I rate this film at 10 because of the singing cows. The Paramount Shorts were released by U.M&M. and N.T.A. in the 1950's. In the 1960's they were licensed to Blackhawk Films which offered 16mm prints to the home market. This included all sorts of various series put out by the Short Subject Unit at Paramount. I don't remember if the Little Lulu, Popeye & Betty Boop cartoons were offered at that time or not. Paramount had several other lesser known series which, over the years, have become practically forgotten. These include Speaking of Animals, Popular Science and Unusual Occupations. The rights to these last three series were purchased by some outfit doing business as Shield's Pictures. They put out a DVD on the website several years ago, declaring that "only 1000 copies are available" and "already they are being sold on Amazon for over $100.00." I have never seen one available on Amazon at all and judging by the fact that Shields Pictures is still offering copies for $20.00 after 5 years, it would seem that there isn't much market for any of these shows... EXCEPT for the herd of cows singing Cow Cow Boogie. It has been put up on YouTube and various other places time and again by various people, but Shield's Pictures is always right there demanding that it come down. This particular sequence has a real cult following and there are many fans who would love to watch it, however there is little chance of doing so unless you can locate a copy of the actual 16mm film that was sold in the past. They are out there and although it took me 10 years of searching to lay my hands on it, I finally found one on E-Bay. This was the only one of this series that I found of interest...the talking animal routine may have been hilarious in the 1940's, but a little bit of it goes a long ways and too much tends to cloy. As a result, I venture to guess that Shield's Pictures will be spending much more time and effort making sure that no one sees the Cows singing Cow Cow Boogie than they will marketing it - which is sad. However, once it turns 70 years of age, around 2015, it will probably fall into the Public Domain and Shields will no longer be able to hush those cows up...that is, if anyone is still listening by then.
