Trapped

This is another totally-bizarre silent Koko The Clown cartoon from the crazy minds of the Fleischer brothers, artist Max and director Dave

We get two stories: Max trying the capture a mouse in his studio and Koko battling a strange spider than his creator drew. The spider has a human face and a derby hat and looks a lot like Max. Most of the time, the poor clown is running from this weird creature. Most of the scenes in this "long" cartoon involved the latter and were drawn out too long. Rarely have I had anything but praise for these "Out Of The Inkwell" efforts but this one dragged in too many spots. I would have made a good 6-7-minute cartoon rather than 11 minutes.

This was one of the "From the vault" extra features from disc 3 on the "Popeye The Sailor Man Volume One DVD set

At a time when every other animation studio seemed to be imitating Disney, the Fleischer brothers (producer Max, animator Dave) were consistently turning out clever animation that was technologically innovative and often brilliantly funny. The Fleischer toons typically began and ended with live-action footage, and often used considerable live-action during the story proper ... as in the well-known 'Ko-Ko's Earth Control' and in the more obscure 'Trapped'.

One of the ways the Fleischers showed the originality of their cartoon technique was in their method of introducing their character Ko-Ko the Clown. Although Ko-Ko appeared in dozens of silent-era cartoons for the Fleischer studio, it was a point of pride for Dave Fleischer always to introduce Ko-Ko by means of a different visual device in each cartoon. In 'Trapped', we see the cartoonist's hands as still photograph cut-outs, manipulated in front of the camera to look like live-action movie footage. The hands sketch a small black dot and ink it in. Then the dot proceeds to bounce across the cartoonist's easel, until the hands finally catch it and unfold it into Ko-Ko the Clown.

Now the toon gets going, with Ko-Ko encountering a giant spider ... who has a human face that's decidedly male, even though the spider spins a gigantic web. (In the real world, only female spiders spin webs.)

What makes 'Trapped' distinctive is that the action cross-cuts between Ko-Ko's battle with the spider and our live-action cartoonist (Dave Fleischer himself) in his travails with a live-action mouse in the Fleischer studio. Eventually, the cartoonist sets a mousetrap. Of course, Ko-Ko escapes from his cartoon and gets caught in the live-action mousetrap. Then Ko-Ko develops some web-spinning techniques of his own, and he proceeds to spin a gigantic (cartoon) spiderweb all round the head of the dozing live-action cartoonist.

'Trapped' is not as funny as 'Ko-Ko's Earth Control' (few cartoons are!), but it's visually innovative, and you and your kids will enjoy it. The black-and-white footage of a real mouse is not likely to disturb anybody. I'll rate this delightful toon 8 out of 10.

Dave 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. 'Trapped' is not one of the best Ko-Ko cartoons, it is decent but most Ko-Ko cartoons are much better than decent which does make 'Trapped' disappointing.

'Trapped' agreed is too long by about 4 or 5 minutes. It does affect the pacing, another criticism concurred with, having a tendency to drag.

While amusing and fun on the most part, the stuff with Ko-Ko and the spider could have been trimmed, the momentum is not always there and it is here where 'Trapped' most tends to lose energy. It's all a little disjointed, there are two stories here and it just feels like two different cartoons.

However, Ko-Ko is very likeable and fun to watch and the spider is an at times creepy, very visually interesting and just as fun opponent. Max doesn't disappoint in the entertainment value either and neither does his battles with the visually innovative for the time mouse.

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, 'Trapped does look great and the spider and mouse look very intriguing and wonderfully strange.

Even though not hilarious or imaginative, the humour is timed well and amuses as well as suitably bizarre. There is evidence of breezy pacing which would have been more consistent and tighter had the cartoon been shorter.

Overall, decent but could have been better. 6/10 Bethany Cox