Countdown to Halloween: The Stupidstitious Cat (1947)

The Stupidstitious Cat (Famous Studios/Paramount, 1947)
Dir: Seymour Kneitel
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

Superstitions... BAH! Never had much use for them. Through most of my life, I have taken the stance that most of the little, weird clichéd beliefs that people use to run their lives are silliness of the highest order. By this, I don't mean morals or laws... no, not even close. Any society needs a certain set of standards by which to maintain the peace, so I'm not suggesting anything like that for a second. What I mean are the oddball ideas that people adopt in order to corral that notorious fiend called "luck".

Myself, I have walked under several ladders, reacted to a spilled salt shaker numerous times with mere shrugs and a swift cleanup, and have knocked on wood or crossed my fingers only when in the company of others and when the use of such a cliché was a good conversation ender (and usually it was used in an openly mocking tone). I openly embrace the company of any black cat whose path I happen to cross; to me, they are just like any other kitties. And, boy, have I stepped on a lot of cracks on the sidewalk; my mother's back has always been fine, and at the pace that I walk, you can't let such little stupid things as a mere crack slow you down. And, apart from a handful of blacksmiths left in business and people who work at racetracks, just how often does one run across a horseshoe these days?

I do, however, have superstitions of my own that I have employed to incorporate into my life at various points in the far past, or that I have flirted with following over the years. A few examples:

Example A: In my youth, as a devoted follower of the Cincinnati Reds and the awesome Johnny Bench, I got it into my head that if I didn't read the Sunday or daily funnies from front to back (or left to right) without skipping a single comic strip, even the crappy ones that I hated, then the Reds would have a losing day on the ball field. How I came upon this notion I will never know; it just became ingrained in my head and I followed it for several years without exception. Sunday mornings even began to expand to giving the team luck for the whole week in my world. I would lie on the floor pouring through first the latest Peanuts strip on the front page and then all the way to the last page through Doonesbury, all the while chanting to myself that "the Reds will win this week... the Reds will win this week..." Truthfully, I didn't keep a chart to see if this was actually working, which is odd, since my usually obsessive nature would seem to merit that I would have kept such a thing. But the Reds were winning so much anyway in the mid-'70s, it was the rare day that they lost. So basically, odds were in my (and my scheme's) favor.

Example B: Some of my friends and I would always lift our feet, cross our arms, and have to touch the window nearest ourselves anytime that we would drive over a railroad track. While I had never encountered it before, it was a superstition of my friends' from their youth. It was goofy and fun to do. There were not only railroad tracks near my home as a teenager/young adult, but also a cemetery. One superstition my friends had that I had heard on my own as a kid was holding your breath when you drove past a graveyard. So after we did the railroad thing, you almost immediately had to hold your breath for about 20 seconds as well. I will admit here that if I were ever to finally get a driver's license of my own, I'm pretty sure that I would do all of this every single time that I crossed a track or passed a cemetery... just for funsies, you know. And since it can be dangerous to lift your feet, cross your arms, and touch the window while driving a vehicle, that might be one more reason why I should never have a driver's license.

Example C: Four-leaf clovers have always been a pleasure in my life. Not so much for the luck factor, but for the simple, zen-like pleasure in sitting quietly in a patch of clover and casually trying to pick one of those elusive little buggers out of the patch. It's like getting a 3000-piece crossword puzzle and deciding to start with one particular piece that has a slight variant over the other 2,999 pieces, only that piece may or may not have been packed inside the box during manufacturing. (Of course, as with four-leaf clovers in patches, there is the possibility that one might run across extra versions of that piece packed inside, too.) When I was a kid, my dad had (and might still have) a nature field guide that he would place the four-leaf clovers that we found inside to press them, and that tradition kind of stuck with me. (Note: He gave that book to me a few years, but the clovers were no longer in it. If I were a harder believer in luck, I could use that to explain away large portions of my life.)

But, despite these examples and a few others, I have never fully endorsed the "luck" lifestyle. I figure things happen just because they do, and no amount of wishing, praying, pleading, hoping, or even (as a last resort) hopping upon one foot while balancing a gourd on my forehead whilst reciting the third verse to Jabberwocky (a new tradition I have just made up) is going to make it happen. But try and tell that to the idiot cat that we meet at the beginning of Famous Studios' first Buzzy the Crow cartoon, The Stupidstitious Cat, released in 1947.

This dopey cat wakes up under a Good Luck sign (with a horseshoe, 'natch) with every part of his body that he can possibly cross, well... crossed. Limbs, fingers, toes, even eyes come undone upon his rising from slumber. Even his tail swirls around to make a knot for himself. Upon rising, the cat is stopped from getting out on the wrong side of bed by two signs pointing the direction to the proper side. After following the orders of the "right side" sign, the cat opens up what looks like a snuff box, but inside are several, supposedly lucky wishbones for him to break for even more good luck. He says to the camera...

"Break a wishbone

And if you get the big end

Your wish will come true

And your troubles will end."

Wishing for a bird for breakfast (hey, you gotta get the next wishbone from somewhere), the breaks one for just that purpose. He seems pleased that his right hand has ended up with the large end, never really picking up on the fact that his left hand also possesses the short end, thereby negating his luck either way. (It is a failure of the film that this isn't pointed out to the audience.) A bird starts to tweet and whistle beautifully outside, which attracts the attention of the cat. He tells the audience, "Whistle before breakfast, you'll...," then pauses in between words to giggle wickedly and lick his chops in predatory anticipation, "cry before dinner." What a creep...

Cue that very bird outside for breakfast. The camera zooms in on a small birdhouse atop a tree in the yard, where the whistling continues, this time in the recognizable form of a tune called Listen to the Mockingbird. From out of the front door comes a plump little crow with a straw hat, Buzzy the Crow by name, who is being introduced in this cartoon as a new Famous Studios stable character. He takes a dive off the front porch of the birdhouse to land with a splash in the birdbath at the tree's base. Buzzy starts to sing, only the voice coming from him doesn't quite match the sweet whistling we heard previously. This voice is raspy and rough, and seems to take a cue from Eddie Anderson's "Rochester" voice on The Jack Benny Show. He sings...

"Listen to da' mockingbird!

Listen to da' mockingbird,

Still singin' where da weepin' willows weep!"

Buzzy is giving himself a bath with a tremendous amount of soap suds, and sings from within a pile of those suds which completely obscure him from the camera. The cat, meanwhile, has sneaked up to the bath and decided to carry it and his prize dinner off into the house. Buzzy reaches out during this to grab a brush to scrub his back while he continues to sing, altering the traditional lyrics of the song just a tad for comedy effect...

"I'm dreamin' now of Hallie,

Sweet Hallie, Sweet Hallie,

She's sleepin' in da alley,

Where the mockingbird is singin' as she lies..."

The last line he sings as he uses the brush on his teeth, revealing a big gold tooth in his smile. He is about to begin the next chorus, but he realizes that the scenery has changed dramatically, with a wallpaper print in the background. "Uh-oh, how'd I get in here!" He flies off towards the window, saying, "Man, you gotta straighten up and fly right!" but the cat slams the window shut just as he reaches it. Buzzy hits the ground and the cat traps him underneath a butterfly net. The cat wishes to begin preparations for a Buzzy the Crow dinner, but the cat will now fall into a relentless series of misfortunes due to his rigid following of the Rules of Luck. Once Buzzy picks up on the cat's weakness when the cat picks up a pin for good luck, the entire plan is undone.

While the cat is putting Buzzy into a sandwich, the crow tricks the cat into believing he spilled the salt. The cat panics and throws it over his left shoulder saying...

"If you spill the salt,

Throw it over your shoulder.

Or you won't live

To be much older."

Of course, once he has undone the curse, he picks up the sandwich to find that Buzzy has departed, leaving a paper reading "Out to Lunch" in his place. The cat calls out "Come out, come, wherever you are" and Buzzy, in the manner of Rochester, replies, "Here I is, boss!" The cat spies Buzzy across the room and races towards him, but the bird is relaxing comfortably on the ground underneath a ladder. The cat recites...

"Hey, if you go under a ladder,

Your days will grow sadder and sadder."

The bird thanks him politely, and the cat responds in kind, and then thrusts out his hand in friendship, meaning to grab Buzzy when he does. But the only thing he grabs from Buzzy is a large black umbrella. The device pops open and whooshes up to the ceiling, and then it floats back down gently to land the cat underneath the ladder. Buzzy says...

"Uh-uh, in the house with an open umbrella

Will make you a most unfortunate fella!"

The umbrella closes just as the cat hits the floor but the snap of his rear end in a mousetrap placed there by Buzzy sends the cat back up again where he smacks into the underside of the top ladder step. Then the cat, umbrella and ladder comes crashing to the floor with the cat trapped inside everything. He pops up from the wreckage in the shape of a set of stairs, which Buzzy climbs up until he is standing on the cat's snout. He lifts the cat's eyelid up high until he is staring the cat in his big, yellow eye. The pupil of that eye rattles about like a roulette marble and then the cat comes to his senses and chases Buzzy away in a flash.

One of the more obscure superstitions today is brought up as the cat chases Buzzy. They run towards a large stand with a vase atop it, but Buzzy turns back just as the cat zips past and goes around the stand, causing it to come between the two of them. "Hey, boss!," says the bird, "Bread and butter!" The cat realizes what he has done and walks back along his path back around the stand and then gives chase once more. (What the cat did not do was say "Bread and butter" back to Buzzy, which would be the traditional way of breaking the curse. This might be why the cat gets it in the end.)

Buzzy runs across the room and hides beneath a huge cabinet. The cat can't see underneath it and so he strikes a match to see. The match lights three cigars that Buzzy has in his mouth, thereby causing another superstition to occur. The cat cries out...

"Yipe! Three on a match!"

...and then Buzzy runs out and shoves all three cigars in the cat's mouth! Buzzy says...

"And you end up in da booby hatch!"

The cigars turn out to actually be fireworks, and the cat is shot across the room where he crashes through the seat of a chair. The cat crawls out and swings the chair around his head and throws it in the direction of the crow. Buzzy warns him, "You'll be sorry!" and pulls on a cord that wheels a large mirror into the path of the flying chair. The cat races forward frantically to try and stop the chair, and he does manage to grab it just in time, so that the chair only taps lightly against the glass. But Buzzy sneaks up behind him and says, "Peek-a-boo!" Still holding the chair above his head, the cat ducks his head back between his legs to look upside-down at Buzzy behind him. Buzzy, who is standing upside-down on his hands (or, in bird terms, wingtips), is holding the pin from earlier in his talons and jabs the cat hard in the rear. The cat yowls in pain and flies up towards the ceiling as before, and then Buzzy shifts the mirror so that the cat crashes straight through it.

The cat is informed by Buzzy that he now has to serve "Seven years hard luck" to which the cat asks, "Did you say seven years hard luck?" Playing off a popular catchphrase from the time, Buzzy responds, "That's what the man said! That's what he said! He said that!" The cat angrily charges the bird, but all he does is hit an inkwell that splats him with black ink all over. The cat slides back towards the mirror and the glass swings around. He sees his reflection and screams, "A black cat!" The cat tears his way straight through the wall and then off and out of the picture. Buzzy is victorious and laughs at how the cat has allowed luck to run his life -- until Buzzy realizes from a desk calendar that the date is Friday the 13th. Buzzy immediately panics and begins following all of the same superstitions that the cat did before. He knocks wood, throws salt, kisses a horseshoe and throws it, and rubs his lucky rabbit's foot... each act, over and over, as the film irises out to a close.

Buzzy's voice was provided by Jackson Beck, who made a career out of portraying the voice of Popeye's nemesis Bluto in a tremendous amount of cartoons for Paramount/Famous. His Buzzy voice, as I sort of stated earlier with my positive reaction to the song, is my favorite part of the film. Buzzy as a a character has a pluckiness and roughness that I like quite a lot. That the films he starred in fail him ultimately, by and large, is not his fault; he is merely a pawn being handled roughly by some notoriously ho-hum hands. Getting back to the voice work and the Rochester angle, it is only at the point of Buzzy's introduction that one realizes that the cat's voice itself was a fairly thin imitation of Jack Benny, with his slow whine repeating the rules of luck suddenly becoming a tad more amusing (though not by much).

I somewhat dislike the design of the cat in this picture; I find him too rubbery, and just a tad too confident for someone who has thrown his lot in with the Rules of Luck and for someone who has a Jack Benny voice. I would have liked him to be a little more nervous (not nervy). Benny, of course, was not nervous per se; he had confidence, but only the confidence of one who is blissfully unaware of how disruptive his personality tics could be. The cat here seems to be extremely careful about what he does, until he sees the bird and he acts like a normal cat. I would have rather seen him use the rules of luck to first capture Buzzy, and then we see his plan come undone by his own rigidity to the rules.

I, too, have a tradition involving Friday the 13th: I love it. I often take the day off from work, as I have done for years and years, and go to the movies and do some shopping, or sit at home and watch my own horror movie marathons, sometimes with friends, sometimes not, and never have I met with a single bad incident or accident. Sometimes I even watch Jason movies, kind of doubling down on the Friday the 13th thing.

But I have my own sort of bad luck running for me these days. Sick with a cough for over a month, on a zillion medications, and mostly out of work for over two years. So, I am home for Friday the 13th under my own power this year. No day to take off, because I have too many days off already.

Of course, maybe I need to do something to turn that luck around. Not sure where to start, so many I can try some of those things I used to do to stop the bad kind. Right now, to prevent any misfortunes, I will indeed try hopping on one foot while balancing a gourd on his forehead and reciting the third verse to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky:

"And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame

came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

and burbled as it came."

Here's hoping it works. (I had better cross my fingers... and my toes, arms, legs and eyes, while I am at it...)

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it...

[This piece was posted in its original form on March 4, 2006. It has been drastically rewritten and edited, and given new photos and a video link on October 13, 2017.]

THE MECHANICAL MONSTERS (1941)

I have never been within a crowd where something was flying directly overhead in the skies, and various people on the ground started pointing at it, and then started saying out loud what they thought it might be. Usually, if there is a bird or a plane up in the air, people are going to ignore it, unless it is either Rodan, a skywriter, or is about to crash. If it is Rodan, they are going to run screaming and not take the time to say, "It's a bird!" The skywriter will inevitably cause boredom by the time the second word puffs out of his craft; and the people will run screaming, as with Rodan, should it be the crash scenario. At no point will anyone in that crowd thrust their finger up at the sky in the direction of the object and shout, "It's a plane!"

And if Superman were flying about above their heads? In The Mechanical Monsters, the second film in the Superman cartoon series from Max Fleischer and Paramount in 1941, "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" is shouted right at the beginning of the film as a streak of brilliant color bolts across the screen, leaving the name of the superheroic character framed triumphantly right at the very moment it is spoken. This is the first time those famous words are heard onscreen (they have done away with the origin story opening already), and as an intro, they couldn't get a sharper one. It sets the mood immediately, and as the bombastic theme song kicks in, there is the quick, tight description of the character, which leads to the image of our hero standing proudly before our eyes. This time, the narrator takes the time to inform us that Superman is "Empowered with x-ray vision...", and there is a crackle of blue voltage that surges around his eyes. (More on this later...)

There is the sound of breaking glass, and the scene opens on the shattered window, bars and all, of the National Bank in Metropolis. There is a droning, humming noise, and we see the shadow of what appears to be an airplane, propeller and all, moving away from the bank and then down the boulevard. The scene then cuts to a room where the lower half of a man is seen sitting down, and he is operating some kind of control switchboard. When he pulls on a floor-based lever, a hydraulic gate opens in a nearby wall and is lowered into the floor. The shadow of the airplane then appears to move through the open door along the gate and across the room. It circles about the room once and then the shadow starts to stretch out as the figure creating it seems to be landing, and what once seemed to be an airplane's tail and rudder turns out to be the feet of a large mechanical construct -- a robot.

There is a propeller set about its neck, and with its arms outstretched, one sees two large iron plates on each arm that serve to turn the limbs into wings. Once it alights upon the floor, the operator pushes a button, and the propeller slowly ceases operating and retracts into a pair of neck apertures. The iron plates on the arms likewise disappear. A light flashes on top of a large case behind the robot; the top of the case opens up, and the back of the robot slides open like a bin. Inside the bin is a large profusion of cash money, and the robot pours the stolen loot into the open case. The operator pushes yet another button, and the robot closes its back, where we see that it has a large numeral "5" written on it. The robot stomps ponderously across the floor past the operator, and over to a nearby wall where there are four other similar mechanisms slumped against it. The robot leans against the wall with his brethren like a spent marionnette, and the scene goes to black.

We then see the front page of the next edition of Metropolis' great newspaper, The Daily Planet. The headline reads, "Mysterious Mechanical Monster Loots Bank!" That's right, you want to keep things on an even keel. Don't want to alarm anyone. A story below the hyperbole is either a clever trap to capture the thief, or the work of a really bad publicity department with terrible timing. It reads, "House of Jewels -- Exhibit Opens To-day -- 50,000,000 Dollars of the World's Rarest Gems on Exhibition". Just when you think, "Boy, they really should wait to open this thing until Superman stops this Mysterious Mechanical Monster!", there is a sub-headline to the story stating, "Extreme Precautions have been taken to Guard against Mysterious Mechanical Monster". Oh, well, as long as they have taken extreme precautions, like say, asking Superman to guard the exhibit. Otherwise, they are asking for it.

Luckily for the House of Jewels, Superman is there to guard it, only he is there in the guise of Clark Kent, Mild-Mannered Reporter. As he eyes the mountain of sparkling, glittering insanity, however, he bumps into his rival (and secret love interest) Lois Lane. When he asks what she is doing there, Lois replies nonchalantly, "Oh, just getting the woman's angle on this story!" Suddenly, there is the piercing sound of a whistle, and the reporters turn to the door, where outside one of the guards shouts, "The Mechanical Monster!" Another shouts, "Look out!" Flying at the House of Jewels swiftly down the street is the robot. The guards pull out machine guns and try their best to bring the metallic being down, but it swerves through the air lightly, and then lands in front of the guards, easily deflecting each and every bullet. It advances on them, and as they continue firing their guns at point blank range, the robot wades through them and through the glass doors of the House of Jewels. Lois pulls Clark out of the way, not knowing who he really happens to be, and the robot walks up to the jewel pile (why they are not further protected from the public by an alarmed window I do not know), opens the bin on its back, and starts scooping the loot into the bin.

Outside, Clark tells Lois to wait outside the phone booth while he phones in the story to their editor Perry White, but Lois has always been an impatient type. She rushes off to investigate the robot, and when she sees how the robot works, she steps up on a chair and climbs into its storage bin. When Clark pops back out of the booth and realizes she is gone, he spies the robot flying up and out of the House of Jewels. His instinct tells him that Lois is probably in trouble, and he jumps back into the booth to change into Superman. (Naturally, he says so in his usual way.) He emerges, and flies straight up (in a fabulous shot loaded with remarkable detail), rushing past the buildings of Metropolis and high into the skies above them.

He locks target on the robot flying ahead of him, and once his eyes go through an eerie switching process, he uses his X-ray vision (a power not used in the first film, but mentioned in the prologue of this one so that the audience would not go "Wha--?" when he used it) to see through the robot's metal casing and determine whether Lois is actually inside of it. She is indeed, and so, he swoops down on the robot to pry open its back. But his attack sets off an alarm at the operator's switchboard (actually reading, "Interference"), and the operator causes the robot to turn completely over. Not only does this get Superman off its back, but it forces the bin to open, and Lois has to hang on for dear life from the edge of the bin, while the precious jewels go flying down through the skies to the ground below. Superman is flung far down into some high tension wires in a valley, and then he also hits the ground. The robot flips back over, and Lois is trapped yet again inside, but at the very least, safe from falling.

The door-gate opens on the villain's lair, and the robot returns home. Both the operator and the robot, of course, are unaware of her prescence, and she is dumped (rather gently, actually) into the storage case. Lois, fearless as always, and with her eyes on the prize, remarks, "What a story this is going to make!" She peers about and sees that there are nearly two dozen of the mechanical beings in slumped about the room, helpless without their puppet master's machinations. The villain sees her for the first time, and demands to know where the jewels have gone. She says, "You'll read about it in tomorrow's paper!" He advances on her with hands full of evil intent... and the scene cuts to Superman struggling with freeing himself from the tangle of high-tension wires. He tears each of the wires in half, totally unaffected by the massive amount of electricity coursing through his body. He then leaps back into the air to search for Lois.

There is then a wonderful pan through the immense operations of the villain, starting first in his operations room, and then down a series of stairs into an underground cavern, where he has numerous rooms carved into the rock for various functions, including the building of his robots, and finally, to the place where he smelts his iron. He has Lois tied up and hanging on an elevator directly over a large pot of lava-like ore, where she shall surely meet her maker when she dips into it. He starts the torture device, and it starts its slow click-click-click down to Lois' doom, but then the villain hears a monstrous pounding on the walls of his abode. However he did it, Superman has come to Lois' rescue, and he smashes the door down easily, jumping into the middle of the room. The villain dives for his controls, and turns all of the robots on. Superman is surrounded, and as the robots advance on him, they each spit fire at him from a pair of spigots on the lower parts of their heads. The intense flames knock Supes to the floor, and the robots take turns pounding him into that same floor. We then see Lois' clicking ever so slowly down to her molten fate, and then the scene cuts to Superman as he finally gets to his feet and starts giving the robots what-for. They resist his punches at first, but he is finally too much for them, and mechanical body parts start flying all about as Superman continues to make a giant scrap heap. He then picks up the remains of about three of the beings and tosses them at the control board, causing it to erupt in a huge explosion.

The villain, however, has high-tailed it to his underground caverns, and shuts and locks an immense door behind him. It is no match for the might of Superman, and he easily punches through it like so much butter. The villain pulls a knife and threatens to cut the rope holding Lois aloft if Supes makes one more move. Superman does so, and the villain responds as promised. But, Superman's inhuman swiftness allows him to zip straight through the elevator just as it hits the molten ore, and Lois is rescued. Or so they think. The villain pulls a lever and the huge vat of ore is dumped over on its side and down to where Superman and Lois rest below. Just as the ore seems sure to melt them, Superman spreads out his cape (which many people do not realize is just as strong as he) and holds it out over Lois, protecting her from the ore. They leap up and out of the cavern, but Superman grabs the villain on the way out, and zips up into the air with both of them. As they hurtle back down to earth, there is a dizzying shot of the city below, which spins and spins and then turns into the next edition of the Daily Planet. It reads, "Superman Destroys Mechanical Monsters -- Inventor Jailed, Millions in Stolen Jewels Recovered". Of course, the story is once more attributed to Lois Lane, and she yet again gives a nod to Superman. Clark is silent but bemused as the picture ends.

[A side note: there is also another sidebar in the Planet stating, "Superman Vanishes Again", which raises the question of why, if there is so much crime, disaster, poverty and pain in the world, Superman would ever vanish at all. He is superhuman. I know he has a psychological need for human contact, and I also know that he needs sleep so he is able to dream, but isn't he wasting valuable rescuing and thwarting time by holding down both a mundane job and bogus identity? Besides, when he "plays" Clark Kent, he gets all smirky when people mention Superman or announce that they are in trouble, knowing full well that he can easily save them. Is smugness a good quality for a superhero?]

When the trailer for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out two years ago, and the skies in the trailer became infested with giant flying robots, and other robots landed and took to marching through the streets, I was glad to be one of the lucky few who realized exactly where this particular vision probably was inaugurated in the filmmaker's mind. No matter what you think of Sky Captain (I, for one, enjoyed the film enough to see it thrice in the theatre, I own the DVD, and my IMDB rating for the film is a registered and solid 7. This means I think it's the bee's knees.), and no matter if you think it is a little too dependent on our collective consciousness of matters pulpy and trivial (I do, a little bit), you have to give it credit for having the moxie to try something different from a normal action or even science fiction film (it is precisely this same reason why I dug The Rocketeer so much), and also points for experimentation with digital imaging. I am no fan of CGI, but since Sky Captain is actually and mostly an animated film (except for the actors and basic props), it actually comes off as more realistic than most CGI. Stylization gives an excuse for the somewhat muddy and dark look of the film. And much of that stylization? And the robots? The Mechanical Monsters and the Superman cartoon series.

The problem here is that the robot scenes in Sky Captain has almost superceded my memories of the Superman cartoon, to the point where it is almost disappointing now to see only one robot paraded down the streets of Metropolis, or flying through the air in the wonderfully staged scene against the House of Jewels guards. (There is a great POV shot of one of the guards firing desperately and futilely at either Robot #5 or 13 -- there is a bit of a gaffe here, where his number changes from shot to shot.) But, once you view Monsters anew, you quickly forget about the other later film that was inspired by it, and enjoy the original version for its dashing adventure and still amazingly designed visual epic sweep.

As for that whole bird-plane-Superman debacle: if Superman were far off in the sky, and he looked more like a bird, and then he got a little closer and everyone thought he was a plane, at no point is anyone going to look like a dope and point at him and say either "It's a bird!" or "It's a plane!", because then everyone will assume the speaker's either waiting for the short bus or is a wiseass. Only when Superman is close enough to be made out for what he actually is will anyone say, "It's Superman!", though, given the idiocy in our society, there will be a large portion of the crowd who haven't been keeping up on current events, and they will think he is a demon or an angel or an invading alien (which he sort of is, really)... or, hell, even Jesus.

It's a good thing no one in the crowd thought he was a frog, because then, due to the laws of poetry, it would have turned out to be little ol' Underdog. (Which is not a bad thing to be, either. That Sweet Polly Purebred is a haw-tay...)

The Mechanical Monsters (Max Fleischer, 1941) Dir: Dave Fleischer
Cel Bloc Rating: 8

[By the way, many movie sites, including IMDB, post the title as Mechanical Monsters, but the film itself actually has the article "The" clearly on the title card. So there...! Nyah! And kudos to Bosko Video for their excellent collection of all 17 films... and for putting the "The" on the back of the DVD case, as well.)

SUPERMAN (1941)

Just how mad is the mad scientist in Superman? Is it his megalomaniacal note, Unabomber style, to Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet newspaper? Is it the fact that it is the latest in a series of megalomaniacial notes, all Unabomber style, to Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet newspaper? Is it his threatening the city of Metropolis in the text of the latest letter with his "Electrothanasia Ray"? Does his madness reach heretofore unknown levels of insanity because he is apparently known only by the monicker "The Mad Scientist"?

No. All of this proves well enough that he is quite mad (though the last bit of evidence is merely circumstantial), but none of it even approaches the pinnacle of his true madness. No, the prove of that is discovered through his pet raven, the companionship of which does not necessarily define madness (though it is often a signifier that you own a laboratory in the 1930's & 1940's), but rather, it is the way he treats the bird that does. On the large door of his mountain lair, the Mad Scientist not only has a lock about mid-level on the door for him to keep out the outside world, but he has a lock built mere inches above the floor, where his pet raven can unlock or lock the door with him. You see, the Mad Scientist in Superman is the villainous equivalent of a Crazy Cat Lady, bestowing little human-like attributes to his pet and doting on it totally. So, he has a little lock made for his bwainy widdle baby to play doorman with him. I'm surprised the weirdo doesn't dress the raven up like Edgar Allan Poe...

I goof on the Mad Scientist only out of love. For I have nothing but love for this first film in the Superman cartoon series produced by the Max Fleischer Studios for Paramount beginning in 1941. Superman was already huge on the pop culture scene by this point, having landed from Krypton onto Earth in Action Comics in 1938, and the rest, as they say, was history (which is actually a truly stupid cliche, since everything that happens to everyone is, technically, history; its significance and stature only depends on where, who and what you are in the world. And also, who is telling it...) But, to put it simply, practically the entire world knew of Superman by 1941, and it is no surprise that someone tried to tackle him in animation. What has always been surprising to me is that no one tried to tackle any of the other superheroes at large in comics at that time, especially given how much theatrical animation there was in those days. Perhaps it was the lessons learned in producing this series that gave other studios or companies pause to reflect, and considered it not financially sound to pursue. All the same, it is a shame that Captain Marvel, Batman or Captain America (who did have live-action serial adventures produced) or even a character like the Sub-Mariner, never made it onto the animated screen in the 1940's.

But we do have the Superman series, and what a series it turned out to be. Though there were ups and downs in quality, even the lowest film in the series has a unique visual appeal unmatched at the time, and often since, and some scenes in certain episodes are actually still quite compelling both dramatically and actionwise even now. It is a landmark series in animation history, and nowhere is this more evident than in the thrilling opening adventure, titled simply Superman. The series was quite expensive to produce, at $50,000 for the first episode alone (that is in 1941 dollars -- 65 years ago -- imagine the cost today for ten minutes plus of animation).

As in most Superman ventures, there is the necessary telling of a truncated version of his origin story, being born on the planet Krypton and rocketed to earth by his scientist father when he discovers that Krypton is doomed to explode. He lands on Earth, and as he grows up, he learns eventually that he has superhuman abilities. As an adult, he takes on the alter ego of Clark Kent, and works as a "mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper". This style of opening narration would also be used in the Superman radio and TV series in a strikingly similar manner (as if it were the only way to tell the story), and is almost as familiar to audiences as the character himself. Oh, yeah... there's that whole "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!" business wrapped up in it, too. (I'm sure you've heard of it. If you haven't, I don't want to know you.) And, just before the story begins, there is that shot of the stoic, powerfully muscled Superman himself, ready to protect us "in a never-ending battle for truth and justice" (but not, it is shocking to discover, "The American Way").

They morph this image into that of Clark Kent, and the story begins with a aerial shot of the Daily Planet building. "Managing Editor" Perry White uses the intercom to call in his star reporters Clark Kent and Lois Lane, informing them that he has received "another note from the Mad Scientist". Not "a mad scientist; "The Mad Scientist". (Every town should have one.) The letter reads:

"Beware - you fools!

My Electrothanasia-Ray
strikes tonight at 12.

Total destruction will
come to those who laughed
at me and failed to heed
my warnings.

Beware - I strike
at midnight!"

Four lines; only two exclamation points. He is clearly a madman, because a phony madman would try to conceal his bluff with a multitude of exclamation points, some of them in the middle of a sentence. There is clearly a cool but evil cucumber at work here, revealed in his ability to maintain his punctuation despite the buzzing in his brain. Sadly, Lois is less restrained, for she has been driven insane by her need to prove she is the best reporter alive. (She is exactly why people hate reporters.) After Perry declares, "This nut might prove dangerous!", she accepts Mr. White's approval on the story before he can finish saying "Welllll...", and she is out the door. Lois dons an aviator's cap and flies off in her own plane to track down the Mad Scientist.

We find him first, and at the only place where he could reside: on the top of mountain outside of Metropolis, in a huge, looming lair, and judging from his decor and choice of machinery, he apparently has Ken Strickfaden, who built the electrical devices for the Universal Frankenstein series, in his employ. The camera zooms in through a window at a throne room, with the scientist's pet raven perched atop its back, and with the scientist staring at the pendulum on a loud, ringing clock. The scientist leans forward on the throne further with every added hour in the ringing, until twelve are counted out, and he declares, "The hour has come!" The raven hops onto his shoulder, and the insidious pair head to the laboratory. A tremendous gun, set atop a mound clearly concealing its power supply and works, leans its barrel ominously out of a slit in the roof of the lair, and the scientist marches up to a workstation and switches on the power. A light jumps on, and a loud humming noise kicks in as the turbines rev up, and then Mr. Mad S. turns the power up, causing a sequence of wires and cords to throb and light up. (It's Tesla coil heaven!) The raven is hypnotized by the bubbles percolating inside one of the machine's tubes, but his attention is drawn by the droning of a plane outside of the window. He hops up to the workstation to warn the scientist, and the baddie shuts down his destructive plan momentarily.

It is here where the scientist proves his madness once and for all. As Lois, who's idea of getting a story is to go directly to the person who is causing the trouble and getting kidnapped (at least she has an unerring nose for rooting out the villains right away), reaches the door, the scientist and his itty-bitty widdle pet unlock their respective locks, and Lois is grabbed and dragged inside. The door slams shut, and then we see Lois' shadow as she struggles in the arms of the scientist. The raven watches from the bottom of the door as he locks it fastidiously with his beak, and then the camera follows the raven on his hopping trek back up the stairs, and into the laboratory, where the scientist is seen lashing Lois tight to a chair. "So, you want a story?", the scientist asks rhetorically. "I'll give you the greatest story of destruction the world has ever known!" Since RKO hadn't stolen and messed with The Magnificent Ambersons yet (that would be the following year), we have to assume he means what is about to happen with his Electrothanasia-Ray. He fires up the machinery again, and lets loose with a powerful ray that blasts a busy bridge miles away. The ray explodes and melts a huge section out of the middle of the bridge, and Lois can only watch the destruction helplessly on a video screen.

The scene cuts to the Daily Planet, where Clark, Perry and the other reporters are hearing of the disaster over the public airwaves. The newsman reports of "cars and pedestrians hurled into the river below!" Clark, sitting at his desk separate from the others, says openly in his mild-mannered way, "This looks like a job--", and then switching his voice to a slightly lower and more manly register, finishes "--for Superman!" He ducks into a nearby store room, shuts the door, turns on the light, and by his silhouette on the glass, we see him changing out of his street clothes and into his famous costume. He sneaks out carefully (also taking the time to switch off the light -- what a guy!), and then zooms out of the window and into the night. A terrific tracking shot shows him flying off to search for the source of the disaster.

He should have just stuck around the building where he works, because the Mad Scientist has that lined up in his sights next. He fires the ray at the base of the structure, and the whole place starts to rock and quake! Copy editors, file cabinets and beams are flung about, and the building begins swaying. Superman notices the destruction and flies back to the building in time to catch it from crashing into the next building. (How the building underneath his feet supports this immense weight is a question best left for someone far smarter than I. But, lest you think Superman catches the building while floating mere centimeters above the roof, it is shown quite clearly that Supes has a very firm footing on its surface.) Superman pushes the building back up into an upright position, but it starts to fall the other direction, so Supes grabs the spire atop its roof and pulls it straight. He then flies down to its base, where the ray is still doing its damage, and pushes the beam away from the building. It knocks him down, but he struggles mightily against its uncaring and unceasing power, and finally succeeds in pushing the force back towards the lair from whence it came.

The scientist is watching this on his monitor, and starts to panic. He turns up the power even higher, and we see a variety of pulsing tubes and wires as the energy builds up in the ray. Superman is resistant to the added power at first, but the ray finally wins out, and pushes Superman violently back down to the ground (in a series of awesomely rendered tumbles). It looks like Superman is finished, but if you think that's true, then it means you didn't count on the Superman theme music as his secret weapon. Because, whenever that terrific score kicks in during a fight, you know that Superman has turned the tide of battle. Here, the familair music starts up, and Superman gives it his all in one mighty burst. He starts punching the ray, one lasered segment at a time (don't ask how that is possible), and up the beam he goes until he nears the barrel of the gun. The scientist sets the machine to its maximum level, but Superman is able to resist even this, and makes it to the gun. He bends it into a pretzel, and pushes the force of the ray the other direction. The ray turns in on itself, with the energy causing the barrel and then the machine itself to bubble and burst through its metal jacket. Superman, in the meantime, tears his way through the crumbling walls, and locates Lois, freeing her from her bonds. Throwing her over his shoulder, he follows the scientist and the raven as they try to escape their doom, charging down the staircase and out the front door of the lair, with the walls falling about them. Superman grabs the scientist and flies off in the nick of time (as he does), as the walls of the lair give way to the massive explosion of the Electrothanasia-Ray. (I imagine that the raven, who was left behind, is sitting up on the mountain, sadly and slowly moving his lock back and forth in its bolt on the now crushed and useless door that once led into their lair. He mourns the loss of his owner, and cries when he sees the shattered remains of the mad scientist's lock, all the while plotting his revenge on Superman. But, I digress...)

There is a swell tracking shot of the cityscape below as Superman flies the scientist to jail and Lois back to safety. Once in jail, the mad scientist grabs the bars, and his image is frozen into a picture in the next issue of the Daily Planet. The headline reads, "Superman Captures Mad Scientist"; the byline reads "Story by Lois Lane"; and a sidebar headline reads, "Superman Vanishes - Public Still Mystified". A sub-headline for the story states, "Superman's Identity Still A Mystery". Perry White shakes Lois' hand and congratulates her on the "great scoop". Lois is more than ready to give credit where credit due, and replies, "Yes, sir! Thanks to Superman!" Clark Kent, sitting at the next desk, looks at the camera, and gives it a wink and a smile.

Even if this weren't one of the prize films of my childhood, it would still rate highly on my list for its soundtrack alone. The Superman theme from this series has been my secret theme music in times of peril and crisis since I first saw the film. Many people are shocked by this, assuming that naturally, since I am about ten times more a Batman fan than I am of the Infant of Krypton, that it would be the Batman TV theme that got me through the day. And yes, I have used that music often, as well, but not nearly as much as I have the Superman theme. The Batman is great for cruising on your bike, but the Superman theme is a real get-up-and-go affair, and you somehow seem to walk faster and prouder when you hum it to yourself. Bill Cosby had his themes on his go-kart; I had mine in my daily life, and it's always been Superman.

But as mad as that might seem, there are far worse levels of madness. I have a cat, but I'm still not dressing him up as Superman. You would have to be truly mad to do something along those lines...

Superman (Max Fleischer, 1941) Dir: Dave Fleischer
Cel Bloc Rating: 9