Snow-White

When the Simpsons or other modern animations try to create the "old style" cartoons from the 20's or 30's they tend to do it by having black and white figures constantly bopping around in motion even when standing on the spot not doing anything. That is the style that is here in this 1933 version of Snow White. The plot is essentially an evil stepmother seeks to kill Snow White when her magic mirror turns its affections to the younger woman but from here we have some variety in the telling as the dwarfs are hardly in it and instead we spend a lot of time with a ghost singing a Cab Calloway song in some sort of hellish underground mine.

As a version of the story is not where you want to go for the story, but as a cartoon it is very enjoyable because it is creative and fluid in what it does. The first half is pretty good and I liked it for its old style animation and sense of character but the second half is much better when the song starts and we focus on this ghost character changing shape etc in time to the words and music. This continues with the bizarre way to deal with the evil stepmother and I liked the image of her transformed and then flipped inside out by one of the characters. The animation does have this great vision to it – as another IMDb writer here has said, if this was done in the 1960's we would have said the guy was stoned but that it was a real trip; it does say a lot that this cartoon from the 1930's fitted in so easily with the style in the 60's and 70's.

It is worth seeing because although it not a hilarious cartoon it is creative with the animation and all has a very nice flow to it – and the addition of Cab Calloway singing just adds to the appeal.

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.

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!!

Most of this cartoon is top-notch Fleischer fare and definitely worth watching, but there's one part that makes it absolutely stand out: the darkly hypnotic scene where Koko the Clown sings an elegy in Cab Calloway's voice in the underworld while Betty Boop is marched down in her glass coffin by pallbearers. The first time I saw it, it was literally breathtaking; all conversation in the room stopped as soon as Calloway started singing, and we watched, hypnotized, as Koko turns into a skeleton and dances with Calloway's moves in Hell while skeleton fish fly through the air and skeleton humans play poker deep in the background. As good as cartoons get.

Trouble starts when the queen's magic mirror says Betty Boop is fairest. Cab Calloway sings "St. James Infirmary Blues." The part of the cartoon with the Snow White story is pretty decent, though nothing really all that amazing, either. It has the distinction, I believe, of beating Walt Disney to the story, though this film does not nearly do what Disney did.

I love how when Cab Calloway appears in Betty Boop cartoons, it is always weird and sort of spooky. Now, the one with "Minnie the Moocher" is by far the stranger of these two, but this has plenty of odd moments itself. There is another Cab Calloway cartoon, and I suspect he is every bit as weird in that.