Friday, January 9, 2009

The Apache Kid


I was talking with Bob Jaques the other day when he mentioned a great and really weird cartoon I haven't thought about in a while: 'The Apache Kid' (Krazy Kat, 1930.) Bob's comment was that if the film had been silent, live action and starred Lon Chaney it could have been a horror movie. I got what he meant. The cartoon is dripping with atmosphere and it isn't much of a stretch to picture Chaney stealing Mary Philbin to his underground lair. I get a pretty strong sense of the expressionistic too in the film - a quality it shares with Universal's original horror cycle. I'm guessing this is intended to be a European local (France?) but I'm not absolutely sure. Certainly the kind of place where a depraved tiger could kidnap a girl so he could ... dance a jig! 
 



If 'Blue Angel' were cast with cats and dogs it might look like this.

I never realized that the 'Apache' of the title refers to the type of dancing.




There are no words for gags like this.

Asthmatic vents.

This character really wants to dance a jig.

2 comments:

:: smo :: said...

lighting up a camel, genius!

p spector said...

As usual, you come up with the goods. Thanks!