Countdown to Halloween: Felix the Ghost Breaker (1923)

Felix the Ghost-Breaker (1923)
A Pat Sullivan Comic
Dir.: Otto Messmer
TC4P Rating: 6/9

Unlike many people of a similar age to me (that age being now, incredibly to me for a variety of reasons, 56), I do not have early childhood memories, outside of toys and clocks, of Felix the Cat. A great many of my age were introduced (it seems) to the character primarily from the television cartoon series from the late '50s and early '60s (specifically, 1958-1961) in which Felix battled The Professor and other baddies in two-part cliffhanger episodes. 

The giveaway for me when people talk about Felix is when they mention either his voice (done by Jack Mercer, previously of Popeye fame), his theme song ("Felix the Cat/The wonderful, wonderful cat...") or how much they loved his Magic Bag of Tricks. I immediately know they are talking about the television series and not the original run of silent cartoons from Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan, wherein the Cat originally began his tremendous popularity. It's not that I feel they are "posers" or something along those lines; such thoughts are squarely idiotic. I don't care when you started liking what you purport to like; just take a little time to learn something about the history of whatever it is you like and we will be fine. Such slights of knowledge were more excusable in the pre-internet days, where you either had to run into a stray article in the newspaper or hike it to the local library and do some research to learn anything. Today, any cellphone gives you access to nearly any subject in mere seconds.

As a child growing up in Alaska throughout the late '60s and through the '70s, I am certainly too young to have watched the series on its initial broadcast, but I also do not recall ever seeing the Felix television series in reruns (at least, not until I was much older and had cable television). If it did run on my local channels at some point, it would have to be due to an astounding slip of my television vigilance, because I watched nearly anything I could (on all four available channels, plus some stray UHF) that lied within the purview of my interests. Animation being one of those interests at the very tippy-top of that list, I could not only practically sniff out cartoons immediately upon turning on the TV set, but even had entire TV guides nearly memorized the day they came out. Unfortunately, while I was aware of Felix as a cultural icon pretty early in my youth – I certainly had friends with dolls, clocks and puzzles emblazoned with his smiling image – it wasn't until my mid-teens that I caught a collection of early silent cartoons on PBS where I finally got to see what all the hubbub was about concerning Felix the Cat.

I do not know if Felix the Ghost Breaker was one of those first shorts that I viewed; honestly, there wereonly a couple of Felix films inside a wide mix of other silent shorts, and the only one that I truly remember by title is Winsor McCay's original Gertie the Dinosaur. But since Felix the Ghost Breaker's plot falls neatly into the realm of horror-related material in time for the Halloween season, it is the short with which I am kicking off my long-delayed return to active cartoon blogging after a nearly 3-year break. Felix the Cat just celebrated his 100 anniversary as a cultural icon last November, and while I am a tad late in celebrating him myself, he seemed the perfect subject for this very moment.

The short was produced for the second batch of Felix silents (1922-1925), which were produced by Margaret J. Winkler. She was a key figure in silent animation history, aiding not just the rise of Felix to superstardom status, but also helping to forge the early careers of the Fleischer Brothers and Walt Disney. While Felix was initially created in 1919 and his early films distributed by Paramount Pictures, Pat Sullivan signed a deal with Winkler in 1922, bringing animator/director Otto Messmer with him. (There has long been a dispute over who the real creator of Felix is: Messmer or Sullivan. Most animation historians of any sort of decent repute tend to side with Messmer. I have no reputation, though I am far from decent, so I will not weigh in with my opinion, as I really don't have enough information.)

Felix the Ghost Breaker is actually fairly Felix light as far as his true involvement in the story goes. Though he is a constant presence throughout the picture, Felix mostly stands about and acts shocked at things for much of the cartoon, and really only springs to action in the final third. The true star of the picture is a spookily obnoxious "ghost" who first haunts a cemetery, then a barn, and then finally a house in short order within the story. Now, there is a big problem regarding the ghostly hijinks in this short, but we will get down to discussing that issue later in this piece. First, let's rip through the plotline bit by bit...

At the outset of the story, it is a dark but not at all stormy night. Felix, wandering alone through the evening, decides to take refuge inside a cemetery for a good night's sleep. Felix walks up to a comfortable looking grave, and with the help of a handy word balloon straight out of a comic strip, informs we viewers, irony fully intact, "That's what I call an ideal resting place!" He curls up beneath a tombstone and falls fast asleep. However, a ghost has a different idea and decides to start taunting our hero cat. First, he employs an unearthly (I presume, since the film is silent) "Oooh"-ing sound. The sound awakens the cat, who then attempts to regain his snooze, but the sound emits from the tombstone again and again.

With the third iteration of the sound, a pair of white-clad hands spring from around the tombstone, and Felix is up and on the alert. Shaking his head and breaking the fourth wall again, he tells us, "I must have been dreaming!" He again lies back down, but the "Oooh"-ing sound continues, and he pops up again, this time seeing a large hand extend straight upward from the top of the grave marker. He again tells us, "I must have been dreaming!" but before he can even consider lying down again, a sheet-style ghost pops up behind the tombstone, looks left and then looks right with dramatic arm flourishes, and then glares at Felix and points down at the grave. Felix shakes in fear, and the ghost momentarily disappears.

While the moon looks down wistfully in the distance at the graveyard shenanigans, Felix scans the air where the ghost evaporated. The cat shakes his head, and then twirls his finger near his ear to tell us he must be going crazy, and then laughs wildly. The ghost sneakily pops back up behind Felix and gives him a fright. The cat grabs a large rock to throw at the ghost, but the spook evaporates once more and reappears on the other side of the grave. It sticks its tongue out at the cat and flies off into the night. Felix swears to go after the ghost, telling us, "That ghost is up to some kind of mischief. I'll follow him!!"

Cut to the spook sneaking up tip-toe style on the open door of a barn. Before the ghost even makes it to the door, Felix likewise is tip-toeing up behind the ghost. After the spooks floats through the door, a long "EEEEEEEEE!!!" emits from someone or something unseen inside. The sound carries to the nearby farmhouse, where a light comes alive on the second floor, and the once-sleeping farmer sticks his head out the window to find out what is making that ungodly noise. After looking about, he peers with great surprise in the direction of the barn, where the action cuts to show the farmer's donkey streaking out the barn followed by the ghost. The donkey stops and quakes with fear while the ghost taunts and points at the animal. The poor equine rears up to attempt a powerful kick at the ghost, but the spook disappears, and then uses the same trick it played on Felix by reappearing behind the donkey, frightening it anew. The spirit then sternly gestures for the donkey to run for the hills, and the terrified creature does just that.

The ghost flies back into the barn, with Felix looking on quizzically at what the horrid thing might be seeking out next. His answer comes quickly, as he first hears a squeal of terror, and then a wheelbarrow flies out of the barn, followed by a sow. As she grabs the handles of the barrow, a dozen small piglets flee from the barn and pile up into the cart. The sow turns the barrow and wheels it at the highest speed she can manage towards the horizon. Her speed is so great that she eventually catches up to the donkey who had fled previously.

The ghost heads towards the house and disappears through the wall. Felix tries to follow the terrible spook, but owing to Felix's inherent corporeality, he merely splats face-first into the wall and then rolls backward. Felix regains his composure and scurries up the porch to peer through the window of the bedroom upstairs. He sees the farmer being terrified by the ghost, who repeatedly points with a stiff arm to tell the farmer to leave the premises. The farmer pulls a gun on the spirit, but it doesn't work to scare it away. The poltergeist then attempts to hypnotize the farmer, but it seems to wear off quickly, so then we see four pairs of ghostly eyeballs floating about at the end of his bed. The farmer leaps for the telephone. "Help!" he cries into the phone, "Send the reserves! There's a ghost in the house!"

Shortly thereafter, a small truck arrives and pulls up in front of the farmhouse. The back doors burst open and roughly four dozen "reserve" members (or cops, clearly) pour out in succession – in the manner of a clown car in a circus – and race through the front door of the house. Felix awaits the results from outside as the sounds of a furious battle begin to be heard from inside. Much yelling and screaming and even gunshots are described to us via words popping up on the screen. The house then flashes almost psychedelically and the stripes of the flashes spin around the house like a merry-go-round (though the house remains stationary). Finally a large hole is torn open on the roof. One by one, each cop comes somersaulting from out of the hole, and then each bounces on the ground and subsequently lands inside the small truck. The vehicle get wider and fatter as it fills up with the defeated reserve members; then, with all the cops collected, the truck speeds off the way it originally came.

With the cops on their way, the last one to be kicked out through roof hole to land on the ground is the poor farmer. He turns to Felix and cries, "I'm ruined! The place is haunted!" Felix gestures for the farmer to not worry, and says, "Leave it to me! I'm a regular ghost-breaker!" He sneaks inside and moves into a room, where at least a half dozen spooks creep past a doorway. When Felix decides to move toward that door, a pair of massive eyeballs appear in midair and stare at the cat, swirling about once or twice. Felix tries to back away and leave, but the ghost appears behind him and points for him to leave. Felix turns and the ghost is suddenly in front of him again in that direction. He turns again and four ghosts confront him; one more turn, and the number is a full dozen. They converge upon him in a tight circle but then the whole group suddenly disappears. Felix, with his eyes still closed, throws several punches in the air, but then realizes he is all alone. He acts tough and determined, but then a large hand pops up through the floor and pulls his tail, sending him running for the door.

In the next room, he stops and arches his back normal-cat style and hisses. He sets himself back to two-foot mode and stands there thinking, but a hole opens up on the wall behind him. The ghost is seen leering at him, and then reaches out to pull the switch on a lamp and send the room into utter darkness. The ghost flies out and attacks Felix. There is a tussle but Felix gets away into the dark. The ghost floats forward toward the screen and points menacingly at the filmgoers in the audience. With the ghost moving away, Felix turns the lamp back on but is frightened by a large skeleton standing just outside the range of the lamplight. Felix jumps up and knocks off the lampshade and the whole room erupts into brilliant light, rendering the skeleton insubstantial.

Felix tries to think of a plan, saying "I wonder how I can trap him?" and then he hits upon a solid idea, perfectly suited for an era then roughly chest-deep in the dryness of Prohibition. (Alcohol gags are fairly prevalent in 1920s cartoons.) After pacing for a quick bit, he notices a bottle of booze on the table. Knowing his audience exceedingly well, the cat says, "They all fall for this!" The ghost reappears and smell the booze in Felix's hand. After a closeup shot revealing that it is indeed a bottle of rum, it becomes Felix's turn to do the taunting as he runs away with the ghost in fast pursuit, greedily grasping for the bottle. Felix then pulls a gun on the spook, ordering it to put its hands up in the air. The farmer rushes forward and pulls the sheet off of the ghost, revealing the cretinous human inside. The old farmer is shocked at the revelation and yells, "Trying to frighten me into selling, eh? I'll fix you!" Jabbing two fingers into his mouth, the farmer whistles loudly for his donkey. The long-eared creature eagerly runs up, rears his hind legs back, and kicks the ex-ghost all the way towards the moon on the horizon! And thusly, the film ends.

Now, while one should not expect too much coherence from a cartoon clearly built to excite the then-fairly wide-eyed filmgoing audience (in relative terms compared to today... and not just kids, either) with the surreal notion of talking cats and havoc-wringing ghosts, I have some definite issues with the film. Most noticeable is the reveal of the "ghost" to be a normal human, a move I almost always despise in almost any form of storytelling. While I personally don't believe in the notion of ghosts as conceived in popular terms, I don't like it when a story that is meant to invoke a fantastical setting at its beginning degrades into normal reality by its end. One can invoke the case of Scooby-Doo's mysteries, which nearly always end in the same manner, and while I did (and do) love the show as a nostalgic presence in my life, it always rankled me that the monsters and spooks were never "real". However, both Scooby-Doo and this Felix short do end with the same fantastical premise as a base: that a talking, intensely anthropomorphized four-legged mammal is the star at the center of the action.

The second sticking point for me is the ultra-late reveal that the human in guise as the spirit is using his charade to try to scare the farmer into selling his property. Again, it's a cartoon short from the silent era and no one is expecting the plot to be carefully laid out in such a way. And also, once again, this is an echo instantly bringing up a recall of Scooby-Doo. It is becoming increasingly clear that this short is practically a template for the mysteries of Scooby-Doo (while most certainly not the earliest example of such a plot).

And the third – and most noticeable – sticking point is the actions of the ghost itself. At least on Scooby-Doo, there was a short explanation by the Mystery Machine kids of how the perpetrator achieved some of his effects. For example: "He used these buckets to make this sound" or "This film projector created the illusion that he was going through the walls" or "He had this rope tied about him to make it look like he was flying by employing this hidden pulley system" etc. (Even though nobody ever saw a big thick hunk of rope dangling through the air at the time... but enough on that...) Here, the ghost is seen flying about the property of the farm in mid-air, disappearing and reappearing, going through walls, appearing as four sets of disembodied eyes, as a pair of giant eyeballs, coming up through the floor, and reappearing as four, six, and then twelve separate ghosts. And also as an entity that is capable of beating the snot out of four dozen armed police officers, causing them to flee. One guy. In a sheet. Neither the farmer or Felix thinks to ask, "How the hell did you do all of that?"

That said, I still enjoyed this cartoon very much. It's got decent atmosphere, it is definitely spooky in parts (with the closeup of the ghost approaching the audience especially memorable), and it moves along very swiftly from gag to gag. I am a little disappointed that Felix does not employ his magical tail as a tool or weapon at any point, as he tends to do in many of his early cartoons (and later ones as well, even the TV series). There is even a moment where question marks appear above his head, although in at least one other short I have seen, his tail makes the question mark when he is puzzled. (A missed opportunity...) But Felix's derring-do and need to make things right is definitely in place and the results are still quite fun.

Hmmm... this gives me an idea. Maybe this is a good way to get that house that I wanted... real cheap...

Happy (early) Halloween! See ya soon with the next 'toon!

RTJ

***

And in case you haven't seen it, you can watch the short below...

Countdown to Halloween: Seeing Ghosts (1948)

For the month of October, Cinema 4: Cel Bloc is taking part in an annual internet celebration known as the Countdown to Halloween. This is the fourth year that I have participated in this countdown, but the first with my Cel Bloc site. To find out more about the Countdown to Halloween, and to see a list of participating websites and blogs, go to http://countdowntohalloween.blogspot.com/.

Seeing Ghosts (1948)
Dir.: Mannie Davis
TC4P Rating: 5/9

It is very easy for me to want to rate a particular cartoon a little higher than I normally might simply because it has one or two factors that may register with me on a personal level. We all do this to in one way or the other. This person may like romances more than that person, who happens to prefer horror films, while their friend may like adventure films, and so each one is probably going to be a little more attuned to the nuances of the genre they prefer, and get wrapped up in little things that the rest of us probably wouldn't even notice or care about at all. Or not... sometimes blind faith to a particular type or genre means not really having a critical eye in the least, and just automatically loving every single bit of product released in that category. I have known people who have done it both ways.

This can extend to actors – such as thinking all of the films of Johnny Depp or Heath Ledger (merely examples) are just a little better across the board than those of other actors, and so you will probably rate them higher in your book. This can also extend to specific elements, like certain cars or animals or buildings.

We all make allowances in this manner in some way. For me, given that I have a blog devoted to the subject, sharks would be one of those elements that get me wound up even more when they show up somewhere, since I am constantly looking out for shark appearances in all manner of films. Monsters of all types, gorillas, elephants, dinosaurs, old Hollywood cameos, filmmaking, Christmas, baseball... these are trigger categories for me, and I probably have many more, because I am a bit obsessed when it comes to these things. And ranking very high on this list are the trappings of the Halloween holiday season: ghosts, haunted houses, black cats, autumnal weather, witches, jack-o'-lanterns, and of course, monsters, monsters, monsters.

This obsession is why I post throughout October for this Countdown to Halloween, why I collect so much crazy junk, and why I watch monster and horror films year 'round. I am one of those people who quite literally never really stop celebrating Halloween throughout the year, or if you want to look at it from another angle, never really start celebrating it because I act the same way every single day. But I am not someone who is comfortable walking around in Halloween drag constantly. That is too far out of my comfort zone, and there are other people for whom that is either a blessing or a necessity, but it's not me. I'm just a guy with a penchant for monster t-shirts, but no fangs or tattoos or even rudimentary costuming. I don't want to be perceived as creepy or scary, but just as a guy who really loves monster movies.

Truth be told, though, I am not as wrapped up in all elements of the holiday as I used to be. I don't dress up in costume anymore, not since I left Alaska, and it is chiefly because I don't have the annual Halloween party with friends to attend at hand. I have a smattering of friends down here, but nobody with whom I socialize on a regular basis, apart from the wife and her family. We will be attending a Disneyland Halloween Party tonight, but even though a great many people in attendance will be dressing up, I do not plan on doing so, nor have I thought out any form of costume. We discussed costumes briefly, Jen and I, but nothing really took, and then time just really got away from us. So, it will be a Universal Monsters glow-in-the-dark t-shirt and maybe my baby monster beanie (an option) but otherwise, just "Your Friendly Neighborhood Boogieman" as usual.

Now, I said that I watch monster and horror films year 'round, but that does not mean that when the Halloween season approaches, that I don't adjust the level of frequency of these films up slightly. Normally, I do at a very high volume, though due to time constraints with the increased amount of writing I have taken on in recent months, both online and off, it hasn't happened this year (but this is a very, very good thing for me, so don't fret). Naturally, when I get closer to Halloween, and especially on the day off, I am very fond of watching collections of Halloween-oriented cartoons that I have accumulated over the years, or have found online.

As I set up in my initial premise, certain elements can make you wish to rate a film higher than you might normally, and I am prone to doing this at times when it comes to films that feature the elements that I mentioned earlier that are mainstays of a "Halloween" cartoon: ghosts, haunted houses, black cats, autumnal weather, witches, jack-o'-lanterns, and monsters. (Technically, "monsters, monsters, and monsters" is what I said.) One can be easily led by the merest inclusion of any of these elements into thinking a cartoon is probably more worthy than it actually is, though not always. Many times, a good cartoon is simply a good cartoon, and you have to take it as such.

Would that I could say that, ultimately, about Seeing Ghosts. One of those shorts that almost seems better than it actually is, Seeing Ghosts initially fulfills, fairly well, everything that one might want from a Halloween cartoon, mostly in its opening couple of minutes. However, once the film's dull, personality-free main characters are introduced, Seeing Ghosts meanders into dull action and barely conceived "gags" (if such they actually are) that squanders the opportunity built up at the front of the cartoon.

Seeing Ghosts was released in 1949 and was directed by Terrytoons studio regular Mannie Davis. The film is only an example of average output from the company, which is to say, technically competent, but never really attempting to shock anyone by doing anything too original or by breaking new ground.

High on a hill during a windstorm sits a lonely looking house. There is a path that winds up the hill, and at the bottom of the path we see a For Sale sign encircled by leaves tossed up by the winds. A closeup on the sign reveals a black cat cautiously sniffing about on the ground, and it seems he blocking part of the sign. As he passes, his tail moves to reveal two more words underneath For Sale that tell the deeper story of why the house has not sold as of yet: Slightly Haunted. There is a cut to a closer exterior of the house, and we see numerous ghosts flying in and out of the windows underneath the moonlight. The scene cuts again to a view from the rooftops of the moon itself and a bat flies in front of it. He seems to be backlit by the orb, and we can see the skeletal frame of his body as he cheerfully glides in midair briefly.

Inside the house, spooks continue to flit about, sometimes in tandem with the lilting but haunting music. A bunch of ghosts are then seen sliding happily down the bannisters of a long staircase, and then several disembodied pairs of gloves pick up a bunch of instruments and start bashing out a swinging musical number. At a busted up piano in the corner, we see not only gloves, but an entire suit and happy, but no body within it, as it plinks along barrelhouse-style on the keys and then reaches for a draft of beer sitting on top of the piano. Lifting the giant mug, it pours the beer straight into the collar of its shirt. The invisible bass player (also with a floating derby) plunks along, and then numerous pairs of quite visible ghosts are seen dancing together. Other ghosts stand in a line and clap their hands in time with the music as a pair of skeletons dance a shuffle across the floor of the room. A lone ghost motions in pantomime to ask a dressing dummy for a dance, and then picks it up and whirls it into action, spinning it wildly at one point.

Enter our protagonists, a house decorator who at first is reminiscent of Practical Pig from The Three Little Pigs at the rival Disney studio, and his canine pal, a small brown pup who rides shotgun in the pig's red, equipment-laden jalopy. The ghosts all peer out the window as the car makes it way up the driveway, and while they seem shocked at first, their faces turn angry on a second glance, once they realize what is being done. The pig steps out of the vehicle with the dog behind him, and nails a sign reading Sold to the column by the front door. "Sold!" say the ghosts in unison, and then louder and louder, "Sold! Sold! Sold!" They skedaddle as the pig opens a very squeaky door to make his initial entrance into the house.

The pig cups a hand to his mouth and says meekly, "Hello!" and a light echo returns to him. He looks at his dog, and then says louder, "Is anybody there?" and the immediate response from every single unseen ghost in the house is a resoundingly booming, "NOOOO!" The pig jumps in shock, but is not half as shocked as his pooch, who turns into a whirlwind and throws his entire body around his master. They both run out of the house, and the dog loses the pig, who has hidden behind a gravestone in the cemetery adjacent. He peers around the stone and sees his one shadow looming on the wall behind him, and jumps in fear. He crouches down the second time and looks again, and once more jumps when he sees his own shadow. The third time he picks up a rock and turns to face whatever it is, but is scared again when the shadow is also holding up something.

Just as he is about to look a fourth time, his dog walks up, and he realizes that the shadows were just him all along. Together, they start to stride out of the cemetery, but the dog's tail wags and tickles the pig's rear end, causing the swine to jump in fear yet again. He takes a full-armed swipe at his pet to warn him against doing such things. Re-entering the house, the door slams shut hard behind the house decorator, but even though he is scared at first, the ghostly figure of a beautiful blonde woman appears before him and walks across the room. He starts to follow her, holding his arms in front of himself in the manner that she is, but she turns around suddenly, causing him to turn too. Now following the pig, she turns yet again and walks straight through a nearby door. The pig looks through the keyhole, but a ghost pops up behind him and kicks him in the butt, sending the pig crashing through the wood of the door.

Picking himself up slowly from the floor, the pig notices a ghost in an old-timey swimsuit swimming through the air above him. The ghost turns and says, "The water's fine, isn't it?" and then swims away. Behind him, another invisible figure pops up wearing a smoking jacket, gloves, top hat, and slippers. He holds a cigarette holder in his teeth, which you can also see fully as he speaks. "Are you the house decorator?" the figure asks of the pig, who nods in the affirmative. The ghost tells him to shake, offering its hand out to the pig, who can only reply, because it is so very, very true, "I-I-I am sh-shaking, m-mister!" As they shake hands, the ghost disappears, and the pig is left holding an empty glove in his hand. He throws it to the ground, but then the glove stands up on the tips of its fingers and walks away.

The glove walks up the pig's paint bucket and dives into it. The pig runs up and grabs the paintbrush. He swishes it about trying to find the glove, but all that happens is that two big green ghosts fly out of the bucket laughing wildly at him. He picks up the bucket and walks to his ladder, and then goes up the first few rungs. Strangely, the bottom part of the ladder seems to close up behind him as he climbs. The ladder shoots up and he ends very high in the room. He starts to paint the dirty green walls a golden color, but as the paint washes down, a window – or at least a certain portion of a window – appears magically before his eyes. He is shocked, but even more shocked when he paints more with the gold color and the rest of the window appears. While looking through the window makes it look like it is a blue sky day (even while it is nighttime), a ghost opens the window and it looks as if he is peering through a golden window (its an odd effect). The ghost says, "Hello!" and then slams the window shut. The window totally disappears leaving only the gold-painted wall, and the pig leaps into the air and falls all the way the floor, smashing hard into it.

Another ghost strides into the room and right past the pig, almost in a mocking and daring fashion. The decorator picks up a board and goes to strike the ghost with it, but naturally, his swing goes right through the apparition. He is about to try again, but the spook turns and grabs the board and snaps it into two over its knee. The dog walks up behind the pig again and once more scares him. The pig tells the canine to go away, and then peers into the next room. But the dog sees something coming and runs away, leaving the pig's back turned as a skeleton walks up and pokes him on the shoulder. "Go away," says the pig, but the skeleton pokes again. The pig reaches back and feels something strange, and pulls his hand forward to reveal that he is hold a shinbone with a foot attached to it.

He turns around, sees the skeleton, and wastes no time in speeding away! He runs so fast that as he passes the dog, his pet is pulled in his wake and they head all the way up the stairs. The pig locks himself in a trunk in the attic and the dog sits on top of it, but a ghost appears over the trunk and the poor pooch finds that he is trapped inside the somewhat elastic spook as if he were in a plastic bag. With a mighty leap, he frees himself of the trap, and it is just enough to force the ghost into the trunk. There is a rumble inside it, and the pig finds he must make his escape as well. Speeding back down the stairs, the pair crash from step to step, making enough noise to make a group of skeletons sleeping underneath each one to pop and say sharply in unison, "QUIET!"

The pig and dog hid their heads under a couch in the living room, but another ghost lights the fuse on a large stick of dynamite and places it behind them. The decorator turns to see the dynamite and runs, but the dog thinks it is a game and grabs the TNT and chases after the pig. The dog tries to give the pig the stick of dynamite, and the pig panics and throws it away, not thinking that, of course, the dog will think they are playing fetch and will bring it back again. Once he throws it, the pig whips through the door and holds the door shut, but the dog leaps out a window and presents him with the TNT. This time, he opens the door to the house, throws the stick inside, and then slams the door shut. The dog actually follows him down the hill, where they both hide to await the explosion. The house goes up in a huge blast and is blown to splinters. Then the pig sees what is coming out of the blast: all of the ghosts come floating down from the sky, suspended by spectral parachutes. Their chutes disappearing as they alight on the ground, the spooks start giving chase once more to the pig and the dog, and the film comes to a close.

Not a very satisfying resolution to a not altogether enjoyable cartoon, but I don't think the pig and dog team ever really fit in very well to the scenario anyway. For a house decorator, except for the painting sequence, he doesn't really try to do all that much in the way of his job. The dog's inclusion in the antics almost seems like an afterthought. The pup never really gets a solo moment with the ghosts apart from the "plastic bag" moment, and it almost feels like he was added just so they had a reason to do the fetch gag with the dynamite.

But Seeing Ghosts does have that marvelous beginning. The first couple of minutes have ample Halloween atmosphere, and the bit with the For Sale sign and the black cat is a nice intro leading to the ghosts. You could argue that the ghost and skeleton gags during the dance sequence themselves have been done equally well and even far better in many cartoons, but since when was watching ghosts enjoy themselves at a swingin' party a crime?

That is exactly the hitch with a film like Seeing Ghosts. I find it extremely disappointing by the end of the cartoon, especially since two-thirds of the running time is spent with a couple of quite forgettable characters. And yet, I cannot dismiss it outright, because the ghost sequences and especially that opening are rendered well enough with spooky flair and fun that the film must be included in any annual Halloween collection just so one can take in the atmosphere.

As I said, we all make allowances in some way. It all depends on what you like...

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it:

Baby Bottleneck (1946)

Baby Bottleneck (Warner Bros. Looney Tunes, 1946)
Dir.: Robert Clampett
Cel Bloc Rating: 8/9

While visiting Zootopia twice upon its release at our local theatre, Jen and I were subjected cruelly to several trailers for upcoming films of variable quality. Amongst these long-running torture devices was a preview for a future Warner Bros. feature titled Storks. My friends can have all the babies they want; that is fine. But speaking for ourselves, neither one of us cares a whit for babies, or the ridiculousness of "baby culture". We are not the ones to ask if we would like to hold your newborn. When the kid can amble about and hold something close to an actual conversation, then call Uncle Rik and Auntie Jen, but not before then. So, the "wacky" antics taking place in a factory that seems to manufacture and prepare newborn brats for their trips via stork into the arms of their parents was pretty much lost on us.

That said, the animation looked fine, the film carries the Warner Bros. pedigree, and Kelsey Grammar's booming, pretension-soaked voice as the stork narrating the trailer seemed like appropriate casting. Plus, though unknown to me the first time I saw the trailer, the co-director and writer is Nicholas Stoller, who still has some cachet with me because of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek, and Muppets Most Wanted. (I will ignore the underwhelming Neighbors for the time being.) And the other co-director is Doug Sweetland, who gave us the magnificent Pixar short, Presto (the one with the magician and the rabbit in the hat). However, forcing a supposedly cute, giggling, red-haired baby on us after the title is displayed at the end of the trailer did nothing to make me any more excited about seeing the film. It is more than likely that I will end up seeing Storks anyway, though, since I usually end up seeing most major animated feature film releases at some point.

So, my initial (and secondary) reaction to the Storks trailer is really not all that important in regards to my seeing it, but there was something that I did notice while watching it that I feel should be mentioned. In the teaser trailer, the Grammar stork (well-dressed in pressed shirt and tie) regales us of the importance of the stork's unique relationship to human infant deliveries throughout history. As he continues to bluster through his speech, swearing how his factory will not falter in their aims and goals, a skinny, red-haired girl struggles to keep a succession of giggling infants from falling off a conveyor belt in the human infant factory. Her ceaseless but panicked devotion to this task is completely reminiscent of I Love Lucy and the famed chocolate assembly line routine, except this particular red-haired girl never tries to stuff several babies in her mouth like Lucy did with the chocolates. But the inspiration is clear. Or is it?

Because Storks is a Warner Bros. film, and because it is animation, and finally because it deals with a baby assembly line run by storks, isn't the real inspiration for this upcoming film actually Baby Bottleneck? Second question: do you remember -- or even know -- what Baby Bottleneck is? 1946. Bob Clampett classic. Baby factory. Storks go on strike. Daffy Duck and Porky Pig are brought in to run the place. Things go crazy on the assembly line. Raymond Scott's Powerhouse is played relentlessly as the machinery goes nuts and chaos reigns supreme.

Yeah, that Baby Bottleneck. I am sure you have seen it at some point. If you haven't, I assume you must be of a certain age, but definitely not of the same certain age that I am. I saw this film a lot over several decades, and in my natural course of things, I just automatically assume that others out there have the same influences as me. How could you not? Well, that is just a silly concept from the start, because such a thing is well nigh an impossibility. Even my little brothers, who saw most of the same things and heard much of the same music I did growing up (even though we were each separated by a few years in age), don't love and don't dislike all of the same things that I do.

I often tend to write like my readers, even brand new ones, are all on the same page as I am. I automatically jump to the conclusion that everyone has the exact love for a film like Baby Bottleneck that I do, and grew up seeing it dozens and dozens of times as I did. As a result, I can sometimes seem as if I am blind to the fact that others may feel differently or have never seen a film like Baby Bottleneck. And, more and more, I should expect that to be the case, given that much of the internet audience is very often younger than I am. There are entire generations that need to discover these films for themselves, and I should welcome them in to the fold.

So, perhaps I should write about Baby Bottleneck with the approach that I will hopefully hit a goldmine of younger readers who have never seen the film before. They will see the graphic on Twitter, click on the link, read or at least skim this article, convince them that they simply must see this film at once, watch the film, then watch the film forty straight times, and become Bob Clampett fans for life. It's a reasonable assumption, because if they didn't become Bob Clampett fans for life, then they surely must have something broken inside their pathetic little shells. (Well, there I go again...)

Before my inner workings blow a gasket, let's discuss the film itself. At the start of Baby Bottleneck, after the credits flash by over a nicely decorated title background showing a baby rattle, toy block, and rubber ball, we see the front page of the Daily News, where the headlines are read by a narrator. In his newsman-style tone, he reads: "Unprecedented Demand for Babies Overworks Stork." It is now that I should point out that Baby Bottleneck was produced by Warner Bros. in 1946, at the start of a period known famously as the post-World War II baby boom. If you are wondering where the generational term "baby boomer" came from, this is it. If you aren't my age or older, then it is possible that your parents are baby boomers. Or your grandparents.

A lot of economic and social specifics are applied to the reasoning behind the uptick in births beginning in 1946, but what it really boils down to is: everybody in America was super-horny after the war ended. Soldiers leaving the European and Pacific theatres; women leaving the industrialized war machine workforce and returning to their homes as housewives again. My own mother was born in 1945, missing the distinction of being a baby boomer by a year, and I barely got in as one being born in 1964. I'm not proud of the designation; I never have been. I've always liked to point that out since I have tried hard to not actually behave like the stereotypical boomer. Sure, I have a penchant for misplaced nostalgia and a taste for trivia, like any boomer. But otherwise... no 3.2 kids for me. No worshipping of the Reaganite '80s and trickle-down economics. No home owned in the suburbs. No midlife crisis red Corvettes. Doesn't make me any better or worse. It just wasn't my idea of life.

Getting back to the start of Baby Bottleneck, people are getting their rocks off like mad and causing problems for the stork. Not storks... stork. Singular. Apparently, there is one stork responsible for delivering ALL of the world's babies. Well, no wonder he is exhausted. (People can't keep it in their pants for a second, which is doubly amazing since so much of the world is just too damn ugly to be allowed to do it. But I digress...) The stork in this film is about as close as you can get to a Jimmy Durante type, with a very bulbous and enlarged beak. We find this particular bird at -- where else? -- the Stork's Club nightspot, where he is pretty much a puddle on the floor underneath a nightclub table. Drunk off his derriere, the stork swings and attempts to pour a bottle of hooch unsuccessfully into his glass, while mumbling out loud -- in a very Durante-like voice and vocabulary -- to anyone that can hear him. "I'm mortified! I'm disgust-i-pated! I do all the woik and da fadduhs get all da credit! Ummm-briago!"

Our narrator returns to read the next portion of the paper: "Inexperienced help being used to make emergency deliveries." We next see a rather dopey looking pooch who is able to remain aloft high in the air through means of a propeller tail. In his mouth, he grips a pair of baby-bearing bundles that are tied together, and another such pair in his front paws. Tied to his collar is a string that allows him to pull a toy airplane behind him with another baby animal in its cockpit and another paired bundle hanging from the plane. The string continues from the back of the tiny plane across the screen to a small baby animal sitting on a wooden baby scooter that is pulled along through the air behind the whole lot.

A quartet of crows grip tightly to the trunk, tail, and ears of a sweet baby elephant. Next, we spy a pelican that has been pressed into service. He walks past us with his prodigiously sized mouth full of several other babies (none of them fish I might add, or there could be trouble). The pelican is only able to move along through a helpful red balloon that is tied to his tail-feathers and a small wagon riding beneath his filled mouth. Directly behind the pelican is a tiny mouse who is seen dragging along a baby rhinoceros. The mouse, straining with all his might, stops to pant several times in a hurried and exaggerated fashion before taking up his bundle again.

The narrator read, "Naturally, some slight mistakes have been made," and so begins a series of mismatched familial pairings brought on by the disappearance of the stork. A mother goose has been handed a baby skunk, and has to clothespin her nose closed to escape the noxious fumes emanating from her false child. A baby kitten is delivered to a mother duck, who implores the kitten to take swimming lessons in the pond next to them, quite against the basic instincts of her false offspring, who hisses and fights in a desperate attempt to remain dry. "Baby gorilla to Mrs. Kangaroo" reveals just that: an enormous, furry child who beats the spectacle-wearing marsupial several times in the head, much to the mother's dismay.

A baby hippo is delivered to a Scotty dog, who sits in a rocking chair singing "Rockabye, Baby" to the gargantuan child until, with the line "When the bough breaks," the rocking chair shatters under the weight. The Scotty, with the usual brogue, sticks his snout out from under the hippo's bottom and finishes singing, "The cradle will fall!" A baby alligator is delivered to a mother pig, and the reptile, not realizing that it doesn't need milk from its mother, seeks to find an open teat on the mother pig, though the other piglets keep closing their bodies together and make it impossible. The gator then uses his elongated body to push and stretch out a gap in the middle of the hungry piglets, but just as Baby Gator is about to snap down hard on his mother, she stops him. [At this point, there is an odd cut that occurs in all known versions of Baby Bottleneck, where the film jumps to the next scene just as the mother pig is about to say something. According to director Clampett in an interview conducted years before his death, the line was supposed to be "Uh-uh! Don't touch that dial!" but it was actually cut by the censors for whatever reason they felt was appropriate. The scene is now considered to be lost.] Finally, a father mouse has to deal with being the papa of a baby cat. (Different from the "baby kitten" we saw earlier with the mother duck exactly how?) The baby cat seems to be torn between catching his father and just batting at him in a way that is clearly frightening to a lifelong cat-fearer.

It is finally revealed by the narrator/paper that "Porky Pig to Handle All Stork's Problems," with the additional phrase, "Appoint Daffy Duck Assistant Traffic Manager". We see an outside shot of the Storks, Inc. building, a big blue tower that confusedly (it must be a mistake), as the camera zooms in ever closer, shows the small, silhouetted forms of numerous storks flying off in all directions with baby bundles clasped in their beaks. (Wasn't there just one stork and isn't he on strike?) 

At a bank of several upright, candlestick telephones, Daffy Duck, resplendent in a clerk's cap set at various odd angles throughout the picture, leaps from phone to phone and answers the calls of worried, prospective fathers, some of them quite famous. "No, I'm sorry, Bing! You've used up your quota!" and "Oh, oh yes, Mr. Cantor! You say you haven't got that boy yet? Well, if at first you don't succeed...!" Finally, there is a call from a famous father from the Great White North. "Who? Mr. Dionne?" (He being the father of the famous Dionne Quintuplets of Ontario, the first known identical quintuplets in history, who were confiscated from their parents by the Canadian government and exploited for the first nine years of their lives.) At Mr. Dionne's most likely outsized request, Daffy responds, "Mister Di-onne! Puh-lease!" with extra spitting at the end. The calls continue hard and quick, and Daffy slowly starts to lose his once happy composure, finally yelling "QUIET!!!" at everything around him.

Porky mans (or is it "pigs"?) the Control Room monitor board. Using his microphone like he is an air traffic controller, Porky calls the various flights leaving the facility for status updates. "Come in, Royden Stork... Come in there, Storky..." he says, invoking the actual name of one of Jimmy Dolittle's pilots in the famous Dolittle Raid over Japan in World War II. Sure enough, Porky next says, "O.K. for takeoff, Jimmy Doo... doo... eh-da eh-da eh-da, doo.. Do-quite-a-little!" Another clerk in the factory, a dog character, strides in by smashing a hole through the door to show Porky his latest invention that will help the company. "It'll speed up deliveries one billion percent! It's a Luuuuu-lu!" The dog has a large firework strapped about his waist, which he lights in anticipation of rocketing out the window. But, of course, it explodes instead, leaving him nothing but a charred, smoky mess. "Well, back to the drawing board!" he proclaims, and struts back out of the Control Room.

An alarm goes off, and Daffy yells out, "FULL STEAM AHEAD!" Porky is standing next to a conveyor belt upon which are sitting the babies of several species of animals, including a dachshund and a very Tweety-like canary bird. He pulls a lever to start the machinery, and the babies shoot forward on the belt. A large baby hippo wearing a pink bow and bonnet set is screaming wildly, but then stops when it turns to look at the camera, and paraphrases Lou Costello's famous line by saying coyly, "I'm only three and a half seconds old!" She then continues to cry at the top of her lungs.

A hand comes out of the machinery to flip babies with a spatula after another arm pats them with a large powderpuff. Another pair of machine hands ties diapers onto the babies, but is stymied when it comes to doing up a turtle child. It pauses, and the box from which the arms shoot out briefly gets a face of its own. It taps its head and considers the situation, then has a light bulb and the word "IDEA" appear above it, before it pops open the turtle shell, gently places the turtle inside onto the diaper, pins it (with the biggest safety pin imaginable), and then puts it back in the shell. A large egg is also diapered, and then another another egg gets the powder treatment.

Next comes the milking station, where each baby's tummy is filled up to capacity by a gasoline-style nozzle. Baby after baby gets fed, but once again, there are complications because of the turtle (who also, like the baby gator does not require milk). The nozzle goes straight into the turtle shell, and milk spills out of it in several places. Finally, the turtle shell pops open, as an angry young turtle uses a bucket to bail out his home. He curses wildly at the milk station machine as he does so.

A very shapely dress mannequin is next in line, which picks up each succeeding baby and pats it on the back until it gives a satisfied burp. The third recipient of this behavior is one of the eggs, which too gets patted, but when the burp comes out, a large bump appears at the top of the egg.

More babies get fed, but one of the babies is turned over the wrong direction, and gets sprayed in the rear end instead. This causes the Control Room monitor board to display the word "TILT" in large red letters, and for all manner of alarms to go off at the same time, frightening Porky into immediate action. He reverses the machine, sending the sprayed baby backwards along the belt and into a washtub. The baby is scrubbed and hung on a line to dry.

Porky starts to check the delivery tags for babies about to be sent out to their parents. There is one for Akron and another for Hollywood, but suddenly, a stray egg seems to have no tag. Porky calls Daffy to his side and asks him to sit on the egg to find out to whom it belongs. Daffy (whose cap by this point has reached comically large proportions in relation to the rest of his body) wants nothing to do with this. "Oh, no-no-no-no! Sitting on eggs is out! O-W-T! Out!" He turns his back to Porky in protest, and strides off singing, "You must have been a beautiful baby!" Porky runs up and grabs Daffy by the throat, orders him to sit on it, and tries to push his butt down onto the egg. Daffy bounces his butt all over the place to avoid touching the egg, and finally, he climbs on top of Porky's head, screaming "Sufferin' Succotash!" in the manner which we normally attribute to Sylvester the Cat. (Same voice actor, Mel Blanc, and there are always similarities in both of their voices anyway.)

Daffy leaps off of Porky's head, and then pushes him backwards towards the egg. Porky, too, tries as hard as he can not to actually touch the egg, which results in his bending completely backwards in an arch over the egg, held up only by the tip of his tongue on the ground. Daffy takes advantage of this, making his distinctive "Woo-hoo" noise over and over and jumping up and down on top of Porky's arched belly. Daffy pulls out a large board and smacks Porky on the rear end, and then capers in front of the egg before running away. 

But Porky grabs one of Daffy's legs, and the duck's leg gets pulled out to about a hundred times its normal length. At one point, Daffy runs out one door and through another, doubling back to see that his foot still remains in the pig's clutches. When Porky lets go, there is a slapping noise as the foot snaps back into his body, coiling up momentarily like a spring, and then spilling out limp onto the floor. As Porky charges the duck, Daffy tries to reel his leg back in to his body, but doesn't have enough time. He leaps onto the conveyor belt and takes several awkward steps in his run forward, one foot on the belt, and the other farther down on the ground due to the extreme length of the leg. Finally, as Porky nears him, Daffy doffs his cap, pulls a feather on top of his head, and the leg snaps back to its normal position.

Just then, Porky and Daffy react in fear as they realize they are trapped in the baby preparation machine. Porky's clothes get caught and shredded in the gears of the machine, and his pink and naked body looks like nothing more than a newborn infant. As they start to go through the normal steps of the machine -- powdering, diapering, etc. -- their attempts to escape cause the machine to go into overdrive and confuse it into thinking the pig and the duck are part of one baby. It bonks Daffy on the head with a small hammer and slaps a baby bonnet on his head. The machine's unit hands then smash Porky and Daffy together and diaper and pin them in place, with the pig inside the diaper with his legs poking out, and with Daffy as the top half of the body.

The machinery then shoots the now conjoined pair into the delivery room, where they are dropped into a delivery bundle, and then shot off into wild blue wonder in the beak of a stork-shaped rocket. We see the Earth from space with the continent of Africa highlighted by text on its surface. Next, a mother gorilla is shown knitting patiently next to a rocking cradle carved out of a tree trunk. She hears the rocket and then the whistling drop of something coming in her direction, and she knows it must be her baby. She picks up the cradle and tries to position it to best catch the infant, but the force of the fall causes the Daffy-Porky to smash through the cradle and into the ground.

Dazed and disoriented, Daffy starts crying when he sees his "mother". The gorilla picks him up gently and places him in a crib made of banana leaves. As she looks down at her baby, she is shocked to see Porky peek out from under the diaper with his big eyes, and when he says, "Boo!" she instantly leaps away. Calmly picking up her telephone and calling the local radio station, the mother gorilla (voiced by Sara Berner) says, "Mr. Anthony? I have a problem!" She starts crying wildly with a large open mouth. Iris out.

Like many of the Warner Bros. shorts of the '30s and '40s (and especially the wartime ones), Baby Bottleneck is rife with references specific to its time, most of which I have mentioned as I went along. The Mr. Anthony gag at the end is a nod to one Lester Kroll, who under the name of John J. Anthony (derived from combining the names of his sons) dispensed common sense advice to those who needed help (sometimes psychologically) on several radio programs in those days, including his most famous outlet, The Goodwill Hour.

Also, well used here is Raymond Scott's swinging composition Powerhouse, taken from its jazz band settings and given the full orchestral treatment by Warner Bros. house composer Carl Stalling. Powerhouse was used many times over here and there by Stalling from the late '40s and through the '50s, especially any time that large machinery or a factory is included in a plotline, but when I think of the film where it used most effectively of all, it is Baby Bottleneck. So powerful is my connection of song to film that even when I listen to the original version of the song, absolutely unconnected to Warner Bros. cartoons, I immediately bring Baby Bottleneck to mind.

But while then-current references and swing music may add some personality to the proceedings, what makes this film truly special are those elements that Bob Clampett showed us in cartoon after cartoon in his Warner days. A massive amount of gags crammed into a six-minute-plus short, one after the other without a discernible break to catch one's breathe. An exquisite sense of speed; not just comic timing and pacing (both of which Clampett had in spades), but a real talent for showing the immeasurable swiftness of his characters or other objects. Of having his characters move swiftly in and out of surroundings and of not just being merely "animated," but actually creating what appears to be real motion as we would normally perceive it in our three-dimensional world. On top of this, add a sense of humor so outrageous that no gag is beyond him, even being able to give his audience a taste of true surrealism (Porky in Wackyland, as his most famous example) or for allowing us the chance to believe that Daffy Duck's leg is capable of stretching to ridiculous proportions. And that he is able to set it back into place through the pulling of a feather on his head.

And about that leg... Clampett may be my favorite Daffy director. As much as I love the way Chuck Jones employed him in concert with Bugs over the years, that version of the character, despite the variations of gun blasts to his face and the redrawing of his body by unseen hands, still was largely achieved through smart but still rather staid posturing and some keen writing (as well as Blanc's vocal artistry). In Clampett's hands, Daffy is a far different duck, almost totally unhinged. It's somewhat akin to the early Martin and Lewis films where Jerry Lewis is this manic ball of energy that you swear is going to explode at any second. We can argue about whether you find him funny or not (for me, earlier is better), but Lewis -- on a physical level and as pure energetic will -- is a force of nature in many of those films. Here, too, Daffy is almost unstoppable until the circumstances of the story get in his way. He zips here and there, answers multiple phones simultaneously, stretches and twists and leaps and hops and dances. His every movement is as rubbery and unconfined as possible, aided greatly by the fact that Clampett and his animators seem to have given him about 2000 different facial expressions in Baby Bottleneck. His is the manic and bouncy Daffy that I love the most, contorting his body wildly while "woo-hooing" his way into my heart.

What is unlikely to do anything remotely concerned with my heart, apart from causing to cease beating, is Storks. Since I started writing this piece, I have since seen a full trailer for the film, and it veers wildly away from the baby factory concept (though that still seems to be the main setting) and has a great many more characters involved in the shenanigans in the film, none of which seemed particularly interesting to me. I will still probably end up seeing the film eventually, but I will probably not be that excited about doing so. Mainly, it's the babies in the trailer, each one designed to exude the maximum cuteness to the audience, and all of it fails to work on me because I do not find human babies cute the least little bit. This probably proves that I was never meant to be a dad, that is for sure, and the course of my life -- even with two marriages -- has proven that to be a fact.

And so my initial theory that perhaps Warner Bros. was "ripping off" (a term that I despise actively, but purposeful here) their own Baby Bottleneck and the late Bob Clampett? Probably misplaced, but I am going to keep a wary eye out when I do see the film. If there is even the slightest nod to Baby Bottleneck -- a drunk stork, a stork strike, a visit to the Stork Club, a pig and a duck working somewhere in the background -- my suspicions will be roused anew. And if they work in a quick bit of Powerhouse, then the truth will be known.

RTJ