The Peanut Vendor

Oh my, very short and to the point indeed this one is, featuring a monkey by the seaside singing an old-timey ditty about selling peanuts while dancing a merry jig, and that is it! I must say though, that for 1933 the animation as well as the orchestration of the monkey's dance is still quite impressive, and especially to say it's animation of the stop-motion variety, and for what it is it's a sunny little short - but I'm afraid that what will grab and keep anyone's attention will only be, and what makes what might possibly have been a cute short into one that's just a little more unintentionally creepy than they probably intended, is the design and unearthly movements of the monkey. The way his mouth is set in a very clown-like grin, the way the arms are longer than the entire length of the body, the grotesque way he takes off his own tail and dances around with it then puts it back on, and particularly the freaking huge unblinking glass eyes that the gibberish abomination occasionally stops to stare directly at you with! It's like they intentionally took everything that's cute and appealing to the eyes of a child and flipped it! The thing is undeniably nightmarish and if I had seen this as a kid, I'd have been terrified of that thing getting me in my sleep with its dopey snake arms and eating me!! Poor Dave Fleischer and his team must have tried so hard to make something sweet and adorable but they clearly ended up doing the exact opposite.. So yes I'd say that it's still technically impressive as an animation to this day, as is the Spookiness of the damn monkey - good vintage animation short that's still enjoyable, but the vendor must go!!! X

The previous reviewer is confusing Len Lye's stop motion film, also called 'Peanut Vendor, with the Max Fleischer produced Screen Song of the same name. Dave Fleischer was not a director per se but a gag man who contributed to much of the flavor of the Fleischer cartoons. The actual director was listed as the first animation credit - in this case Seymour Kneitel. The second credit was given to the animator who animated the most on the short- in this case Tom Johnson. This particular cartoon involves the rhythmic antics (Fleischer cartoons often animated to the beat of a popular song) of zoo animals set to the famous tune. In the center of the film a live-action Amida asks the audience to 'sing along with the bouncing ball'-a phrase which has entered the common vernacular with few knowing it's origin. The film ends with a Hawaiian guitar reprise of the sung while the zoo animals consume peanuts. One curious element of the film is the phonetic translation of the Spanish lyrics (the song originated from Cuba) during the the 'bouncing ball' sequence. I'm guessing this was to help English speaking patrons sing along easier. The results are hilariously confusing-just try and sing along! All and all a superior example of the Screen Song series at it's height.

The Dave Fleischer and Seymour Kneitel directed Screen Song is actually 10 and 1/2 minutes long. The first 3 and 1/2minutes, and last 1 and 1/4 minutes are nice Fleischer animation of the period depicting animals at the zoo devouring the peanut vendor's wares. In between is 5 and 3/4 minute live action follow-the-bouncing-ball sing along of "The Peanut Vendor" and "I Am a Gay Caballero" featuring the notable Mexicana singer-dancer named Armida Vendrell. A listing for the 2 minute stop-motion animated film pictured above and discussed in other reviews can be found on imdb under "Experimental Animation 1933" . It was directed by Len Lye, and features "The Peanut Vendor" performed by Red Nichols and His Five Pennies.

The other reviewer is entirely right in emphasizing that there has been an extreme mix-up of two different short films that were mistakenly combined into one IMDb page. One is apparently a Screen song by Dave Fleischer, similar to the vintage cartoons of the day; the other is a two-minute independent stop-motion film by filmmaker Len Lye which has received the most attention of the two. I am here to review the Lye short, as I have never actually seen the Fleischer cartoon - I am unaware if the latter is even available online at all. Regardless, the only way to review either one is to post a review on this page or find the IMDb page for 'Experimental Animation 1933', which is another name for the stop-motion film (maybe he never really titled the work?)

Len Lye created "The Peanut Vendor" in the hopes of being able to start a career in puppet animation, which, perhaps fortunately for us, never happened. In today's world of horror films, this two-minute work is more terrifying than amusing, as I'm sure it would've been intended for younger audiences. All the movie consists of is a creepy-looking monkey puppet singing and asking people to buy his peanuts before they're all gone, whilst doing a weird dance with his dismembered tail. It's an odd curiosity, definitely an attempt from Lye to be more of a commercial filmmaker - which never happened, as the man was known primarily for his experimental films. Additionally, the short is also his most known work simply because of its weirdness and how different it is from the rest of his output, and in the end a bit of an oddity in its own way.

This is a very odd sort of experimental film that took me by surprise. That's because it's directed by Dave Fleischer of Popeye and Betty Boop fame. In other words, he and his brother made a lot of cartoons and I had no idea that they ever experimented with stop-motion like you'll see in "The Peanut Vendor". For that reason alone, it might be worth a look. As for the quality of this short film, it's pretty poor--even by 1933 standards. After all, "King Kong" used stop-motion that very same year and was light-years ahead in quality. Willis O'Brien (of "King Kong" fame) had been using and perfecting the craft for years and others, such as Charley Bowers, were also using it very effectively. Here, however, the character moves with little fluidity and the puppet (a white monkey) is very creepy and rather off-putting. It also doesn't do very much--just sing and move about a bit.

I won't rate this one since it is an experiment, but it probably won't appeal to most viewers--just folks who are interested in the history of cartoons and stop-motion.