A Sleepless Night

This is a silent film, though I assume that in it's original form there was a soundtrack and/or sound effects, as silent films were definitely things of the past by 1940. This combined with the fact that a previous stop-motion short covered much of the same territory (and did it better) make this one you can skip.

The film consists of the daily routine of the same mice from WILD OYSTERS, but this time there is no cat and the mice only torture the dog a bit. I really wish they'd done more of this sadistic "Itchy and Scratchy" type humor, as it was funny. Sadly, most of the film is spent watching the mice do very dull things--going to bed, cleaning up, etc.. While you appreciate the care that Charley Bowers put into making this film, you can't help but think that he'd seen better days. As for me, I much prefer his earlier films where he was the star. The stop-motion only films just don't have the belly-laughs of the other films.

In "A Sleepless Night", Charley Bowers created the puppet-animation mouse characters that he also used in the very enjoyable feature "Wild Oysters". This feature is not as wildly creative as the later one, but it's still pretty good. Part of the film footage seems to be lost, as well as the audio, which makes it a little harder to evaluate, although it is still not difficult to follow the action.

The mouse family's little home inside the wall has the same endearing detail as it had in the original feature. The action here is not quite as entertaining, but it still does make good use of the imaginative furnishings in the settings.

Bowers's best features set a very high standard, and so it is probably unfair to expect everything he does to come up to the same level. In itself, "A Sleepless Night" is certainly good enough to be worth watching.

A Sleepless Night (1940)

*** (out of 4)

This puppet animated film from Charley Bowers is pretty darn good. It basically involves a dog being unable to sleep and a family a mice living inside the wall having the same issue. I've read different things about this short including some say that it is missing footage and others saying that it's complete but wasn't totally finished. Whatever the case is the movie is actually quite delightful and it's certainly worth watching. I really loved the look of the dog and thought it was rather hypnotic watching him do his thing. The mice are given rather silly things to do but at the same time I just thought the animation was so good and there were so many great details that I couldn't help but enjoy what I was watching.