Red Hot Mamma

After a misleadingly innocuous opening this cartoon quickly goes bizarre, and I do mean bizarre. Our plucky heroine Betty Boop makes like Odysseus, visits the Underworld and returns to tell the tale. All the elements of a great Pre-Code Fleischer cartoon are here, from the swinging jazz score and oddball gags to those delightfully gratuitous silhouette images of Betty in her nightgown, striding past the hell-fire. I love the jaunty song she sings, the design of the demons, and the visual pun when Betty turns a "cold shoulder" to Satan himself. Some of these Betty Boop cartoons -- the best ones, I mean -- are so strange they inspire not amusement, exactly, but something closer to queasiness, only it's a pleasant kind of queasiness. Which makes no sense, but neither does Red Hot Mamma. Personally I love the Fleischer output from this period, and find more film-making skill, panache, and sheer rampant imagination in these 7-minute epics than I find in most of D. W. Griffith's features. Plus, Betty is way cuter than Carol Dempster.

Don't let the opening fool you. The opening suggests that 'Red Hot Mamma' was going to be a quite tame and safe cartoon, especially for a pre-Code cartoon. Whereas a number of pre-Code Betty Boop cartoons were wonderfully strange, very risqué and imaginatively surreal.

This opening however is deceptive. 'Red Hot Mamma' is a long way from being tame and playing it safe. When it comes to Betty Boop, it is one of the most imaginative and daring, and one of the most classic examples of the surreal and the risqué. Of the 1934 batch of Betty Boop cartoons, it is one of the best, one where you just marvel at the content and how much it gets away with, and of the whole Betty Boop series.

As ever in a Betty Boop cartoon, the animation is still incredibly good, the detail is immaculate, there are the typical imaginative moments and everything is beautifully drawn. The Hell sequence is the finest example. There is a return to the more jazzy style of music, and it is a style that meshes brilliantly with the action and is a music score that is very much memorable in its own right.

Regarding the content, the jokes and humour are one of the series' most risqué and creative, plus they are funny and none less than that, and the surreal nature is so imaginatively done and captivating to watch. The plot structurally may be thin and typical and may not make sense, but that is not something to be expected here.

Betty Boop, one of Fleischer's most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. That charm, sensuality and adorable factor is not lost anywhere here. The other characters also add a good deal.

Overall, wonderful stuff and up there with Betty Boop's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

I found this cartoon on YouTube and watched it because it said it had been banned. Now whether it really was banned, I have no idea and IMDB makes no mention of this. I would not be too surprised if it had been, as the film came out just before the toughened Production Code was adopted by Hollywood, as it does glamorize Hell...something not explicitely banned by the Code but not exactly in the spirit of it either!

The story begins with Betty sleeping. However, the weather changes and the house is freezing, so she builds a huge fire in the fireplace....and the house becomes like a furnace. Not surprisingly, she now dreams she's in Hell and it's an amazingly nice place all things considered.

As usual, the Fleischer Brothers' animation is top notch even if it is in black & white. As for the story, it's diverting and strange but not among Betty's best. Worth seeing, however, just for the novelty of the story!

This cartoon is a perfect example of the creativity and inventiveness that was possible prior to the advent of the Hays Office and The Code that tamed Betty Boop and made many of the subsequent shorts so much more dull and lifeless. The irony is that Will Hays was a politician who was involved in the Harding administration, which found no rival for corruption until the Nixon administration. Mr. Hays was the last person to lecture anyone on behavior! The details of this cartoon would never have found acceptance under Hays or The Code, so I'm glad it was made and released before all the nonsense went into effect. Wonderful short. In print and available. Well worth watching. Most highly recommended.

Red Hot Mamma (1934)

*** (out of 4)

Highly entertaining short has Betty Boop growing cold so she starts a fire and decides to sleep by it. This turns the heat way up and before she knows it Betty is in Hell. This is a devilish little Pre-code short from Paramount that has some terrific animation as well as a creative streak that makes for a lot of fun. There's no question that the entire Hell sequence is the highlight and there are some very creative jokes throughout. One such thing is when we see freshmen devils getting their horns as well as another section where the Devil goes full blast by turning the heat way up to get to Betty. If you're a fan of the series then this one here certainly ranks as one of the better ones.