The really early sound Fleischer shorts are pretty delightful, with different delightful things in each era, progressively. The silents are pretty wonderful as well.
First, some brief Thunderbean news!
We still have the special set vault open for a few more days at the Thunderbean shop – per a few people’s request – but will be wrapping it back up soon. All the older Halloweens sets are there along with all the other stuff. Thanks to everyone for supporting the projects- especially the new sets- it’s been super helpful for sending out all the pre-orders we’ve had for Halloween and Rainbow 2.
Speaking of that, we’re working on sending the last batch of Rainbow 2 pre-orders as well as the Spooky Cartoony Halloween set (we’ve sent all the domestic orders and are working on the handful left of ones going out of the country and new orders from last week). After we have these out, it’s full blast ahead on a few more special sets as well as Cartoons for Victory, the long-in-progress update to the DVD. It’s really a combination of the films on Cartoons for Victory and More Cartoons for Victory since the Snafus have their own Blu-ray that includes a good amount of films from both of those DVD sets.
On the broadcast side of things, I’m having a great time seeing the new Animation Antiques show on MeTV, and happy to have some of the Thunderbean Library as part of it. There are three titles from Thunderbean this coming week: Cubby’s Stratosphere Flight, In the Bag (Van Beuren’s Tom and Jerry) and the 1940s Noveltoon Stupidstitious Cat. Knowing I’m watching those films along with perhaps thousands of other people is such a cool thing. You can see the schedule weekly on MeTV’s website here.
Now – onto our Halloween toon: Mysterious Mose (1930)
Grim Natwick’s animation is beloved among the most diehard of animation fans for its cleverness and bizarre flights of fancy. I find every short from this period to be really enjoyable.
It’s a scary night, and poor Betty is really going through the wringer in her fear, hunkering down in her bed as her nightgown seems to want to leave, in scenes largely animation by Willard Bowski early in his career. After singing the ‘Mysterious Mose’ song (in some great scenes largely animation by Grim) her fears seem pretty unfounded since Bimbo, as Mysterious Mose, really isn’t all that scary, just sort of bizarre. Clearly Betty somehow stops being scared of him as he attempts to woo her. He ends up seemingly scared by the bizarre happenings that he seems to have initiated (with quite a few scenes animated by Ted Sears). Then, it turns out that Bimbo (as Mose) ain’t really Bimbo after all, or was he somehow transformed into an exploding animatronic? We’ll never know.
Of course, this cartoons doesn’t have much of a story beyond that, but is full of really entertaining animation. I always watch my old print of this around Halloween, in worse shape than the print scanned here.
If you want to see a beautifully restored version of the short and don’t have the set yet, it’s on the Fleischer’s Greatest Hits Blu-ray released earlier this year.
Have a good week everyone!
