Customer Reviews

Johnny Legend Presents: The Complete Weird Cartoons

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Well, it ain't complete and most of `em ain't weird, but THE COMPLETE WEIRD CARTOONS is fun. In fact, the only thematic glue here is the age of this collection - none were made later than 1945.
Still, there are a few gems and semi-precious stones here. There are two very early Walt Disney cartoons, "Alice's Eggplant" and "Alice the Toreador." They're a charming combination of live action and black-and-white animation. Alice was a young girl who was featured in a number of Disney's early works.
There are a few I suppose you could call weird. Charle's Bowers' "It's a Bird" and Wladyslaw Starewicz's "Frogland" and "The Devil's Ball" both employ stop-action animation rather than the usual pen-and-ink stuff. Starewicz's stuff defies brief description, Bower's "It's a Bird" is a live action/animation combo about a man who discovers a metal eating bird. If they wanted to include a really weird Betty Boop they could have done better than "Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions." They could have used "Snow White" (the Betty Boop one with Cab Calloway), or "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You," which features live-action cut-ins of a very young Louis Armstrong.
There are a few here you'll never see on Saturday morning, cut for their racist content. Ub Iwerks "Little Black Sambo" and Chuck Jone's "Inki & the Minah Bird" seem fairly tame even by today's standards. Walter Lanz's "Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat," on the other hand, is pretty bad. Jone's Inki seems no more a stereotype of a black male than Elmer Fudd is a stereotype of a white male. "Scrub Me..." will take your breath away with its overt racism.
In all, this is a fun and interesting collection. These are NOT cartoons you'll want to plunk your unattended children in front of, though.

This DVD includes all the stuff that was previously edited in the two VHS tapes. This is: " Hasher's delirium " ( 1910 ), a one minute silent cartoon by french cartoon pioneer Emil Cohl; four surreal pieces from Fleischers' studio : " Betty Boop's crazy inventions " ( 1932 ), " Crazy town " ( 1932 ), these both starring Betty Boop, and the colour cartoons " Cobwell hotel " ( 1936 ) and " Small fry " ( 1939 ), all of them directed by Dave Fleischer and produced by his brother Max; one of the gems of the compilation: " Scrap happy Daffy ", a black & white Daffy Duck's cartoon from the Second World War period by Frank Tashlin, who would later direct Jerry Lewis in some of his finest movies; an early cartoon of Chuck Jones titled "Inki and the Minah bird " ; two other gems, two examples of russian puppet-animator Ladislaw Starewicz: " Frogland " ( 1923 ), an excellent adaptation of La Fontaine's famous fable and an excerpt from "Fetiche" ( 1923 ), collected here as " Devil's ball ", about a puppet dog who descends to hell while it's trying to recover its toy-ball; Charley Bowers' first talkie " It's a bird " ( 1930 ), a bizarre stop-motion masterwork; Pat Sullivan's " Felix the cat in Non-stop fright " ( 1929 ); " In a cartoon studio" ( 1931 ) from Van Beuren studio; two Walt Disney's cartoons from Alice series: " Alice toreador " and " Alice's eggplant ", produced for his first studio in Kansas City ; Walter Lantz's " Scrub me mamma with a boogie beat "; Ub Iwerks colour cartoon " Little black Sambo " ( 1936 ); " Hold anything " ( 1930 ), starring Bosko and animated by Isadore Freleng; and various bizarre vintage cartoon commercials .

Not all the prints are of the same quality, but the compilation is very recommendable.

This is a DVD release of two old compilations originally released by Rhino. It's an interesting collection to say the least. The most interesting shorts on this disc include "Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat" a cartoon filled with racist stereotypes from Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker), "Inki and The Minah Bird" from Chuck Jones (Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry) and extremely strange "It's A Bird". The biggest complaint is the prints used are horrible and vary from Good to Down-right Poor. Also of note not all openings are cut but most of the closings are gone. Mildly Recommended.

Firstly to address the reviewer below. Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat is way more racist then any of the cartoons on the Warner Bros. Censored 11 list including Coal Black. Coal Black actully did what a lot of films did NOT do back then and actully acknowledged the blacks contribution to WWII, while Scrub Me Mama just shows them to be awfully lazy. As for Inki And The Minah Bird, this is one of Chuck Jones best cartoons and the all the gags in the film have nothing to do with Inki's ethnicity even if characiture is offensive.

Those are still instresting to see along with Betty Boop, Walt Disney's Alice Cartoons and Scrap Happy Daffy but there are a few cartoons on there which are very boring. The video and sound quality is so-so, absolutely nothing near the Looney Tunes Golden Collection or such but if you really want to see some of these cartoons which are entertaining for buffs only then it's pretty good value for money.

Rather than going for "banned" or "censored" material (see my review for CARTOON CRAZYS: BANNED & CENSORED), this collection merely aims to be "weird" and at times successfully encompasses all three categories. Other than that, there's no real theme running through the 18 cartoons and short films gathered here. Cartoon favorites like Betty Boop, Daffy Duck, and Felix the Cat are represented, along with obscure works by Walt Disney and Max Fleischer. Outrageous racial stereotypes are provided by INKI AND THE MINAH BIRD, HOLD ANYTHING, LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, and SCRUB ME MAMA WITH A BOOGIE BEAT. Bizarre examples of stop-motion animation are on view in Charley Bowers' IT'S A BIRD and Wladyslaw Starewicz's FROGLAND and THE DEVIL'S BALL.

On the downside, the print quality of some titles varies wildly, and not all the selections here can truly be categorized as "weird." Overall, this collection is best suited for animation buffs looking to augment their cartoon library.

Watching this as an adult is really a bit disturbing but yet entertaining at the same time. That tells you how much censorship has ruined and buried a lot of great vidoes.

granted, its not all reproduced in the best quality; there's some real wear and tear here- but the rough edges actually improve the 'toons in a way, and the odds and ends (like the drive in movie theater ads) give it all a real authentic feel throughout..... the Charley Bowers stop motion animated thing in it, methinks is the centerpiece, its so incredible to see the stop motion effects they used in the 1930s! They just don't make 'em like they used to.

The weirdest thing about this public domain collection of odd cartoons is the inclusion of a couple of Walt Disney cartoons here. Usually the suits at Disney can't rest easy if someone somewhere is making money off of a Disney character. Disney's creation in this set is Alice, who seems to be a real little girl superimposed upon the animation. Oddly, the characters in Alice's world have some rather Bolshevik ideas at a time when such ideas were out of fashion in the U.S.. Even more oddly, the Russian cartoon included has its characters clamoring for a king at a time right after their own had just been executed. Betty Boop is included, and she is always fun. There are also a couple of Warner creations here including the fun "Hold Anything" which was meant to sell sheet music for the Warner Brothers musical comedy "Hold Everything", which is now a lost film. This was the purpose of the early Warner Brothers cartoons - to sell the sheet music and recordings of the songs in the Warner Brother films. However, my favorite is "It's a Bird", the stop-animation cartoon from Charley Bowers. Charley's bird eats scrap metal and then lays a very unusual egg. I'm only familiar with Charley's work because of a feature film that he starred in that is on More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931.

The quality is unrestored, but it is acceptable and a must-see for fans of pre-code material, animated or otherwise.

A fun set of very old and unusual cartoons, including some that you will never again see on TV due to PC concerns. If you are a fan of the old USA Network "Night Flight" show, you will have seen many of these. The print quality on some of these is not too good; I know for instance that there is a better print of Inky and the Mynah Bird out there. But this is still a good collection.

Just because it's weird, that doesn't make it original or entertaining. Some of these cartoons do have colour, but most seem stuck in the fairly plain wackiness of early American animation. Of course, anything Betty Boop is craaaaazy and trailblazing in that style, but too many are a series of bland rip-offs or racial stereotypes. There's one Robert Clampett cartoon and it's not even any good.

What I liked best was the puppet animation (an obvious kind of gimmickry) the characters are at least more interesting.

You'd be better off with 'Masters of Russian Animation', 'Animation Show' (which is fairly current), or the feature-film, 'Fantastic Planet' which is incredible! 'Cameraman's Revenge & Other Fantastic Tales' includes the best short on this disc and many different ones from the same inovator!