The Introverted Detective

 I'm taking my time reading my next book review, so for now, you'll get more 1930s content. Today I picked a short film starring Laurel and Hardy. Let's get into it.  Courtesy of Pinterest Made in 1932, I'm reviewing Helpmates. This is an MGM production. The basic plot is simple. Hardy (Oliver Hardy) had a wild party and Laurel (Stan Laurel) gets a call from Hardy to help clean up, because Hardy's wife was coming home at noon. With all the physical comedy and verbal jokes (this is a talky) I expected, they mess it all up. Hardy comes home to a house burned down because Laurel tried to make a fire and spilled something flammable. Also, his wife is not with him when he returns.  I've grown up watching Laurel and Hardy films. My dad loves these two actors and this era. The top films on my watch list are films I've already seen. This was lower on the ranked list I have. I wanted to watch something I'd never seen before. I do remember one of the lines, so it...

 Today we review the cartoon Dizzy Dishes from 1930, starring Betty Boop. This features her original design as a dog (dog ears instead of earrings). She was originally the girlfriend of Bimbo the dog. Eventually, Bimbo left the screen and Betty Boop became her own character. Let's get into it.  Courtesy of YouTube.com This was a Fleischer Studios production. Betty Boop is property of Paramount. Popeye is also a Fleischer Studios production. Paramount has everything Fleischer at this point. Fleischer Studios went under after Disney outperformed them and out-marketed them. For more on Fleischer Studios,  click this link. Overall Thoughts This cartoon was a bit hard to hear the words on at brief moments. Why? Because sound quality in old talkies isn't the greatest. It was 6 minutes at most, but I have thoughts. It mostly stars Bimbo the dog and has one song by Betty Boop (with her boop boop be doop line) while she sings. Bimbo sings that line back to her while falling in lov...

 This year's Snow White got mixed reactions, but what about this 7 minute short of Betty Boop as Snow White? Did you know that the Disney Snow White (1937) uses an animator who job-hopped to Disney from Fleischer?  Courtesy of IMDB.com - Yes, the icicles are singing. Disney took animators from Fleischer all the time, it turns out. Snow White, as Disney did it, was using a previously Fleischer Studios animator (after Disney was quite impressed by his talents). Fleischer made a Snow White before Disney did, but it looked quite different than the one Disney made. Imagine Betty Boop and KoKo the clown starring in Snow White. That's our short for today. Who's KoKo the clown? He's a character Fleischer used to animate.  Overall Thoughts Oh my, there are so many. First of all, Fleischer gets weird and you have to see it to understand. Cab Calloway is KoKo and sings about "wanting crap shooting poll bearers" and it's kind of cool, except as usual, a lot of anatomi...

 Porky in Wackyland is a cartoon starring Porky Pig, released in 1938 by Warner Brothers. Porky is looking for a do-do bird and ends up in Wackyland. Let's get into it.  Courtesy of alchetron.com Porky in Wackyland starts off with a typical WB opening, goes into a newspaper picture of Porky with a headline announcing his intentions to get a rare do-do bird, and then shows him flying there. I see some sort of Lindbergh resemblance in this. From there it becomes a little ominous when he lands in "darkest africa" and reads a sign for Wackyland that says "it can happen here" (with an added deep voice to repeat the phrase). From here, I'll just give you the link to the archive:  Watch the original in black and white here. Anyway, it's an odd one. It's taking inspiration from Alice in Wonderland. It's the most nonsensical thing ever. It may also scare your kids. You even see a cat-dog reference that looks kind of like the Cat-Dog show many years later ...