Category Archives: Spooky Cartoons

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Jack Frost (1934)

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THE CARTOON CRYPT

A great ComiColor cartoon from Ub Iwerks… my daughter Esther’s newest favorite. It has a fun soundtrack too… note the scarecrow Cab Calloway tribute, presumably influenced by the Fleischer Betty Boop cartoons Snow White (1933) and Minnie the Moocher (1932)… the scarecrow even appears to be rotoscoped a bit, I suspect. The soundtrack is by the one and only Carl Stalling… he really got around in the 30’s. I’ve extracted the soundtrack as an mp3 which you can download here. Right time of year for this one too, as the leaves begin to turn…

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that this cartoon appears to feature the same bear family that is ruthlessly abused a year later in the previously mentioned cartoon The Three Bears.

Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database.

This cartoon, along with almost all of Ub Iwerks cartoons for his own studio, are available on the excellent DVDs The Cartoons that time Forgot Volume One and Volume Two. Jack Frost is on Volume 2.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: The Cobweb Hotel (1936)

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THE CARTOON CRYPT

Another great cartoon from the Max Fleischer Color Classics series.

You can get all but one of the Color Classics on this great DVD set called Somewhere in Dreamland:

I’ve noticed a couple additional things worth noting going through the DVD set. First of all, the color on some of the cartoons, although still seemingly faded, is hugely improved over the other versions of them that I’ve seen… this is particularly obvious comparing versions of Hawaiian Birds. Also, in the version of Peeping Penguins included, the song “Curiosity Killed the Cat” is curiously missing from the soundtrack, which is a damn shame. I haven’t checked it against my other version of it, but it seemed like this version may have been shorter as well. In spite of these relatively minor flaws, this is still an incredible set of cartoons. You can click the above image to order it.

Read more about this cartoon on The Big Cartoon Database.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: The Mascot (1933)

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THE CARTOON CRYPT

A great, great short by Ladislaw Starewicz, The Mascot, in three parts. I posted a short excerpt from this cartoon previously… this is the full cartoon at a much better quality. The Mascot is one of the most bizarre and beautiful puppet animations I’ve ever seen. And it has a monkey! Don’t miss it!

Part 1

Part 2

Part3

Read more about Ladislaw Starewicz at Animation Heaven and Hell.

Read more about Ladislaw Starewicz at Wikipedia.

See a tribute site to Ladislaw Starewicz made by his granddaughter.

For more old cartoons with monkeys, go here.

THE CARTOON CRYPT: Scrappy in Let’s Ring Doorbells (1935)

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I was curious to find some Charles Mintz cartoons, as I haven’t seen many of them. There aren’t a whole lot of them out there on the internets yet… he produced this one for Columbia, and it is directed by Art Davis. Mintz is probably best known these days for screwing Walt Disney out of the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This beautifully animated cartoon starts slow, but boy does it get twisted. Alcoholism, child abduction and endangerment, gunfire, racism… yep, they don’t make ’em like this any more. If you are easily offended, you may not want to watch this one.

Believe it or not, there is a really nice site out there dedicated to Scrappy… SCRAPPYLAND.