like "Popeye meets Sinbad" this one is worthy of being one of the best Popeye cartoons ever made.

It's original, it's humorous, and it has plenty of great moments with your spinach loving sailor.

Highly recommended to those who liked the Popeye meets Sinbad one.

For those who hasn't see Popeye meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves digitally remastered on DVD, you're in for a revelation! I'm so happy that Warner Bros. got rid of the dreadful A.A.P. opening and closing titles of all Fleischer Popeye cartoon movies and put back the original Paramount titles where it belongs.

I love the cartoon. Especially Abu Hassan (Bluto) and his boys singing that catchy tune back in 1937 which is still timeless to this day. Can't stop singing! It's now available either can buy or rent it as part of the Popeye collection (1933 - 1938) available exclusively from Warner Home Video.