Have You Got Any Castles?

Have You Got Any Castles? (1938)

*** (out of 4)

Extremely entertaining Merrie Melodies short has a familiar plot but it's taken to the limit here. The animated film pretty much takes place on a book shelf as various forms of literature comes to life. We get various stories including Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The House of Seven "Gables", So Big, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Little Women, The Thin Man, The Good Earth and countless others. The animation is quite good throughout this short with a lot of great attention to various details. There are a few Hollywood celebs who make appearances here including W.C. Fields and a funny spoof with Clark Gable. Mel Blanc does fine work in the form of several of the characters but we'd come to expect nothing less. What really makes this film stand apart from countless others that tried the same story is the actual music, which is incredibly entertaining. Carl W. Stalling and Milt Franklyn hit all the right notes and really keep the action moving. Everything mixed together makes this one of the better ways to tell this familiar stories so fans of animation or any of the books mentioned should have a grand time.

I absolutely love this cartoon. It is engaging, it is colourful and it is extremely clever. It is enormous fun spotting all the literary references such as Heidi (who does sing like Cab Calloway), The Three Musketeers and The Thin Man, references to Frankenstein, Fu Manchu, Mr Hyde and Phantom of the Opera(the beginning was hilarious, it isn't everyday when you see monsters such as Fu Manchu dancing to Gossec's Gavotte) and the caricatures of Charles Laughton, William Powell, Greta Garbo and Paul Muni. The animation is spotless, the music is fabulous and the voice work is top notch. The gags and puns come fast and the cartoon is loaded to the brim with them. Who cares whether it is plot less, it is amazing to look at, it is entertaining and very clever. 10/10 Bethany Cox

The "town crier" inside a warm house on a snowy winter night dazzles us with his vocabulary, introducing us to various literature characters who come to life in this home's big library.

Most of the characters were people seen on screen in the mid '30s, actors like Paul Muni (The Story of Louis Pasteur) or Williams Powell (Nick Charles of The Thin Man fame) or, well.....there are so many I'm not going to list them all. It starts with four horror stories: Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein and runs the game to Topper, the Invisible Man, The Good Earth, The 39 Steps, on and on and on. We see dancers and singers like Bill Robinson and Cab Calloway represent some of the titles.

With all the jokes and sight gags poured into this, you get a lot of silly, stupid, clever and funny, some of it depending on how familiar you are with the characters, and how much you enjoy puns.

My personal opinion would involve three "c words" - clever, cute and colorful. Having seen almost all of those classic films, I thought this was a lot of fun to watch.

Before this short begins, there is a little written prologue about the racist nature of some of the humor in the film--as a sort of warning. I appreciate this instead of just censoring or hiding the film, as it IS a part of our history (for good or bad).

The color in this film is quite nice--vivid and better than the average 30s cartoon. What follows are a long series of mostly lame jokes where books come to life--with characters coming off the pages. The Asian and Black characters are a bit overdone (especially with the large-lipped Black cartoon characters), though compared to a lot of the images of Blacks in films of the time, this is relatively benign. I am not excusing it--but it could have been and often was a lot worse! Unfortunately, despite a clever idea and nice animation, I must also admit that most of the jokes weren't that funny and there was too much singing. On the plus side, however, there were lots of references to famous Hollywood films and actors, so lovers of classic Hollywood will probably enjoy this more than the average viewer. Not great but compared to the average cartoon of the 1930s, this is actually a bit better than average. Cartoons of the 40s would evolve for the better--with far less singing, better laughs and an edge--all which are problems with "Have You Got Any Castles?".

A rather annoying cuckoo clock summons us all to the town crier who rather monotonically introduces us to figures from fictional history. Amongst them are "Fu Manchu", "Frankenstein" and "Dr. Jekyll" - but they are not so menacing after all as they indulge in something akin to the dance of the "Sugar Plum Fairy". That's the start of our ensuing jolly and quite innovative trawl through a library of books that gives the animators an excuse to use the titles as some creative inspiration for the drawings and for the musicians to imaginatively score along to, too. I especially liked "Whistler's Mother", "Bulldog Drummin" and that has to be Charles Laughton on the front of "Mutiny on the Bounty"... Do we get to castles? Well not really - but that doesn't seem to matter as the snake charmers and even Henry VIII get in on the act. Who knew little boy actually blew!!?