The Underground World

I love the Fleischer Superman cartoons. The animation is smooth and fluid with vivid colors. The distinct art-deco style, vintage science fiction imagery, and use of noirish shadows gave them a look unlike any other cartoons. The music and voice work is superb. They're fun, accessible, enduring animation classics. While this is a cartoon from Fleischer Studios' successor, Famous Studios, it still tries to maintain the Fleischer style.

The sixteenth of the Paramount Superman series. Dr. Henderson asks the Daily Planet to finance an expedition to explore a series of caves his father disappeared in. Perry White agrees and sends Lois & Clark along to report on the findings of the expedition. Dr. Henderson and Lois head into the underground caverns first, with Clark to follow along later. When the two are captured and taken to an underground city of Hawkmen, it's up to Superman to save them before they are turned into golden statues like Henderson's father decades before. A truly great cartoon and one of the best of the series. The underground caverns are beautifully animated, the Hawkmen are imaginative villains, and the action is super (pardon the pun). Love the ending!

Hmm....

First my layman's hat:

Entertaining enough considering it's age. A nice little story, quite fun as it went along and a funny joke which did actually make me laugh out loud at the end.

It's all quite simple. Some old guy appears. He says let's go find my dad and maybe treasure. They go off to a mysterious cave. They get in trouble. Superman gets them out. Sweet!

Secondly my expert's hat:

Well after a yeah of the most expensive animation of all time [so I hear] I guess it couldn't go on. This item is obviously less extravagant thatn those Dave Fleischer was knocking out in 1942. But the style and the care still seem to be these but after a year with 10 releases I guess the production couldn't keep up with the imagination.

Dave Fleischer had obviously rubbed his gift off on the people here. The man had made literally HUNDREDS of productions by this point and his influence still shows.

Finally my plain balding head:

It is nice to see that old rubbish like this can still entertain. It is a pity they didn't have more time and money to push their imaginations forwards a little more. I bet the comics of it's day weren't in this class.

Oh and it was nice to see Superman before he had a proper outfit, x-ray vision, invulnerability, laser eyes, breath of ice, speed of the puma and stuff.

Yes indeed a classic.

Underground World, The (1943)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The son of an explorer takes Lois and Clark to the Henderson Caves where the son's father was last seen decades ago. Once there the son and Lois are kidnapped by some type of eagle creatures and it's up to Superman to save the day. This film is certainly better than the last few in the series but that's not saying too much. Once again we're treated to some very good animation and some nice creatures, which makes this stand out more than some of the previous ones. What the eagle things are doing is never explained but that's probably for the best as the writing in these shorts hasn't been the greatest. There's some nice action scenes and seeing Superman fight these things was fun.

Create a place that is inhabited by a new race, Hawkmen. Have Lois end up there through some careless actions or just happenstance, and now we have a story. For some reason these guys have a pit of molten rock to throw people into and Lois is going to get this treatment. This brief, but fun offering, is about a series of events that remind one of the Saturday morning serials in movie theaters of the thirties and forties. It is fun to see Superman coming to the rescue just in time. Lois continues to be the object of his affection. With all this man (super man) has to do, he spends an awful lot of his time keeping Lois alive. She should be paying a rescue tax.

"The Underground World" is one of the weirdest, if not the weirdest installments of the Fleischer Brothers' Superman series. It begins with a guy getting the Daily Planet to finance an expedition into some caves that his father discovered and you assume he is returning to try to find the guy. He takes along Clark and Lois and soon things go totally insane--Lois and the Professor are set upon by hawkmen inside the caves! They have heads just like hawks and wings but also humanoid bodies!! Eventually Superman springs into action--saving the pair and sealing up the caves for good.

While the action isn't bad on this one, the whole hawkmen angle is awfully silly. Because of this, it's definitely one of the lesser episodes in the series and one you just might want to skip. If you still want to see it, you can download this and other Superman cartoons for free at archive.org.