Mysterious Mose

I saw this piece as the opening work at a funky little church-basement art film festival a good twenty-five years ago. When it was over the entire audience stood up and cheered. Then they made the projectionist show it two more times! As with all good Fleischer cartoons the transformations (this guy invented morphing) were breathtaking, the music was fantastic, and the synchrony between the two was literally stunning. it's head-and-shoulders above 99% of what's out there in animation. I've been looking for a video copy of this ever since.

It's hard to believe that this amazing cartoon runs slightly less than six minutes. Somehow those wildly imaginative animators at the Fleischer Studio managed to pack a lifetime supply of nightmare imagery, sexual gags, dreamlike transformations, and stupefying weirdness into this brief black & white short. And they make it look easy! It takes a couple of viewings to absorb it all, and even then it leaves you feeling dazed.

First there was Walter Doyle's song: "Mysterious Mose" was recorded by several bands in the spring of 1930, several months before this film was released. It's a great, jaunty novelty tune with a Halloween-like atmosphere, all about a ghostly character who roams the land and scares everyone silly. The rendition by Bobby Dixon's Broadcasters is a really cool record, complete with slide whistles and other "haunted house" sound effects, but the version in this cartoon is even better. The mood set by the song, combined with the genius of these animators, makes for a genuinely eerie experience.

We first see a young woman huddled in her bed, pop-eyed with fright as the wind howls outside, and mysterious moans and thumps are heard. She's an embryonic version of Betty Boop, not yet the Betty we know. She's so scared her hair turns from black to gray and back again. A ghostly shape appears in bed alongside her, but when she lifts the covers she finds no one there. From under the sheets her nightdress jumps right off her body and she has to grab it back again. (A gag so nice they use it twice.) Even Betty's big toes come to life, huddle together, and pull the covers over themselves in fright. Why? In a trembling, girlish voice, Betty sings to us about that man of mystery who is roaming the land. We first see Mose in silhouette as his shadow glides along a fence. (He's "portrayed" by Bimbo, the studio's familiar dog character.) When a cat yowls at him, he smacks it so hard it's reduced to nine kittens! Soon thereafter, Mysterious Mose enters Betty's house through the keyhole, and then the serious hallucinations kick in.

The next couple of minutes are just wild, and better seen than described. Let it suffice to say that Mose sails through the air like a blob of ectoplasm, singing and bringing bric-a-brac to life; the moose-head over the fireplace joins in the song; a mouse pops out of Mose's shoe and plays the flute; a monkey pops out from under the rug and plays a trumpet; then several goldfish emerge from his trumpet and "swim" through the air before morphing together and transforming into a single, huge caterpillar, who finishes the song on his saxophone.

There's more, but you just have to see for yourself. I love animation from the silent days right through the heyday of Bugs Bunny, but there was nobody who did it quite like the Fleischer gang, and Mysterious Mose is one of their mini-masterpieces of Surrealism.

This cartoon, Max Fleischer's Mysterious Mose, was one of the early ones that starred a girl voiced by Mae Questel who would be eventually known as Betty Boop, here drawn with dog ears. She's all alone in bed at night and scared because she finds a human bulge in her blanket and literally has her shirt float out of her twice! (though we don't see her naked body!) She then sings the title song as her head pops forward and back. That's before we see who the stranger is. It's Bimbo, the one who's actually credited above the title here. Then he sings the song as all sorts of surreal morphing come about...A little atmospheric in the beginning with some good humor provided before the surreal musical finish makes this one of the more entertaining of the early sound Fleischer cartoons. This one is well worth a look for animation buffs.

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.

The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. That charm, sensuality and adorable factor is not lost anywhere here, nor her comic timing and she is very well supported by the ever fun Bimbo in a more surreal role to usual.

'Mysterious Mose' is for me among the better early period Betty Boop cartoons. It has all the elements that make her pre-Code cartoons so worthwhile and does do so much, almost everything, right and little wrong. Story-wise, will agree somewhat that it is very slight and not too hard to figure out.

However, the animation is outstanding, everything is beautifully and meticulously drawn and the whole cartoon is rich in visual detail and imagination. Every bit as good is the music score, which delivers on the energy, lusciousness and infectiousness, great for putting anybody in a good mood.

As hoped, the fun is ceaseless, with some very well timed and funny gags, and delivers on the creativity and imagination as well as (for Betty Boop especially) a surprising darkness and surrealism. As well as a raciness that one associates pre-code Betty Boop with. The voice work and such is good.

In summary, Betty Boop fans will find a lot to enjoy here in 'Mysterious Mose'. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This short has most of the strengths and none of the weaknesses of the early Fleischer sound shorts. The Fleischers were almost invariably well animated and had odd and wonderful touches scattered throughout the cartoon. Watch the early stages of fright with Betty and various objects in the bedroom. The title song is quite memorable, the scoring helps set the mood and it gets quite scary here and there. This is the kind of thing the Fleischers did extremely well. They did this type of thing better later on in the Betty Boop series in shorts like Old Man of the Mountain, Bimbo's Initiation and Snow White. This cartoon was probably an early attempt at this type of spooky short-sort of a trial run. The ending is very good here. This is on VHS as part of Betty Boop-The Definitive Collection. Most recommended.