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Oh man, this is a good one: Scrappy in 'The Gloom Chasers' animated by Art Davis and Sid Marcus and released January 18, 1935. Okay, I know all you Warners fans out there see this stuff as kind of squishy and pointless. Maybe even the artists who drew it felt that way (tho Marcus & Davis certainly had help) but that's not what I see on screen. In fact, the quality of the animation is quite exceptional in my opinion. Lively stuff. Plus the sort of weird touches that one might expect of a studio in New York. Mintz Studios was, after all, a transplanted NY studio and, at various times, employed artists migrating west from that city. It's hard to believe a year later the series would crash against the rocks with stuff like 'Scrappy's Camera Troubles'! . I've read that Sony is now in the process of making their library available on-demand. Let's hope someone over there likes cartoons! Ya all know a blown out 16mm (though I'm glad to have anything) in crummy Blog-O-Vision is no match for the fine grain of a 35. Ah man, I need a spit cup just to think about it!
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Fruity children are here to dance your blues away ... four times!
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"Take that teeny tiny twubble". Sure it's annoying but after the third pass you'll be humming it all day. But stick it through ... bizarre stuff is gonna happen!
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I love the incidental characters in Mintz cartoons. Davis' style was a tad blander than Huemer's (he began as Huemer's assistant) but still interesting to look at. Oh, and Scottish people are cheap (even though they are probably quite generous).
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A similar set-up a la Huemer era Scrappy (Sunday Clothes, 1931).
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Of course, the dust bowl was no laughing matter during the depression. People in that area of the country were giving up. Suicide was rampant and people just starved to death. I think, after living through something like that, I might want a little triteness. Or perhaps the whole thing was a gag. Culhane wrote in his auto-bio that people in Florida laughed at 'The Grapes of Wrath'. Who knows?
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and speaking of ... haven't we been here before? Y'know I'll agree we see too much of this cycle but you know what else: It's a really nicely animated cycle. I love the perspective as the boys draw their fingers across the plane of the camera pointing right at the audience. These were the days when audiences might sing along in a theater if they liked the song!
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Hillbillies are enraged by fruity children (leatherface not pictured)
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'Gloom Chasers' answers the question: "Yes, but what of the pitchfork?"
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Sweaty horses are aroused by young boys.
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The cow transforms from hideous ...
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...to hideous!
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and the clouds do their auto-erotic cellulite dance.
What more could you ask for?
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