I saw this famed 1932 cartoon, which I've helpfully linked:
Or: Thank goodness I can always watch something short like a cartoon if I'm feeling not so hot one day. That was me a few nights ago... not for its entirety but for a bit my disposition was not great. As this cartoon is known in some circles solely due to its weirdness (in fact, long ago I once saw on another website a discussion of this which morphed into talk of the rotoscoping process used to create the images on screen) it is worthy of discussion.
In only 8 minutes, this Max Fleischer cartoon presents quite a plot, but even before that you briefly see live action footage of Cab Calloway and his band perform. After that, we see Betty Boop and her boyfriend Bimbo-a cartoon pup-run away because the former is upset over the way her parents treat her. Once the moon rises in the night sky, things become spooky so they hide in a cave. Big mistake... the expected spooky creatures are shown: ghosts, skeleton, a witch, goblins, etc. There's also a bipedal singing walrus, which is more peculiar than scary yet that is OK as it's Calloway seeing his hit song Minnie the Moocher, which should be familiar if you saw him do it almost half a century later in The Blues Brothers. The live action bit demonstrates that him in walrus form does the same gesticulating and movement as he performs. This has weird moments like that throughout.
Besides the wild story there is lovely animation, various gags and the presence of several jazz songs from the period. While this may be best after several “jazz cigarettes”, the music is a nice artifact from 90 years ago & overall it was an 8 minute blast.
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