Posts Tagged 'ghost'

Let’s go back to the early days, for a really great Bimbo short.

First of all, I think it’s worth noting that the whole “raiding the chicken house” trope is inextricably tied up with blackface minstrelsy.  Of course, Bimbo being a canine, he comes at it from his own angle (not unlike Mr. Fox), but in 1930 the racist minstrel tradition would have been fresh in the minds of audiences.

On the other hand, the bit where Bimbo and the chicken switch heads and clothing is pure  Fleischer craziness, with their usual touch of the uncanny (particularly when the chicken has Bimbo’s head but still makes chicken noises).  Even when his head’s on the right body, though, Bimbo never speaks in this cartoon, which isn’t really the norm for him.  It works here, though, putting the emphasis entirely on the song.

And what a song it is! In a cartoon this fun, made by Jewish animators no less, you can’t really take the hellfire-and-damnation lyrics seriously.  In fact the song has the same sort of ironic winking quality as Fats Waller’s “Devil to Pay.”  It seems to be largely a vehicle to subject to Bimbo to this round of surreal frights and tortures.  And honestly I’m not even sure I can parse all the levels of intersecting cultural implications at play when, amid all the Christian ghosts condemning Bimbo for stealing food, a stereotypically Jewish ghost shrugs and says, “You needed it.”

As usual in these sorts of cartoons, the weirdness escalates until it reaches a frenzy.  There’s a singing scythe, a scatting chicken, booty-dancing ghosts, and a trio of creatures I can only describe as angry crotches.  As Bimbo runs away at the end, the faces of the monsters who taunt him take on a surprising level of grotesque detail, reminiscent of the work of Basil Wolverton (who must surely have been watching these sorts of cartoons in his formative years as an artist).

I think I’ve previously discussed the tendency of Fleischer cartoons not to have real endings in any narrative sense.  For what it’s worth, this one is an exception.  The ghosts and demons come to drag Bimbo to hell, and that’s just what they do.

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.