Fleischer Friday: Betty Boop’s Halloween Party

I was hoping to have a whole week of exciting Halloween-related content, but sadly I was too busy doing classwork, carving pumpkins, and putting together my McCabe costume to write any of it.  Maybe I’ll have a week of spooky stuff at Christmas time, just to be different.  Anyway, it wasn’t hard to choose which cartoon we should watch today.

As pre-code Boop goes, this one is actually pretty lackluster.  The song isn’t very memorable and has nothing to do with the holiday, and I really feel like there could be more monsters.  I mean, the scarecrow and the ghosts are great, but this is the early ’30s.  Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, and Mr. Hyde had all just exploded into cinematic consciousness, but there’s none of that stuff here (to be fair, Mr. Hyde makes an appearance in another Boop cartoon, which we’ll save for another day).

What I do like about this cartoon is that the spooky Halloween stuff is all friendly.  The scarecrow decorates for the party, and the strange ghost-creatures serve as a line of defense against the party crashing gorilla.  I don’t regard the gorilla as a particularly “Halloween” sort of antagonist, since everyone in Betty’s world is some sort of anthopomorphic animal anyway.  He does make a good villain, though, and I love the bit when he gives the owl two black eyes.

I’m also fond of Betty’s Goldberg-esque Jack O’Lantern process.  I’m only sad we didn’t get to see who’s responsible for the nose and mouth.  The Witch Paint and Cat Paint are also fun.  I find myself wishing that decorating for a party was more like this.

My favorite bit of all, though, is the revelation about the black cat at the very end.  I won’t spoil it, in case anyone is reading before watching, but the important thing is that this is one of the only Boop cartoons that has an actual surprise in it that’s worth a spoiler warning, if you see what I mean.  Even when you’re having fun, you usually know exactly what to expect, but that took me by surprise the first time.