Product Details

• Format: Animated, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Republic Pictures
• VHS Release Date: September 2, 1994
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302729971
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #317,859 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fleischer Treasure, December 13, 1999

By 

Scott T. Rivers (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cartoon Madness: Fantastic Max Fleischer [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Cartoon Madness" is an excellent historic overview of animation pioneers Max and Dave Fleischer, featuring beautifully restored 35mm prints of some of their best shorts. The highlights include rarely seen color classics such as "Poor Cinderella," "Dancing on the Moon" and the two-reel "Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy." Fleischer surrealism is represented by Betty Boop's "Snow White," "Bimbo's Initiation" and "Ko-Ko's Earth Control" - all terrific. However, there should have been a little more emphasis on the Popeye and Superman cartoons, which remain among the Fleischers' finest achievements. Apart from that minor flaw, "Cartoon Madness" proves once and for all that Max and Dave had more flair than Disney.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No better tribute to the genius of "Uncle Max", December 2, 2002

By 

Rachel Newstead "finder of forgotten animation" (Appleton, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cartoon Madness: Fantastic Max Fleischer [VHS] (VHS Tape)

He was a master cartoonist, animator and inventor. He brought popular comics characters such as Popeye and Superman to vibrant life. His innovations, such as "rotoscoping" and the use of three-dimensional backgrounds, surpass even those of Walt Disney and his right-hand man Ub Iwerks. Yet while his work has received increased attention in recent years, Max Fleischer remains largely unknown.

Hosted by film critic and animation fan Leonard Maltin, "Cartoon Madness" is light on narration, preferring to let the body of Fleischer's work speak for itself. And to large measure it does--we see rare footage from the silent days, when Fleischer clearly led the industry (before a certain young upstart from Kansas City named Disney showed up, anyway). Shown at one point is a brief clip of a 1926 sound cartoon, "My Old Kentucky Home," which predated Walt's "Steamboat Willie" by two years. We discover, at last, that those highly detailed backgrounds weren't actually drawn--they were built! In a process devised and patented by Fleischer himself, animation cels were photographed vertically against miniature sets, allowing characters to move in a world with real depth.

Cartoons that have received little airplay in recent years are presented here, such as Betty Boop's solo color outing, "Poor Cinderella" (Myron Waldman, a longtime animator for Fleischer's studio and its successor Famous Studios, once said the color process was invented by Max himself.) Once again, we're allowed to see the sumptuous detail of the "Superman" series, the most expensive animated shorts made up to that time. The series proved that the animators could do more than bizarre funny animals and Popeye cartoons--"Superman" was better drawn in the Fleischer incarnation than in the original comic book stories. Shadows, a feeling of weight and dimension, and realistic movement were hallmarks of the series, and one wonders immediately why they're not more often seen.

Alas, for all his technical brilliance, Max was a poor businessman and an even poorer judge of public taste. Studio infighting and severe financial reverses, Maltin tells us, led to Fleischer's downfall. Ironically, Fleischer faltered by doing the one thing he'd avoided for most of his career--imitating his rival Disney. When Walt premiered "Snow White" in December 1937, Max persuaded Paramount executives to build a brand-new, ultramodern animation complex in Miami, where he would start work on his first feature, an adaptation of "Gulliver's Travels." Audiences, however, failed to warm up to Gulliver as they had Snow White and her seven companions. Fleischer's subsequent effort, "Mr. Bug Goes To Town," did equally badly. The latter film, as we can see from clips presented in this documentary, was expertly animated, but it could not halt the studio's plunge into bankruptcy. Control reverted to Paramount in 1942 and Fleischer was fired, ending an era which had lasted more than a quarter of a century.

If you love classic animation, or if you're a Fleischer fan who wants to see the classic Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons in all their original brilliance, buy this tape. It's well worth the price of purchase.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun for the whole family, December 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cartoon Madness: Fantastic Max Fleischer [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I love this tape. You don't have to be a kid to enjoy the classic work of the Fleischer studios. Their animation techniques were far ahead of their time and their humor was brilliantly deranged. It's a shame they aren't still around, but with this tape, we can at least get a taste of their genius. This one should be on DVD.