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The Snowman is bizarre to be brief. It starts out like any routine 1930s cartoon, with a cheerful little boy and his animal friends going through winter-related gags and building a cute little snowman. Then things get strange once said snowman comes to life, grows fangs, and starts ravaging the country side like Frankenstein's monster.

This nightmarish turn makes it feel as though this were a parody of 30s cartoons rather than the real deal. The animation is well-rendered and inventive, and the humor is deliciously dark.

A must-see for animation geeks. And for fans of 1930s cinema in general, I may add.

Upon first viewing of The Snow Man, I found it a well-made and animation cartoon with superb music and a memorable titular character, but also a little uncompelling and mean-spirited with a bland first three minutes. Re-watching The Snow Man(this time in colour), while it wasn't great, and a couple of the same criticisms still stand, it fared better on re-watch.

The Snow Man's best components are the animation and music. The animation is very crisp, vibrant and atmospheric with lovely backgrounds. And while The Snow Man looks very good in black and white, it looks even better in colour and has much more atmosphere. Some parts like when the snowman is introduced are also very inventively animated, especially with how the snowman comes to life. The music, as ever with the consistently great Carl Stalling, is also brilliant, the energy it has the entire time is non-stop, the way it's orchestrated is lush, rich and haunting, and a suspenseful but characterful atmosphere is created. There are some nice and inventive sight gags, namely the snowman's Jimmy Durante impression, personally also really appreciated how deliciously dark some of the humour was. The animals are sweetly endearing, the Eskimo is likable and the snowman makes for an unsettling but also fun(mostly the former though, as a kid he was nightmare-inducing) impression, his introduction being the highlight. The ending is predictable, but a nice way to end, the snowman's defeat being another inventive bit of animation.

One can forgive that the story is as thin as ice and practically non-existent(most cartoons were at this time), but if the cartoon was paced well and if there was some more charm that might have been forgivable. Unfortunately for me, the cartoon did drag in the bland and overly-cutesy first three minutes(before picking up significantly once the snowman is introduced), and the cartoon is still lacking in charm and heart. Instead the cartoon still feels a little too creepy and mean-spirited(though not as badly as it did on first viewing as the humour came over stronger), and the juxtaposition from cute to creepy while unexpected also seemed a little clumsy and felt like a moment of the cartoon not knowing what to do with itself.

To conclude, well-made and animated, and much better on re-watch thanks to the humour and seeing it in colour, but still didn't blow me away. Frosty the Snowman it certainly isn't. 7/10 Bethany Cox