Part 2: The Next 149 Cartoons

Own it now on DVD

Disc 4: The Grampy & Pudgy Show Featuring Betty Boop...plus: Christmas, Iwerks, and More (54 cartoons)

We now return to the comfort zone, more or less. For starters, here are 19 more NTA/U.M.&M. Betty Boop titles -- and now 100% post-Code, which means not only a Pudgy pup-pa-palooza, but better still, a near-complete tour of the world of "Prof." Grampy, one of the finest late-period Fleischer Studios characters. "House Cleaning Blues" gives us a shining late example of the Fleischer 3-D tabletop background technique, while "Betty Boop and Grampy" -- though not the fine Paramount-intro-and-outro version found in P.U.P. Toons© Episode 1 courtesy of Tom Stathes (your loss there, Mill Creek!) -- comes from a better-quality PD source than usually is the case. Also, Grampy matches wits with Irving, "The Impractical Joker," and, for the only time in his on-screen run, does not quite come out on top (hey, not even Popeye was perfect!). As to Betty's further solo appearances, those high points on Disc 4 are "No! No! A Thousand Times No!" from 1935 (with some very subtle reminders of what the Code had airbrushed away just months earlier) and "Musical Mountaineers" from 1939, her second-from-last bow in the Golden Age. Let's quickly dismiss the bogus B&W copy of "Poor Cinderella" that also got in somehow.

Fittingly, then, "Christmas Comes But Once a Year" -- Grampy's only Color Classic outing (and this one does in fact appear in color, a la U.M.&M.) -- headlines the seasonal portion of this disc, together with a somewhat splice-y print (is there any other kind?) of the 1944 Jam Handy version of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" produced and directed by Max Fleischer; "The Candlemaker," a highly reverent late 1950s entry from Halas & Batchelor, produced for the United Lutheran Church; and "Jack Frost," the 1934 Ub Iwerks ComiColor short.

So now you want more Iwerks works, eh? Well, Mill Creek's got six other titles listed on the Disc 4 sleeve as "Other," all ComiColor entries as well ("The Big Bad Wolf" and "Old Mother Hubbard" among them, though not in a whup-each-other-upside-the-head crossover, sad to say). If you want to see them in pristine shape, I'll have to direct you toward the "Cartoons That Time Forgot" DVD series from Image Entertainment...but, if just-watchable Iwerks fun is OK with you, stick around.

That will also keep you away (at least for a while) from the 22 additional "New Three Stooges" episodes which round out this disc. While that series does have its occasional pleasant moments, as sprinkled throughout this package, you'll hit the threshing floor hard when/if you click on "Dinopoodi" -- easily the leading nominee for Cambria Studios' all-time low point, which I realize is saying quite a lot. If you're blissfully unfamiliar with that title, imagine the animated Stooges going all animated Abbott & Costello on us after encountering a mutant dog-o-saurus that inherited Wonder Wart-Hog's snout. (And if you're entirely unfamiliar with Wonder Wart-Hog, pop that legendary 1960s character's name into your search engine. Then, let yourself forget that I ever mentioned...er...whatever the title of that last short might have been.)

Disc 5: More of Everybody, plus Oswald, Alice, and the Return of "Other" (44 cartoons)

Gather 'round, kids! It's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Time for fans of Popeye and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit combined. As with the painfully sound-impaired Fleischer Color Classics on Disc 3, so for the Sailor Man with "I Never Changes My Altitude" (or "...Attitude," as Mill Creek would have it per the Disc 5 sleeve) and, if you squint in the direction of extreme left field, "Quiet! Pleeze." Along with "The Paneless Window Washer" and three other Popeye shorts that fare somewhat better in presentation, these are all A.A.P. versions, of course. Meanwhile, in Oswald's neighborhood, we get something resembling two Disney entries ("Great Guns" and "The Mechanical Cow") and one Lantz short ("The Plumber"), each retrofitted with an "Oswald Rabbit Presents" intro plus "period soundtrack" where "needed," and (naturally) stripped of all manner of credits. Gee whiskers, it's enough to make you hallucinate that you're suddenly watching an authentic early 1950s local TV cartoon show instead of SpongeBob (which, put that way, would still be a quantum improvement even so).

But now that all the lawyers have left the room, we can move along to the rest of the attractions on Disc 5. That guy who introduced Oswald (hey, are you sure the lawyers took off? OK, thanks) is further represented here by three Alice Comedies also sullied with oddball soundtracks ("Alice Rattled by Rats," "Alice the Toreador," and "Alice's Tin Pony"). Back in safer PD territory, "Molly Moo-Cow and the Butterflies" from Van Beuren's Rainbow Parade group joins the mix, while Felix is back in earnest with eight more well-traveled entries, six in B&W (including "Felix in Hollywood") and two in color. Little Lulu and Little Audrey also return to resume their battle of Gold vs. Brass begun back on Disc 2 -- "A Bout With a Trout" vs. "The Seapreme Court," anyone? -- as do Casper, Gabby, Van Beuren's Tom & Jerry, and a handful of Aesop's Fables entries (again hidden under the "Other" category).

Disc 6: Hunky & Spunky & Cousins (51 cartoons)

So, which vintage characters get the star turn next? That honor goes to Fleischer Studios' lovable (?) mother-and-son donkey team, Hunky and Spunky, with Disc 6 anchored by six out of the seven Color Classics to have featured them from 1938 through 1941 (the seventh can be found back on Disc 3, for some reason). Among these, if memory serves, "A Kick in Time" (via Matinee at the Bijou) has been perhaps the most widely exposed H&S short in recent years-outside of the cheesy TV prints of all seven seen here, of course -- which is nothing to kick about. Anyway, once you hear little Spunky braying "Mom-mee! Mom-mee!" for the first time, you'll know exactly where you are. Plus, there's at least that darned catchy H&S theme song, used to best effect in their eponymous Academy Award-nominated debut (hum, hum, hum, "Keep a-movin', keep a-movin'..."), to keep you from movin' to punch Disc Skip for at least another 40 minutes.

Now to the ballast: Four more Mr. Piper space-fillers (alas) as on Disc 2, plus a somewhat more rewarding assortment of 41 "Other" shorts from Famous (Screen Songs, one-off Noveltoons, Herman & Henry, Dogface, etc.), Fleischer ("Granite Hotel" from the Stone Age series, and still more Color Classics, including "Somewhere in Dreamland"), Van Beuren, Ub Iwerks, Jam Handy ("A Coach for Cinderella," featuring Nicky Nome), and out of Australia, Eric Porter Studios ("Bimbo's Auto," starring not-quite-the-"Bimbo"-you-might-expect).

To Be Continued... in Part 3: Another 151 Cartoons