The Ouija Board

I love the history of film and have watched thousands of early--very early films. Among them have been quite a few animated films, so I have a good idea about what types of animated films were available back in 1920...and they were incredibly primitive. Most had very simple drawings and backgrounds and just a few years later, these simple sorts of cartoons simply wouldn't have made it in theaters. A wonderful exception to these simplistic cartoons were the Koko films of Max Fleischer.

Before Fleischer started his own studio, he worked for Bray Studios. There, he perfected the use of the Rotoscope...a technique he invented by which a cartoonist would take live action film footage and trace over it to create animated characters. The biggest advantage with this sort of technique is that the characters were extremely fluid and moved about like real people or animals. "The Ouija Board" is one of these Rotoscoped films and uses Fleischer's first star, Koko the Clown. Like most of these Koko films, he is a character that can interact with the real world--much like you saw in later films like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?".

The plot for this short is very simple and the cartoon lasts less than six minutes. One of the animators and a janitor are playing with a Ouija Board and as for Koko, he's haunted by a bunch of ghosts until he ultimately leaves the cartoon and starts trying to scare the folks in the studio.

For the most part, all of this this is good clean fun. There are a few stereotypes, common in the day, involving the black janitor and ghosts---certainly not politically correct nor all that funny. Though, Fleischer, too, reacts to the 'ghost' and so it's not all at the expense of the poor black man....so who knows if viewers today will be offended by it or not! Regardless, the animation is lovely and the film holds up pretty well today.

By the way, if you are curious about who it was that dressed up like Koko and let themselves be animated for these 'Out of the Inkwell' films...it was Dave, Max's brother.

When Max comes in to draw the latest Koko cartoon, the janitor and another cartoonist are playing around with a ouija board. Max goes to check out their activity while Koko deals with ghosts in the cartoon in this early Out of the Inkwell cartoon.

Fleischer is still playing around with the sheer audacity of working with the series' combination of cartoon and live action, so the gags are neither as funny nor well executed as they would become later. Koko is clearly a frenetically rotoscoped Dave Fleischer. Nonethless, although this cartoon is not as brilliant as later efforts in the series, it is engagingly performed and beautifully executed.

Max Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.

Ko-Ko similarly was an always amiable character to watch and among the better recurring characters in Fleischer's early work. Likewise, his series of Out of the Inkwell cartoons were among the best early efforts of Fleischer and silent cartoons in general. Fleischer may not be at his very finest and there are other cartoons of his that fit the word gem more. There is, like so many Ko-Ko cartoons, so much to like about 'The Ouija Board'.

'The Ouija Board', being an early effort, is not one of the funniest or most imaginative Ko-Ko efforts, when the humour would become more refined and inventive later.

Live action scenes don't really interest or entertain much and the janitor character agreed is not very compelling or funny as well as not very tasteful.

A lot is done very well to brilliantly however. Love the character interplay as always, even so early on.

One expects the animation to be primitive and very low quality, judging by that it's the 20s when animation techniques were not as many, as refined, as ambitious and in their infancy. While Fleischer became more refined and inventive later certainly, the animation is surprisingly good with some nice visual wackiness and wit.

Pacing is bright and breezy and even though not hilarious or imaginative the humour is timed well and amuses. There is a great spooky atmosphere too, very early cartoons were not always this spooky. Ko-Ko is a very likeable lead that engages throughout. Liked the cartoonist and the ghosts, the janitor not so much.

Altogether, pretty good. 7/10 Bethany Cox