Snow-White

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 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.

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.

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.