Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves

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.

The song of Abu Hassan and his 40 thieves is the axis of this charming short adaptation of classic story, great for the humor, fight scenes and for the admirable Wimpy serving in exemplary manner his interest. So, an admirable short film, remembering the emotions of childhood and giving a precious gift of adventures and songs and humor and wise use of cliches.

First of all, I've seen this cartoon twice and what a difference! The first look was on a generic DVD collection of cartoons and a was a cheap buy. This second look was on the "Popeye The Sailor Man 1933-1938 Volume One" DVD set" with a "restored" picture and it looks stunning. The colors are rich and bold, the contrast great and it almost like something made in recent years.

The story pits "Abu Hassan" (Bluto) against Popeye, the Coast Guard man (along with Olive Oyl and Wimpy). The radio announces Hassan and his 40 thieves have just committed some crime so Popeye takes off in his flying ultra-modern-looking boat. (The radio then changes shape, reaches out and snatches Wimpy's hamburger from his mouth!)

As cool as the plane-boat is, however, it conks out and crash lands in the desert. Our good guys look like Moses and Hebrews crossing the long desert. Only Popeye seems to be holding up and then figures out a clever way to get all three of them to a place where they can get food and water, and then go looking for the bandit. By now, he doesn't have much further to go. They are there in that Casablanca-like city

Rather than going into all the details in this special, 17-minute Technicolor cartoon, suffice to say it was not only interesting but very clever (especially Popeye's butchering of words) and a real hoot to see in that "restored" cut of it.

This cartoon features the normal Popeye humor and heroics, all packaged in one beautiful- looking animated short!

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.

The second Popeye colour feature again takes a page from 'The Arabian Nights' as the spinach-eating sailor battles the legendary 'Forty Thieves' (oddly, Ali Baba is absent) who are led by egotistical tough guy Abu Hassan (essentially Bluto in foreign garb, voiced by Gus Wickie). After crashing his flying patrol boat in the desert, Popeye (voiced by Jack Mercer), his gangly girlfriend Olive Oyl (voiced by Mae Questel), and gourmand J. Wellington Wimpy (voiced by Lou Fleischer), end up in a Arabian town that gets thoroughly pillaged by Abu Hassan and his fast moving band of thieves. Finding his friends abducted, Popeye follows the brigands to their magical cave and before you can say "Open Sesame" is battling with two-score Arabesque villains to the rousing tunes of John Phillip Sousa. Needless to say that when things look the bleakest, out comes the can of spinach. The film is fun, albeit a bit dated, and culture-sensitive types will find a pleasing amount of Arab stereotyping over which to wax indignant. The animation is superb and Fleischer Studios Tabletop 3D background technique is on display, especially in the opening desert scenes and in the thieves' cave. The film is all you would expect from a Popeye feature, no more, but no less. In addition to the comic action sequences, there are lots of background jokes to watch for (I liked the 'Ali Cat Café'). The voice talent is great, especially Mercer's constantly muttering, semi-inarticulate sailor. Popeye is a one-of-a-kind character and, IMO, the Fleisher shorts and features made in the first half of the last century are 'his best work', so enjoy.