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Reviews
A Haunting We Will Go (1939)
An almost forgotten nugget from Hollywood animation's golden age
Lil' Eightball, a darker-skinned version of Scrappy and Buddy of '30s cartoondom, is unafraid of "ectoplasmic figments of the imagination",but a bunch of silly spirits in a haunted house try to prove the opposite. Some of the cast appear "borrowed" from Disney's "Lonesome Ghosts", a film the ex-Disney director had previously worked on.
Although, some pre-World War II live-action "spook" comedies took on racial overtones, it is difficult to criticize animated shorts like this and "Jasper And The Haunted House", since they closely resemble "Lonesome Ghosts", "Shiver Me Timbers", "Scrappy's Ghost Story" and many other 'toons featuring a variety of human races and animal species. The minor discretion here may be Eightball's big lips and "hee-hee" jive-talk (provided by the great Mel Blanc). Universal bravely included this excellent cartoon, along with the naughtier "100 Pygmies And Andy Panda", on the recent DVD "Woody Woodpecker And Friends Vol. 2".
Olio for Jasper (1946)
One of the best of George Pal's Jasper shorts
Mr. Scarecrow is impressed with Jasper's snow-globe, which prompts a tall-tale rags-to-riches-to-rags story: Poor starving Mammy dumps Baby Scarecrow with a greedy miser. Later, he whistles for his supper with a fruit seller. As an adult, our hero makes a "killing" on Wall Street, but lets his company "go to the dogs".
The story is a bit disjointed, but the production values ape anything Walt Disney was doing in 1945 (had he produced "stop-motion" instead of 2D animation). Not surprisingly, the Pal Puppetoons would price themselves out of existence within two years. Available on the excellent DVD "The Puppetoon Movie", the Jasper shorts are rarely screened today due to their dated views of "black culture".