Countdown to Halloween: Wot a Night (1931)

Wot a Night (1931, Van Beuren Studios)
Dir.: John Foster and Vernon Stallings
TC4P Rating: 5/9

When Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks made and released The Skeleton Dance in 1929, it had a huge influence on the cartoon industry at large. (And if you are wondering when I will get to The Skeleton Dance on this site, don't worry... it's coming up very soon.) It is hard to find an animation studio that didn't fill the frames of a short or seven with dancing, laughing skeletons in the early 1930s. Not that skeletons weren't used in animation before The Skeleton Dance, but the huge success of the Disney short made sure that skeletons would not go away as subject matter for many, many years.

Most films that use skeletons as the main characters are usually comprised of very simple, blackout gags and there is usually nothing that really connects any one scene to the next, except perhaps for the general air of spookiness. To connect things together, however loosely, what is needed are a protagonist or two. The human cartoon duo of Tom and Jerry, early stalwarts of the Van Beuren Studios, had an entire series built out of little more than unconnected blackout gags, with very little relatable plot at all, and so combining their tall guy-little guy antics with a pack of frightening skeletons and assorted ghosts was a natural fit.

In Wot a Night, the initial entry in the Tom and Jerry series, our first clue that the night will not be a normal, quiet one is the opening shot of a rain-drenched railroad depot. The wind whirls and whips at the depot so hard that its single building, every object on its platform, the nearby telephone poles, and even a taxi are nearly knocked over with each howling blast. Inside that taxi sit a napping Tom and Jerry – once again, the human non-MGM versions, mind you – and they seem almost oblivious to the weather as the rain and gale force winds smack them directly in the faces. In fact, the taxi itself is taking the storm far worse than they are, as its grill becomes a face that spits out water and shivers and shakes in the cold.

Tom and Jerry, at the provocation of an approaching railroad whistle, suddenly wake up and look with bleary eyes through the storm before them. They leap excitedly from the taxi while the train pulls into the station and peer into the distance, but a savage bolt of lightning hits them glancingly and then a blast of cold rain drenches them. They practically swim back through the air into the warmth and relative safety of the back of the taxi. The train is shown approaching the station on wide oval wheels (for some reason), and it clatters up and down with each rotation of the wheels. Without warning, the tracks are completely flooded by the rain, and several pairs of long oars pop out of the windows of the single passenger car and attempt to row the train towards the station. The train makes it out the flood area and reaches home, with the spent vehicle turning and arching its back to the tune of Shave and a Haircut, and at the "two bits" part, it rears up like a cat or dog and practically poops out its only two passengers onto the ground. (This really makes you wonder about who it was rowing all those pairs of oars.)

The two passengers are a couple of very tall, identical, bearded weirdos, wearing stovepipe hats atop their heads. They head towards the taxi where they are greeted happily by cab drivers Tom and Jerry. However, as our heroes attempt to exhort the pair of weirdos into their cab with cries of "Taxi!" and "Cab!," (practically the only dialogue in the film that isn't sung), the twin beardies turn away from the cab and walk away along the boardwalk. Tom runs ahead of them and herds them back, and it is noticeable that the pair walk oddly with their heads almost stabbing forward on long necks almost like ostriches, though the style of walk is more akin to that of chickens. Once in the cab, Tom peels out of the station, the car spitting mud behind them, but very quickly, the cab finds itself almost completely flooded by the storm.

With the cab having a hard time moving forward through the flood, we see the compartment in the back with the twin weirdos, who find themselves confronted with a very odd companion: a massive frog who swims into the cab through the window. The frog makes a couple of grunting noises and then performs a back flip through the water and swims away. Tom gradually guides the cab through the deep water, and as he does, a pair of rods pop up out of the back of the cab, drop down into the water, and winch the twin weirdos up above the water's surface inside what appears to be a small rowboat or scoop. The weirdos doff their caps in unison in salute to Tom's efforts to help them, a whistle sounding on the soundtrack as their sole mode of discourse. Soon, Tom drives the cab up out of the water and the weirdos now ride high up in the air above inside the rowboat through the rain.

Eventually, they reach a castle sitting atop a large plateau with an entrance through a cave far below the castle. The weirdos are winched back down to the ground, where they step backwards out of the boat, and then march oddly into the cave without paying for Tom and Jerry's services. The boys are not happy with this and chase after them through the door of the cave, but an iron portcullis drops down behind them, sporting a large lock on its gate, and Tom and Jerry find themselves trapped.

High atop the castle, things start to get real spooky. Storm clouds are seen rumbling above the castle, and then one cloud forms its own head and arms and looks down at the castle. The cloud reaches out and starts to play a boisterous tune on the battlements of the castle, pressing down on the merlons along the wall as if playing a pipe organ, with the resulting sounds emitting from the various turrets and other towers forming the top of the castle. In the fields nearby, a pair of trees start playing their branches like flutes to finish the tune

Inside, Jerry paces about with his hands in his pockets. He calls Tom into the room and shows him a set of blinds on a window. Tom begs him not to open it, but Jerry does, revealing nothing but darkness through the window. Behind them, however, a large bat-like creatures flies up out of a hole in the floor. It spreads its huge wings, easily dwarfing the pair in size, but it does nothing more than grimace wickedly as it flies away towards the camera. (As in most other Tom and Jerry shorts, the taller Tom is the bigger 'fraidy cat, and that holds here as well, with Jerry almost nonchalantly gliding through the scenario with little surprise on his face.)

Tom runs into another room and finds an open door where a sign reads "Private" alongside it. A skeleton walks right past them into the room, and then we see the pair as they look into the room, where the skeleton is shown toweling himself off while standing in a slowly draining bathtub. The skeleton whistles and seems not to give Tom and Jerry any notice, and not only rubs down his arms and legs with the towel, but also runs the length of cloth entirely through his empty ribcage. He turns and sees the boys standing there gawking and then panics, screaming and leaping into the air while holding its head in shock! Before they know it, the skeleton spins tightly into a whirl and is sucked down the drain of the tub along with the water!

Tom and Jerry slowly turn around in the hallway and find that there are dozens are ghosts standing directly behind them. Jerry shows no worry, but as Tom finishes yelling at the skeleton in the other room, he turns around, sees the ghosts and drops into a dead faint. His collapsing body causes part of the floor to break away and they fall into the level below, where another skeleton is painting piano keys onto a small ledge in the wall. After he sloshes more paint at the wall to create sheet music, he then pours the rest of the paint from his bucket onto the ground, where it forms into a small stool. He spins the stool seat to meet his rear end so he can begin to play, but the stool refuses to go any higher and forms a face that mocks the skeleton. So the creep spins his lower spine and pelvis instead so that it drops down towards the stool.

In the catacombs nearby, the piano music brings to life a couple dozen skeletons that had previously been shown to lie dashed and crumpled along the ground. They get up, find partners, and begin to dance elegantly to the music. Back at the piano, a female skeleton with hoop earrings and a skirt, plays a pair of castanets while the music takes on a more Spanish air. Tom and Jerry watch the dance from another room, but behind them (in a very odd throwaway gag) a large glove (with two small legs and feet sticking out of it) dances along a shelf next to them. At a break in the song, the glove stops dancing and spreads its fingers, forming an even larger (but not that large) shadow on the wall adjacent. The boys turn to look at the glove, and Tom panics yet again, racing from the room with Jerry tagging along quietly behind him.

In the next room, Jerry finds an umbrella lying on the floor, so he picks it up and starts to play it like an accordion (as you do). From the darkness appear the heads of four other skeletons, who seem to be done up for a minstrel show. [Here comes more of that casual 1930s racism...]

The lead skeleton sings:

"In the Good Book it says that Cain slew Abel..."

And then the other three skeletons provide the choir...

"Yes, good Lawd!"

The first one sings the next line of his tale, with the call and response style continuing for a while...

"He hit him on the head with the leg of a table..."
(Choir) "Yes, good Lawd!"
"Didn't Daniel in the lion's den..."
"What he do?"
"He said unto those colored men..."
"What he say?"
"Ya'll wanna get to hebbin?"
"Sho'! Sho'!"

The lead skeleton then takes the next verse himself...

"Den cut out all yo' crapshootin'
an' git on your long white robe
an' your starry crown!
Be ready when de great day comes!"

All four skeletons join voices for the chorus of the song...

"Good lord, I'm ready

Indeed, I'm ready

Oh, good lord, I'll be ready when the great day comes!"

Sitting all the way to left, the fourth skeleton takes a brief, bass solo...

"Good glory hallelujah!"

After the next refrain, the bass skeleton finishes the song portion of our program with a deepening run down the words, "...the... great... day... comes".

At the conclusion of the gospel song, Jerry pulls out a pair of dice and rolls a seven. The four black skeletons can't keep themselves from leaping onto the dice, but it spells their doom and they end up shattering in dozens of pieces instead. Running outside, Tom trips over a rock and smashes his face into the ground. As he lies there prone, we see large black footsteps tracking up towards Tom, and when they reach his head, the footsteps roll up into a ball and then burst into the shapes of the two tall weirdos who took the cab to the castle in the beginning. Tom panics and his underwear-clad body jolts from out of his clothes, slithers around to the back of his suit, and then climbs back inside again.

Jerry finally catches up and both pairs – Tom and Jerry and the bearded weirdos – take turns eyeing each other quizzically. One weirdo turns to the other one and nods his head, making a "mmm-hmmm" noise of approval. The other weirdo makes the same noise and nods back to the first. They both point their index fingers in the direction of Tom and Jerry and then walk away. Tom turns and points his finger at his smaller partner, and Jerry lifts his shirt to discover that there is nothing but a skeleton underneath. Tom is shocked, but all he does is turn away from Jerry, buried his face in his hand and snicker at what has happened to his buddy.

But Jerry moves over to Tom and lifts the back of his shirt to also reveal naught but a skeleton's bones. Panicking yet again, Tom turns and looks down at his chest. His shirt pops open and he sees nothing but ribs. He screams and runs offscreen. Jerry runs after him, and then the pair are shown running away with their hands waving above their heads. Their pants are starting to fall off and revealing even more bones. Tom briefly stops and cries in vain at Jerry, and then both continue running and waving as the film irises to a close.

The film is no great shakes as an adventure or as animation, but it does have moments that transcend the general blandness. The opening set-up of the drenched rail station and the tale leading up to the arrival at the castle is an appropriately eerie and imaginative beginning. It actually makes you think that something greater is going to occur once the castle is reached, but the bat/vampire sequence doesn't pay off (I will grant them that it is quite weird), much in the same way that the giant frog in the cab is an interesting touch but does nothing for the film in the end except give it a fleeting sense of true surrealism. The skeleton sequences are fun in bits, but to be seen as anything but a play off of what The Skeleton Dance did so simply and brilliantly, you've got to bring a little bit more.

The dynamic between Tom and Jerry is always what brings the most enjoyment to me out of their films. Tom is a big, tall basket case in any situation and useless in a fight for their lives, but Jerry – the more diminutive one who is roughly the shape and size of a cannonball with limbs – is always utterly calm in any situation. He usually stands with his hands in his pockets, taking in whatever is happening before them, and then either acting or exiting depending on the severity of their danger. In this film, it takes his ultimate magical turn into a skeleton to finally lose his composure, but before that, he could almost be sleepwalking through most scenes. In contrast against the more manic Tom (who has a couple of good moments, especially when he crawls out of his clothes in his long johns), Jerry is quite enjoyable to watch here.

The more racist themes that pop up often in the series are here in its very beginning as well. In late September, I posted a piece on another Tom and Jerry short from a year later than this one called Plane Dumb. [You can read that article here.] That adventure, in which the pair travel to Africa, is a full-on blackface-makeup adventure, so at least this film doesn't go quite as far in offense. But this one does contain the first version of a sequence that is replicated in Plane Dumb: the animation and music (though a longer take) of the four black skeleton minstrels that Tom and Jerry encounter. It is unfortunate that otherwise light, silly cartoons are tainted by such sequences, but that's history, folks. You gotta take the lumps with the smooth.

As a Halloween cartoon, though, this one has the goods, in quantity if not quality. Perhaps parents looking for a safe cartoon for the kiddies might want to steer clear for those particular scenes, but experienced adults can make up their own minds for their party atmosphere.

Until the next haunting time,

RTJ

*****

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