Snow-White

This is a classic example of cool animation. you can not get animation like this anymore, apparently it scares children, but how i do long for the sight of Betty Boop being carried in a frozen coffin by 7 dwarfs into a tunnel. it just works! for many, the Fleischer's aren't their cup of tea (not making sense, not the best animation, creepy) but for me, the animation is fun and inventive and is far more intelligent than Disney's work which i find un-stimulating at times and can drag. fair enough, they embellish the story a tad but, to be fair, they only had ten minutes and they still managed to produce innovations (the dancing, singing, transformed coco the clown has his dancemoves roto-scoped from Cab Calloway's dancing, roto-scoping was invented by them).

But, what i believe sets this out as a true gem among gems is Cab Calloway. A man with a voice that just blows me away and adds real depth to an almost over-covered song. the music is enthralling, the animation entertaining and the end product, magical. please, find this on you tube.

Betty Boop was the signature of surrealism in her time. Here she goes to visit her evil stepmother/queen, who is caught up in asking her mirror who the fairest is. She is really quite ugly, but with no competition, the mirror pretty much caters to her vanity. Then Betty Boop shows up. The stepmother tells her minions to chop off her head. They pretend to but send her off to the dwarfs. Then all kinds of weird stuff begins to happen. The Queen is able to morph into all kinds of things and also has power over the transformation of others. Betty must depend on the forest animals and other creatures to keep her safe. Eventually the evil queen pursues with very strange results. What a mind to come up with some of this stuff.

This is a wonderful short humorous cartoon, predating the Disney feature inspired by the same folk-tale.

The Wicked Witch/Queen is jealous of Betty Boop's beauty, and orders Boop's execution. Guards Bimbo and Koko are too kind hearted to carry it out. As in "Minnie The Moocher", the scene shifts to a spooky cave where we are serenaded by the voice of Cab Calloway.

The music and action mesh beautifully, keeping the momentum strong throughout. Watch carefully for a plethora of visual jokes to the sides and behind the action.

Unfortunately, most copies of this cartoon on video were taken from 1950s television prints, which cut off part of the frame.

This is perhaps as close to perfection as the Fleischer Studios achieved. A gem.

Everything about this short is fantastic! The music is perfect, the animation is superb and quite darkly creepy in spots, the story is excellent and everything fits together like a seamless jigsaw puzzle. When Koko (voiced by Cab Calloway) sings "St. James Infirmary Blues", watch his movements. The animators captured Cab Calloway's movements perfectly here. Cab Calloway is caricatured in cartoons frequently in cartoons from others studios and is quite easily recognizable as Cab Calloway in them, but this is something completely different. The character is Koko, but the walk is Calloway and it works completely. Anyone who is a fan of both Koko and Cab Calloway (I may be the only one, although I hope not) will see both characters in one place at one time, a perfect blend without either dominating. That's hard to do under any circumstance. I bow humbly to genius. You have got to see this if you love cartoons! In print and available. The tape is worth it for this one short alone (although it's excellent and there are other great shorts here as well) and is most highly recommended!!!!!! A shot from the other end of the court at the buzzer and nothing but net!!

This is another of those Betty Boop cartoons that feature two things: music and an insane storyline with wild visuals where crazy things happen one after the other. Back in the late '60s, we would have thought the cartoonists who made this had to be stoned. I say that because this is not any Snow White story you've ever seen. It's so strange, and it's almost hard to describe.

In one fairly long scene, we hear the voice of the great Cab Calloway while some ghostly spirit-like figure dances through some Dante's Infero/hello underground. It's really bizarre!

Earlier, we get the ugly queen talking several times to her "looking glass" (mirror) with dialog such as, "Am I the fairest in the place?"

The mirror answers, " If I was you, I'd hide my face!"

I'm telling you; these guys MUST have been on acid who wrote and drew some of these early Betty Boop cartoons! They are so wild, it's unbelievable.