Lonesome Ghosts

Hey gang- here's another great cartoon!

This is one of the many Disney cartoons I saw as a kid, over and over and over again on VHS, taped off TV.

As an adult, a part of me finds the Warner Brothers cartoons more appropriate to my tastes- the humor is sharper, the characters better. The prevailing opinion is that while Warner Brothers had better gags and more appealing characters, Disney excelled in smooth, technically brilliant animation. So with a Disney cartoon, you're less likely to actually laugh out loud.

This sounds about right to me... think about Bugs Bunny's wit vs. Mickey Mouse's personality, or lack thereof. On the other hand, Donald Duck, while somewhat narrowly defined, is one of the funniest cartoon characters to watch. More about him in a future post. For now, let's get down to my insane-obsessive analysis.

First of all, look at these bums, lying around, waiting for the phone to ring. This cartoon came out in 1937 – 47 years before Danny Aykroyd & company captured our imaginations with Ghostbusters. Now that's forward-thinking!

I also love the idea of trying to catch ghosts with shotguns and nets. At around the five minute mark, Donald even punches a ghost in the face. Who would think of doing this?

The ghosts' voices are funny to me too- the creators just added a weird echo to them to make them sound "otherworldly" or something, but it's a 1930's effect so it sounds like they're in a bathroom stall or something. I love it- it's one of those details that brings me back to watching it as a kid.

This above is the kind of thing you see more of in the Disney shorts. Both Disney and WB showed you crazy things you couldn't see in real life, but while a Bugs Bunny cartoon might be filled with quotable dialogue, shorts like this were more based around complex visual gags. Mickey bouncing off the door (twice), then having to catch his balance before pulling the door to the floor. It's the kind of thing you can only see in cartoons and here is rendered beautifully- the timing, the subtle details that go by before you even realize they're happening.

Mickey catching his balance after bouncing off the wall is one of those moments I love. It happens so fast you barely notice it, but goes so far in terms of bringing life to the character.

Here's another one of those visual gags- this is a fairly long, slapsticky scene of Goofy getting caught up in this armoire-type thing. He's not saying anything particularly funny, but the animation is executed perfectly so it's great to watch.

I haven't seen this one in years, I can't imagine why these old cartoons are never on TV anymore. Kids would still love them. Youtube is great!

The Old Grey Hare

Hey everybody, here's a great cartoon:

A couple of thoughts: first of all, Elmer Fudd has to have the greatest cartoon voice of all time (provided by Arthur Q. Bryan, not Mel

Blanc as I always assumed). They always tried to work in lines that

sounded especially hilarious in his voice - like "My, that weawwy was a dewicious weg of wamb."

In this one he goes "What happened- I'm aaaalll winckled." And it's GREAT.

Bugs Bunny shows up as a rascally old coot, torments Elmer til he gets himself shot, and then, as always happens in situations like this, Elmer feels terrible and cries, "So wong, old fwiend!" There's so much good stuff in this cartoon.

Back in these days, they used full animation (as opposed to limited animation- an explanation can be found halfway down the page here) and drew so many details... and they happened so fast, you might miss them. With limited animation, the characters hold their poses so you have time to dwell on every nuance. These Golden Age characters keep moving. Like when God is talking to Elmer and he's looking around- and does this funny little twist to look behind him:

Or when Bugs is "dying" and says, "who turned out the lights?" and Elmer looks around to see what he's talking about, for some reason:

Look how horrifying this frame is! A demonic Bugs Bunny is strangling an old man!

I could go on but this cartoon speaks for itself. Maybe I'll do more of these at some point.

UPDATE: Aparently this cartoon was removed from Youtube due to a copyright violation from Warner Bros. I'm not going to bother searching for and re-posting right now, because I imagine it will just get taken down again, but if you can find it on Google video or anywhere, I highly recommend checking it out.