ReFrederator Blog

Whoa! You’ve heard of virtuosos attacking this or that piece of music with enthusiasm? In today’s cartoon, “Bars and Stripes,” the instruments attack back; after sprouting little arms and legs, they run around lobbing musical notes like hand grenades! Their opponent in this epic battle is Krazy Kat, who, at this point in his movie career, bears zippo resemblance to his comic strip namesake (well, he still has that odd shaped ribbon on the back of his neck, but that’s about it.)

Manny Gould and Ben Harrison directed this opus for the Charles Mintz studios back in 1931. About the time the piano starts regurgitating huge melodic missiles at our protagonist, you’ll be deciding that early talkie cartoons are A: charmingly uninhibited, displaying wild imagination, unbridled by traditional concepts of narrative, or B: deeply disturbing, exhibiting the fevered hallucinations of a borderline psychotic. Maybe a little of both.

Harmonize with us again tomorrow as ReFrederator marches to a different drummer during “Musical Moments Week.”

Dave Kirwan