Spree for All

Snuffy Smith pushes a button and his new, post-war house assembles. He's prepared to enjoy peace and quiet. However his neighbors, the Mulligans and the Coys, are too busy fighting their hillbilly feud to allow him.

There were several attempts to turn Billy De Beck's cartoon strip into an animated series over the decades. This Famous Studios Noveltoons was one of a short run. Despite the notes in the trivia section, it was originally released in color, even though the only known surviving print was in black and white.

A couple of gags and a series surrounding the characters' playing "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain" enliven the cartoon.

For a long time 'Spree For All', featuring the popular comic strip character Snuffy Smith, was a lost cartoon. As of now though it does exist, albeit not in a colour print which was somewhat unusual for the Famous Studios' Noveltoons series that it's part of. Instead it is available in a French black and white print, which does make do as it is better than nothing. But imagine how even better it would have been released in colour, as it was originally produced in.

'Spree For All' is neither among the best or worst Noveltoons, an uneven but also quite interesting series, cartoons, better and worse were produced both before and since. It belongs though in the solid middle category of the series, which is not too bad a position to be in for what was one of Famous Studios' better periods and also their by quite some way their best decade in an output spanning twenty five years.

The story is very slight, with the song taking up most of the cartoon consisting of a very catchy rendition of "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" and a series of more than competently done gags. The consequences of the love potion is the closest it gets to a plot and even that is overshadowed by the song.

Also would have loved more of Snuffy himself. He is an amusing and far from annoying character but feels too much of a supporting character here, though at least a crucial one, and other than in the cartoon's setting up and towards the quite predictable and somewhat of a damb squib ending he mostly disappears from the action.

With all that being said, the music is outstanding (the one asset to be so from personal opinion and by far the best thing about 'Spree For All') and like its own character with a lot of lively energy, rousing singing and action enhancing orchestration. The song is very catchy and avoids being repetitive, complete with some clever visuals in the physical gags that the song enhances well, so much so it wasn't a problem for me that it takes up a lot of 'Spree For All'. The animation is also not too bad, the backgrounds are very simple and it would have been better in colour but the physical humour is visually lively and the drawing is neat and fluid. Also really liked how Snuffy's house is made up.

Pretty much all the gags come from the feuding families and friends, all stereotypes but enjoyable ones, and when their characters and love potion are introduced. The good news is that one is far from short-changed when it comes to the gags, and they didn't feel stale either (to me they were never less than amusing) with the visuals helping. The voice acting and singing are good.

Overall, pretty decent. 7/10