Popeye The Sailor: 1933-1938

A Review by Matthew Hunter

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Well, blow me down! For the first time in the history of home video, Popeye the Sailor has been given an official release. You can throw out those bargain-bin Public Domain discs and the awful redrawn color versions you taped off Cartoon Network now. Well, unless you have a copy of "The Organ Grinder's Swing" with the correct credits.

It seems no classic cartoon DVD set from Warner Home Video, (or anyone else for that matter) is going to be 100% flawless. As it turns out, several cartoons on Popeye The Sailor: 1933-1938 have had their opening credits reconstructed, and in some cases, digitally recreated. The result is very authentic-looking, if you overlook a slip-up on the short "Organ Grinder's Swing", erroneously given the wrong credits! The "original masters" these prints supposedly came from may have been missing the opening titles, or the titles were in rough shape. Either that, or "original masters" is a term Warner Home Video is using loosely. 

Credit goof-up aside, these cartoons have never looked better. Everything is crisp, clear, and presented in glorious black and white. The two color cartoons presented here, the Technicolor 2-reelers "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor" and "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves" , are stunning, and a true revelation if you're like me and have only seen faded, beat-up prints of these on TV and video. The amazing hand-constructed 3D set pieces that were lost in Turner's redrawn colorization process and dulled by faded prints now catch the eye immediately, and are a joy to look at. The cave in "Ali Baba" and the neighborhood in "Protek The Weakerist" are particular standouts.

The cartoons also sound great, there is no crackle, hiss or echo anywhere. The original songs written especially for the cartoons sound clear as a bell, and when Popeye beats somebody up to the tune of either his theme song or "Stars and Stripes", it's just as rousing as it must have been to theater audiences in the thirties.

The set presents the cartoons chronologically, and it's fun to see Popeye, Bluto, Olive Oyl and co. develop over a 5-year period. Before finally hitting their stride with the Popeye series, the Fleischer studio went through 2 Popeye voices before finally settling on Jack Mercer, a couple of shorts where Olive's voice is not that of Mae Questel, and even a couple of different Bluto voices before settling on Gus Wickie. Popeye himself is a bit rougher around the edges in earlier shorts...often punching through walls to get where he's going, for no apparent reason other than to prove he can! There are also a few cartoons that feature a villain other than Bluto. Eventually, the plots of the cartoons became simpler, and audiences came to expect that, at some point, there was going to be an elaborate fight scene between Popeye and Bluto. The setting of the cartoon (Construction site, apartment, blacksmith shop, barbershop, diner, etc.) gave Bluto and Popeye an entire arsenal of things to throw at one another and/or throw each other into. These slapstick brawls are a real thrill to watch, and, sadly, remind us all of what can't be done in American cartoons being produced today. A lot of Japanese anime series have some pretty brutal fights, but they're not near as well-staged or as creative as these! You won't see SpongeBob Squarepants punching Patrick in the jaw, throwing a chest of drawers at him and then pounding him through a brick wall! You also won't find a villain as deserving of a beat-down as Bluto. Originally a one-shot character in the Segar comics that inspired the series, the Fleischers chose Bluto as Popeye's chief nemesis. Bluto is an enormous, bearded thug of a sailor who finds joy in bullying others to get his way. He frequently kidnaps Olive Oyl, and also does dirty deeds like spraying mud on windows to boost his window-washing business, abusing his ferry-boat passengers, abusing animals, and worst of all...keeping Wimpy from his hamburgers! Bluto beats the living daylights out of Popeye any chance he gets, but once Popeye eats his trademark spinach, it's all over for the "big palooka". Popeye himself, despite being gruff, bald and one-eyed, is an extremely likeable character. He beats people up, sure, but only when they deserve it. Even though Olive Oyl constantly snubs him in favor of Bluto or some other interloper, Popeye is still loyal to her and always bails her out of trouble. He even gives Bluto a fair chance...despite their rough history, Popeye will still pal around with Bluto as long as he doesn't double-cross him...which almost always happens! Popeye will give anyone the benefit of the doubt, always keeps his word and is a friend to all, but will not tolerate injustice to himself or others, and always has a strength-boosting can of spinach handy to put troublemakers in their place.

Once Jack Mercer and Gus Wickie hit their stride as the voices of Popeye and Bluto, the dialogue became pricelessly funny. With Popeye muttering under his breath and Bluto growling through his teeth, there was little need to animate synchronized lip motion, thus the dialogue for these films was recorded post-animation. This left room for Mercer and Wickie to improvise and ad-lib. For example, a fight aboard an airplane prompts Popeye to crack "I doesn't likes yer altitude!" The dialogue in "What, No Spinach?" is hilarious, with Bluto as the owner of a diner, Wimpy as his cook and Popeye as the frustrated customer. It gives the cartoons a spontaneous, loose feel. The animators also threw in lots of twists and gags on the traditional Popeye-vs.-Bluto formula. In "I Likes Babies and Infinks", Popeye, Olive and Bluto try to stop baby Swee'pea from crying, which eventually results in Popeye and Bluto trying to one-up each other with funny antics to make the kid laugh. It quickly degenerates into a brawl in Olive's kitchen. When Popeye reaches for the spinach, he grabs a can of strong onions instead, making everyone cry, except Swee'pea, who finds it hilarious! It's really a testament to good cartoons in general: You don't need lots of bright colors, shrill voices and rude jokes to be entertaining, just good characters, a simple plot, and lots of humor and heart.

Cartoon-wise, my personal favorites on this collection include: "Shoein' Hosses", "A Dream Walking", "Beware of Barnacle Bill", "Dizzy Divers", "A Clean Shaven Man", "Brotherly Love", "What, No Spinach?" " Sindbad the Sailor", "I Never Changes My Altitude",  and "I Likes Babies and Infinks"....but they're all great and I'm sure you'll come up with your own list of favorites. The whole experience was a treat for me, having never seen some of these cartoons before, and some I hadn't seen in black and white.

The documentaries on this set are interesting, especially "I Yam what I Yam: The Story of Popeye the Sailor", which covers the entire history of the character. There are also brief featurettes about the characters, voices and music of the cartoons. There's also the very nice bonus of a documentary about early silent animation, and a nice selection of silent cartoons from not only the Fleischer studio, but Bray, Sullivan and others as well. They're not "restored" per se, but they're interesting curios that look decent and are a welcome sampler of early animation. The commentaries on the shorts vary from informative to obnoxious, and don't cover anything that the documentaries don't touch on already. Those by Jerry Beck, Greg Ford, and Daniel Goldmark are worth checking out, and Michael Barrier's take on "King of the Mardi Gras" has some interesting information about Jack Mercer. Otherwise, those done by contemporary animators are pretty disposable. John Kricfalusi makes some interesting, sometimes funny, observations, but he's brought along his own peanut gallery in the form of animator Eddie Fitzgerald and an animation student named Kali who are just plain annoying.

In summary, this is the DVD set cartoon fans have been waiting for since the dawn of home video. It's not perfect, but considering how nice this stuff looks despite being over 70 years old, and that it is all presented in its original format in chronological order, there's not much room to complain. Despite the credit mistakes, I can find no flaws with the shorts themselves, no audio problems, no censorship, and no DVNR to speak of. The packaging is nice, too, with great drawings of Popeye, Olive, Bluto, Swee'pea, and, for some reason, the Jeep (who doesn't appear on this set, but...they mention him in the documentaries.) If you are a fan of animation, you should have this DVD, and any future volumes, in your collection.