ReFrederator Blog

ReFrederator is up to it’s old tricks — and treats — with today’s 1954 cartoon “Fright to the Finish.” Popeye tries to celebrate a peaceful, Bluto-free Halloween with Olive Oyl, but STRANGE things are happenin’! Turns out the big hairy jerk is just off camera, pulling some mean spirited, seasonal pranks. Of course, the sailor man eventually sets everything straight — what IS weird, is Popeye’s resolution of the situation without the application of any spinach. A couple of years later in another cartoon, “I Don’t Scare,” the same trio were squabbling over Friday the 13th, and again our squint-eyed hero came out on top without eating his vegetable of choice. Since spinach appears to be the lucky charm in most day-to-day altercations, Popeye may feel it oddly inappropriate as a weapon against mindless superstitions. You tell me!

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Dave Kirwan

ReFrederator kicks off a week of creepy classics with “The Cuckoo Murder Case” wherein Flip the Frog and his independently minded shadow play detective, investigating a haunted house. SPOILER! The jolly frolics take a decidedly dark turn when the murderer turns out to be no less than the Angel of Death himself, who, at this point in his career, was making relatively few cartoon appearances.

There are probably still a few people left on the planet who realize the title of this 1930 Ub Iwerks release is a vague-ish parody of the then ridiculously popular Philo Vance books/movies (they all had names like “The BLANK Murder Case” except BLANK was always a different six lettered word). Of course, today, the bigger mystery is “who the hell is Philo Vance?”

Very Scary Week gets even weirder — just wait!

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Dave Kirwan

We wrap up Favorite Ape-isode Week with “A Day at the Zoo,” vintage Merrie Melody stuff from 1939. No plot. Just lots of miscellaneous jokes about animals, and when I say ‘miscellaneous’ I mean ‘dumb, dumb, DUMB, so dumb you’ll be vigorously shaking your head AFTER you laugh out loud, and start to choke on that doughnut.’ This is a Tex Avery film, so, not surprisingly, (A) many of the gags challenge even the cartoon laws of physics and (B) everything ends up with someone being eaten alive (in this case, Egghead.)

ReFrederator is all Halloweenish next week. Check us out.

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Dave Kirwan

Oooooooo! Who’s that buggy eyed fella staring agape at the escaped ape?

Well, actually — it’s Superman!

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Okay, the deal here is Bosko teaching a gorilla how to chew gum in “Congo Jazz,” which doesn’t exactly sound like ‘Great Moments in Cinema’, but actually it’s kinda cute — like most of today’s film. Yes, yes, yes — Bosko is, in fact, a racist caricature of a black man, and he’s drawn in a style not a whole lot different than all the cartoon critters he meets in the cartoon jungle. But if you choose to make allowances for the cultural climate in which Bosko was designed, you’ll discover he exhibits scant stereotypical behavior. He does have that 1930’s thing for turning animals into musical instruments but, hey, most of the fauna do that to themselves already.

We’re lookin’ at one of the very first Looney Tunes — and it’s lookin’ back, sayin’ “Ha-Cha!”

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Dave Kirwan

“My Friend the Monkey” has Betty Boop trying to buy an organ grinder’s livelyhood, his trained monkey, for two dollars. Two dollars! And I’m here ta-tellya, she just isn’t gonna take no for an answer. Pretty hard bargain. And exactly what her goal is might be a little murky. La Boop’s household is already way over the recommended daily allotment of ‘cute’ what with Pudgy the Pup prancing about. I guess the theory is in a Max Fleischer cartoon, you can’t get too much adorableness.

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Dave Kirwan

Just pondering Felix the Cat’s mystical ability to reconfigure his basic molecular structure into that of any object at will. I mean, sure, we take for granted he can mutate into — what ?— a satchel, a hat rack, a cannonball. And, of course, with the slightest provocation, his tail instantly simulates punctuation symbols (question marks, exclamation points, etc.)

But in “Felix Doubles for Darwin” the feline outdoes himself. Not only does transform his entirety into block letters — F-E-L-I-X, which, you know, sorta makes sense on an odd, literal minded level — but at one point he transmogrifies into morse code. Morse freakin’ code! That’s just plain creepy.

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Dave Kirwan

ReFrederator is all about Baboons, Chimpanzees, Gorillas and such during our Favorite Ape-isode Week. Today Felix the Cat tackles the weighty subject of evolution in a film that predates the Scopes Monkey Trial by a year, “Felix Doubles for Darwin.”

Do we share a common ancestry with the apes? Well, since this is a 1920’s cartoon, the answer is self-evident: judging by how critters are drawn, EVERYTHING is pretty much related. Cats, dogs, mice, monkeys, bugs and fish all look a lot alike to me — inky blots with white muzzles and black jellybean noses. Of course, judging by how the Pat Sullivan Studio thinks the Trans-Atlantic Cable works, I’m not sure I’d take their word on things scientific.

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Dave Kirwan

As a small child living on a daily diet of after-school cartoons (and Jets, the Cereal Made Just for Boys) I wasn’t bothered much by Popeye’s chronic job hopping. Window Washer? Sure! Cowboy? Why not? Private Eye? Sounds fun! But today’s film, “I’m in the Army Now” always threw me. I mean, he’s Popeye the SAILOR man — and here he wants to be a soldier? Very traumatizing. My tiny, unformed brain recognized the whole affair as profoundly… unnatural.

Turns out it was totally natural for the Max Fleischer Studio to grab any premise, no matter how odd, if it afforded the opportunity for them to make a cheater — a ‘new’ film that had great hunks of old footage Gorilla Glued into the middle. We see scenes from one of Popeye’s earliest efforts (”Blow Me Down”) and one of his very best (”King of the Mardi Gras”) among other sundry clips.

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Okay. Alright. Download today’s cartoon. Watch it. Think about it. Then email me. AND TELL ME WHAT THE HECK IT’S SUPPOSED TO MEAN! Damned if I know!

From 1933, we see Sentinel Louey in “A Dizzy Day,” and it appears to be a collaboration between RKO Van Beuren Studios and New Yorker cartoonist Otto Soglow. The same alliance resulted in some the Little King cartoons — seems like they were trying to cook up a brand new character here. A cheerful little sentry goes off on a series of jolly little adventures THAT MAKE NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. A plot that vanishes before our very eyes, odd gags with no apparent punchline, role reversals that lead… nowhere — not so much a dizzy day as a dada day. And all of this is rendered in that minimalist French curve style Mr. Soglow made famous back when Art Deco was considered cutting edge. Weirdness —big [Read more…]