The past few days (when I haven't had the chance for movies) I viewed a pair of old 1929 cartoons made for Disney by legendary animator Ub Iwerks: The Skeleton Dance and The Haunted House. The two are below, in different fonts. SD will be first, then Haunted House:
Ub Iwerks is quite a name; so is his birth name: Ubbe Ert Iwwerks.
What a weekend... and not in a good way. It was not all bad but there were too many bad things so I'd rather forget about it. That includes the computer issues I had earlier today and I think are fixed (after a few hours of work) yet that is uncertain. If I peace out for the next few days-or heck, if it happens at any point in the future-you will know why.
Anyhow, at least I did have time to revisit this classic cartoon, and why not include cartoons in my annual Halloween season list? Sometime in October I'll talk about Skeleton Frolic, which was also directed by Ub Iwerks and was in essence an expanded color remake of this, the first of the Silly Symphonies done by Disney. In only 5 minutes, you can almost feel the chill of an autumn night (such as in Illinois, where I grew up) as various iconography connected to the Halloween season-black cats, spiders, owls, etc.-are seen in a cemetery graveyard, and a quartet of skeletons come out of the ground to dance and engage in creative sight gags as a jaunty tune plays in the background.
The animation and music are nice, so this is a short that is still effective 90 years later. In hindsight, I wish I would have viewed this and Skeleton Frolic around this time of year in autumns past as it sets the proper mood for the spooky season, and how can I not laugh at a skeleton using its own skull as a projectile, or another's backbone being used as a xylophone?
That Al Jolson reference has aged rather badly, I'll say...
I had little time last night and today so I could only squeeze in another Ub Iwerks cartoon but that is OK as it's in essence a remake of Iwerks' Skeleton Dance, recently discussed by me. This time, Micky Mouse is walking on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere when suddenly there are hurricane force winds so he seeks shelter in the haunted house, where skeletons force him to play his organ... er, I mean they force him to play a tune on an organ and some accompany him as a jaunty tune is played and there is more skeleton dancing.
As in the previous cartoon, various creatures tied into the spooky season (bats, spiders, etc.) appear and set the mood. I do prefer Dance but this is still an amusing and worthwhile cartoon. Note that I am not penalizing this for a brief gag which people wouldn't know unless they were familiar with Al Jolson. That alone wouldn't be controversial... except that it referenced Jolson in blackface. Times were different back then, yet it's no big deal as I've viewed entire musical numbers in blackface, which were much more awkward than this brief moment.
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