ThadBlog

Only fitting that the most hacked-up presentation of classic animation ever has the most irritating opening ever. This was for 1990’s Casper and Friends, the package of Harvey owned Famous Studios cartoons where they refused to clear any music rights, so they re-dubbed all of the shorts with synthesizer music and vocals by people who couldn’t act. (And Jackson Beck, Sid Raymond, and Arnold Stang were all alive and in good health at that point!)

To ease the pain, here’s the opening and closing to Matty’s Funday Funnies from 1959.

Another classic Harvey Eisenberg story, from October 1953. This is a little later than what’s been featured here and on other various blogs. In 1951 he began drawing his characters a lot rounder and a little more conservative. It’s still great stuff, and he still had his flair for elaborate layouts and facial expressions.

Welcome to another edition of Your Saturday Bowl of WTF! Last week’s was a hoot, wasn’t it? Let’s take a look at some of the funnier comments…

“So many Columbia cartoons are the cream of WTF–and this one is the buttermilk of WTF!” - Frank Young
“I felt like imitating the dog after seeing the ending. “I took it, I took it, I took it….”” - Kevin
“I know I’ve seen that before but I would think I would remember everything that is atrocious and utterly retarded.” - Sasha M.
“The title should tip you off this is going to be bad. The joke is “hubba-hubba” sounds like Hubbard? Good lord.” - Jim B.
“Well, that one substantially ups the WTF quotient - the Screen Gems Studio is the gold standard of WTF!” - Paul Etcheverry

This week’s edition is a later Walter Lantz cartoon by Alex Lovy: Mouse Trapped (1959). As anyone can see from watching the last Woody Woodpecker set, the studio’s quality took a nosedive in the 1950s, and it was a few notches above what Hanna-Barbera would do for television. They’re pretty lame for the most part, but they’re still fun time-wasters.

This and all other Lantz product of the period were TV cartoons at heart, with the usual pedestrian gags executed in the same mundane manner, yet the plot here is certainly WTF-y. C’mon, the police shooting at black cats on Friday the 13th! More WTF-ness: what the hell was going on with the dialogue recording on this thing? Hickory and Dickory keep changing voices, so it’s jarring to hear a skirted mouseette speak with Dal McKennon’s dulcet tones. They’d do it again in Witty Kitty (1960), the short they’re credited as stars of but appear for about a full ten seconds. It’s clear the staff thought Doc the cat (voiced by the great Paul Frees) had more star potential.

… by blowing up a small part of it.

From Friz Freleng’s “His Bitter Half” (1950). Animation by Virgil Ross.

For a taste of how great a real Fleischer documentary could be, listen to this week’s episode of Stu’s Show, re-airing from 7pm to 9pm (EST) every night until Tuesday. Bernie Fleischer (son of Lou Fleischer, head of the studio’s music department) and Ray Pointer (the world’s authority on the studio) discuss the studio in-depth. It’s amazing that Warners is going across the world for ‘experts’ in Europe that nobody’s heard of while Ray is in their backyard.

My second favorite feature of Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories is “Li’l Bad Wolf”. Zeke Wolf (the Big Bad Wolf’s name in the comics) has to carry the burden of having a son that is a pig-friendly do-gooder. (Did Li’l Bad Wolf have a first name? Or was Zeke really that hickish and named him “Li’l”?)

It was an idea spawned by Western veteran Chase Craig, who wrote the first story. This is the third one, written and drawn by Carl Buettner, and Li’l’s first encounter with the Practical Pig, from Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories No. 54 (March 1945). These scans are taken from a Gladstone reprint.

The feature varied wildly unlike the Barks stories that proceeded them. When they were good, like this one, they were great. Otherwise they tended to be quite juvenile.