Countdown to Halloween: Felix the Ghost Breaker (1923)

Felix the Ghost-Breaker (1923)
A Pat Sullivan Comic
Dir.: Otto Messmer
TC4P Rating: 6/9

Unlike many people of a similar age to me (that age being now, incredibly to me for a variety of reasons, 56), I do not have early childhood memories, outside of toys and clocks, of Felix the Cat. A great many of my age were introduced (it seems) to the character primarily from the television cartoon series from the late '50s and early '60s (specifically, 1958-1961) in which Felix battled The Professor and other baddies in two-part cliffhanger episodes. 

The giveaway for me when people talk about Felix is when they mention either his voice (done by Jack Mercer, previously of Popeye fame), his theme song ("Felix the Cat/The wonderful, wonderful cat...") or how much they loved his Magic Bag of Tricks. I immediately know they are talking about the television series and not the original run of silent cartoons from Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan, wherein the Cat originally began his tremendous popularity. It's not that I feel they are "posers" or something along those lines; such thoughts are squarely idiotic. I don't care when you started liking what you purport to like; just take a little time to learn something about the history of whatever it is you like and we will be fine. Such slights of knowledge were more excusable in the pre-internet days, where you either had to run into a stray article in the newspaper or hike it to the local library and do some research to learn anything. Today, any cellphone gives you access to nearly any subject in mere seconds.

As a child growing up in Alaska throughout the late '60s and through the '70s, I am certainly too young to have watched the series on its initial broadcast, but I also do not recall ever seeing the Felix television series in reruns (at least, not until I was much older and had cable television). If it did run on my local channels at some point, it would have to be due to an astounding slip of my television vigilance, because I watched nearly anything I could (on all four available channels, plus some stray UHF) that lied within the purview of my interests. Animation being one of those interests at the very tippy-top of that list, I could not only practically sniff out cartoons immediately upon turning on the TV set, but even had entire TV guides nearly memorized the day they came out. Unfortunately, while I was aware of Felix as a cultural icon pretty early in my youth – I certainly had friends with dolls, clocks and puzzles emblazoned with his smiling image – it wasn't until my mid-teens that I caught a collection of early silent cartoons on PBS where I finally got to see what all the hubbub was about concerning Felix the Cat.

I do not know if Felix the Ghost Breaker was one of those first shorts that I viewed; honestly, there wereonly a couple of Felix films inside a wide mix of other silent shorts, and the only one that I truly remember by title is Winsor McCay's original Gertie the Dinosaur. But since Felix the Ghost Breaker's plot falls neatly into the realm of horror-related material in time for the Halloween season, it is the short with which I am kicking off my long-delayed return to active cartoon blogging after a nearly 3-year break. Felix the Cat just celebrated his 100 anniversary as a cultural icon last November, and while I am a tad late in celebrating him myself, he seemed the perfect subject for this very moment.

The short was produced for the second batch of Felix silents (1922-1925), which were produced by Margaret J. Winkler. She was a key figure in silent animation history, aiding not just the rise of Felix to superstardom status, but also helping to forge the early careers of the Fleischer Brothers and Walt Disney. While Felix was initially created in 1919 and his early films distributed by Paramount Pictures, Pat Sullivan signed a deal with Winkler in 1922, bringing animator/director Otto Messmer with him. (There has long been a dispute over who the real creator of Felix is: Messmer or Sullivan. Most animation historians of any sort of decent repute tend to side with Messmer. I have no reputation, though I am far from decent, so I will not weigh in with my opinion, as I really don't have enough information.)

Felix the Ghost Breaker is actually fairly Felix light as far as his true involvement in the story goes. Though he is a constant presence throughout the picture, Felix mostly stands about and acts shocked at things for much of the cartoon, and really only springs to action in the final third. The true star of the picture is a spookily obnoxious "ghost" who first haunts a cemetery, then a barn, and then finally a house in short order within the story. Now, there is a big problem regarding the ghostly hijinks in this short, but we will get down to discussing that issue later in this piece. First, let's rip through the plotline bit by bit...

At the outset of the story, it is a dark but not at all stormy night. Felix, wandering alone through the evening, decides to take refuge inside a cemetery for a good night's sleep. Felix walks up to a comfortable looking grave, and with the help of a handy word balloon straight out of a comic strip, informs we viewers, irony fully intact, "That's what I call an ideal resting place!" He curls up beneath a tombstone and falls fast asleep. However, a ghost has a different idea and decides to start taunting our hero cat. First, he employs an unearthly (I presume, since the film is silent) "Oooh"-ing sound. The sound awakens the cat, who then attempts to regain his snooze, but the sound emits from the tombstone again and again.

With the third iteration of the sound, a pair of white-clad hands spring from around the tombstone, and Felix is up and on the alert. Shaking his head and breaking the fourth wall again, he tells us, "I must have been dreaming!" He again lies back down, but the "Oooh"-ing sound continues, and he pops up again, this time seeing a large hand extend straight upward from the top of the grave marker. He again tells us, "I must have been dreaming!" but before he can even consider lying down again, a sheet-style ghost pops up behind the tombstone, looks left and then looks right with dramatic arm flourishes, and then glares at Felix and points down at the grave. Felix shakes in fear, and the ghost momentarily disappears.

While the moon looks down wistfully in the distance at the graveyard shenanigans, Felix scans the air where the ghost evaporated. The cat shakes his head, and then twirls his finger near his ear to tell us he must be going crazy, and then laughs wildly. The ghost sneakily pops back up behind Felix and gives him a fright. The cat grabs a large rock to throw at the ghost, but the spook evaporates once more and reappears on the other side of the grave. It sticks its tongue out at the cat and flies off into the night. Felix swears to go after the ghost, telling us, "That ghost is up to some kind of mischief. I'll follow him!!"

Cut to the spook sneaking up tip-toe style on the open door of a barn. Before the ghost even makes it to the door, Felix likewise is tip-toeing up behind the ghost. After the spooks floats through the door, a long "EEEEEEEEE!!!" emits from someone or something unseen inside. The sound carries to the nearby farmhouse, where a light comes alive on the second floor, and the once-sleeping farmer sticks his head out the window to find out what is making that ungodly noise. After looking about, he peers with great surprise in the direction of the barn, where the action cuts to show the farmer's donkey streaking out the barn followed by the ghost. The donkey stops and quakes with fear while the ghost taunts and points at the animal. The poor equine rears up to attempt a powerful kick at the ghost, but the spook disappears, and then uses the same trick it played on Felix by reappearing behind the donkey, frightening it anew. The spirit then sternly gestures for the donkey to run for the hills, and the terrified creature does just that.

The ghost flies back into the barn, with Felix looking on quizzically at what the horrid thing might be seeking out next. His answer comes quickly, as he first hears a squeal of terror, and then a wheelbarrow flies out of the barn, followed by a sow. As she grabs the handles of the barrow, a dozen small piglets flee from the barn and pile up into the cart. The sow turns the barrow and wheels it at the highest speed she can manage towards the horizon. Her speed is so great that she eventually catches up to the donkey who had fled previously.

The ghost heads towards the house and disappears through the wall. Felix tries to follow the terrible spook, but owing to Felix's inherent corporeality, he merely splats face-first into the wall and then rolls backward. Felix regains his composure and scurries up the porch to peer through the window of the bedroom upstairs. He sees the farmer being terrified by the ghost, who repeatedly points with a stiff arm to tell the farmer to leave the premises. The farmer pulls a gun on the spirit, but it doesn't work to scare it away. The poltergeist then attempts to hypnotize the farmer, but it seems to wear off quickly, so then we see four pairs of ghostly eyeballs floating about at the end of his bed. The farmer leaps for the telephone. "Help!" he cries into the phone, "Send the reserves! There's a ghost in the house!"

Shortly thereafter, a small truck arrives and pulls up in front of the farmhouse. The back doors burst open and roughly four dozen "reserve" members (or cops, clearly) pour out in succession – in the manner of a clown car in a circus – and race through the front door of the house. Felix awaits the results from outside as the sounds of a furious battle begin to be heard from inside. Much yelling and screaming and even gunshots are described to us via words popping up on the screen. The house then flashes almost psychedelically and the stripes of the flashes spin around the house like a merry-go-round (though the house remains stationary). Finally a large hole is torn open on the roof. One by one, each cop comes somersaulting from out of the hole, and then each bounces on the ground and subsequently lands inside the small truck. The vehicle get wider and fatter as it fills up with the defeated reserve members; then, with all the cops collected, the truck speeds off the way it originally came.

With the cops on their way, the last one to be kicked out through roof hole to land on the ground is the poor farmer. He turns to Felix and cries, "I'm ruined! The place is haunted!" Felix gestures for the farmer to not worry, and says, "Leave it to me! I'm a regular ghost-breaker!" He sneaks inside and moves into a room, where at least a half dozen spooks creep past a doorway. When Felix decides to move toward that door, a pair of massive eyeballs appear in midair and stare at the cat, swirling about once or twice. Felix tries to back away and leave, but the ghost appears behind him and points for him to leave. Felix turns and the ghost is suddenly in front of him again in that direction. He turns again and four ghosts confront him; one more turn, and the number is a full dozen. They converge upon him in a tight circle but then the whole group suddenly disappears. Felix, with his eyes still closed, throws several punches in the air, but then realizes he is all alone. He acts tough and determined, but then a large hand pops up through the floor and pulls his tail, sending him running for the door.

In the next room, he stops and arches his back normal-cat style and hisses. He sets himself back to two-foot mode and stands there thinking, but a hole opens up on the wall behind him. The ghost is seen leering at him, and then reaches out to pull the switch on a lamp and send the room into utter darkness. The ghost flies out and attacks Felix. There is a tussle but Felix gets away into the dark. The ghost floats forward toward the screen and points menacingly at the filmgoers in the audience. With the ghost moving away, Felix turns the lamp back on but is frightened by a large skeleton standing just outside the range of the lamplight. Felix jumps up and knocks off the lampshade and the whole room erupts into brilliant light, rendering the skeleton insubstantial.

Felix tries to think of a plan, saying "I wonder how I can trap him?" and then he hits upon a solid idea, perfectly suited for an era then roughly chest-deep in the dryness of Prohibition. (Alcohol gags are fairly prevalent in 1920s cartoons.) After pacing for a quick bit, he notices a bottle of booze on the table. Knowing his audience exceedingly well, the cat says, "They all fall for this!" The ghost reappears and smell the booze in Felix's hand. After a closeup shot revealing that it is indeed a bottle of rum, it becomes Felix's turn to do the taunting as he runs away with the ghost in fast pursuit, greedily grasping for the bottle. Felix then pulls a gun on the spook, ordering it to put its hands up in the air. The farmer rushes forward and pulls the sheet off of the ghost, revealing the cretinous human inside. The old farmer is shocked at the revelation and yells, "Trying to frighten me into selling, eh? I'll fix you!" Jabbing two fingers into his mouth, the farmer whistles loudly for his donkey. The long-eared creature eagerly runs up, rears his hind legs back, and kicks the ex-ghost all the way towards the moon on the horizon! And thusly, the film ends.

Now, while one should not expect too much coherence from a cartoon clearly built to excite the then-fairly wide-eyed filmgoing audience (in relative terms compared to today... and not just kids, either) with the surreal notion of talking cats and havoc-wringing ghosts, I have some definite issues with the film. Most noticeable is the reveal of the "ghost" to be a normal human, a move I almost always despise in almost any form of storytelling. While I personally don't believe in the notion of ghosts as conceived in popular terms, I don't like it when a story that is meant to invoke a fantastical setting at its beginning degrades into normal reality by its end. One can invoke the case of Scooby-Doo's mysteries, which nearly always end in the same manner, and while I did (and do) love the show as a nostalgic presence in my life, it always rankled me that the monsters and spooks were never "real". However, both Scooby-Doo and this Felix short do end with the same fantastical premise as a base: that a talking, intensely anthropomorphized four-legged mammal is the star at the center of the action.

The second sticking point for me is the ultra-late reveal that the human in guise as the spirit is using his charade to try to scare the farmer into selling his property. Again, it's a cartoon short from the silent era and no one is expecting the plot to be carefully laid out in such a way. And also, once again, this is an echo instantly bringing up a recall of Scooby-Doo. It is becoming increasingly clear that this short is practically a template for the mysteries of Scooby-Doo (while most certainly not the earliest example of such a plot).

And the third – and most noticeable – sticking point is the actions of the ghost itself. At least on Scooby-Doo, there was a short explanation by the Mystery Machine kids of how the perpetrator achieved some of his effects. For example: "He used these buckets to make this sound" or "This film projector created the illusion that he was going through the walls" or "He had this rope tied about him to make it look like he was flying by employing this hidden pulley system" etc. (Even though nobody ever saw a big thick hunk of rope dangling through the air at the time... but enough on that...) Here, the ghost is seen flying about the property of the farm in mid-air, disappearing and reappearing, going through walls, appearing as four sets of disembodied eyes, as a pair of giant eyeballs, coming up through the floor, and reappearing as four, six, and then twelve separate ghosts. And also as an entity that is capable of beating the snot out of four dozen armed police officers, causing them to flee. One guy. In a sheet. Neither the farmer or Felix thinks to ask, "How the hell did you do all of that?"

That said, I still enjoyed this cartoon very much. It's got decent atmosphere, it is definitely spooky in parts (with the closeup of the ghost approaching the audience especially memorable), and it moves along very swiftly from gag to gag. I am a little disappointed that Felix does not employ his magical tail as a tool or weapon at any point, as he tends to do in many of his early cartoons (and later ones as well, even the TV series). There is even a moment where question marks appear above his head, although in at least one other short I have seen, his tail makes the question mark when he is puzzled. (A missed opportunity...) But Felix's derring-do and need to make things right is definitely in place and the results are still quite fun.

Hmmm... this gives me an idea. Maybe this is a good way to get that house that I wanted... real cheap...

Happy (early) Halloween! See ya soon with the next 'toon!

RTJ

***

And in case you haven't seen it, you can watch the short below...

Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus (1916)

Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus (Hearst International Film Service, 1916)
Animator: Leon Searle
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

So, what would you rather have from a cartoon titled Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus? A cartoon that truly reflects the original Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse as they were portrayed in one of the most original and important pieces of art ever created (my opinion), the famous comic strip created by George Herriman? Or would you rather have the characters engaged in a full adventure that takes place in a circus setting and uses all of the elements that one expects to see when placed in such an environment?

You won't get either from Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus. While the two characters certainly look exactly like their comic strip versions, and even talk in the "slanglish" speech that Herriman employs for his characters as well (albeit in word balloons only, since this is a silent film), at no point does the film attempt to duplicate the famous backgrounds and perspectives of Herriman's wonderfully rendered and surreal imagining of Coconino County, Arizona.

Instead we get a very basic white background at the beginning, along with the back end of a ticket wagon and opposite it, the entrance to the "Big Circus" tent. Krazy Kat, looking pretty much as in the comics, wanders around the ticket booth, and asks via word balloon, which lays out each letter in her statement in order, "A ticket an' a half." The ticket seller gives Krazy the ticket and a half, and after Krazy moves to the entrance to the show, she turns around and waves her paw. [Note: Krazy Kat is notoriously non-specific, and quite fluid, as to sexuality, but to make things easier in describing the action, I have gone with Krazy as a female in this case.] 

Krazy commands, "Come on Ignatzes darlink!" and then moves inside the tent. Into view comes Ignatz Mouse, himself looking exactly as he does in the comic, with his stick legs and arms, his round little body, his face all wound up in frustration at the world, and his curled tail. He stops at the entrance and motions that he is listening to what is occurring inside. Instead of moving through the open entrance (he has a half ticket after all), he decides to look under the edge of the tent and then enter that way. (I guess mice are rather prone and used to sneaking about, so maybe this way is more natural to him.)

We get a telescopic view of Krazy Kat's bottom perched on the stands inside the circus, with her tail swishing back and forth in excitement. Ignatz strides up and looks at her tail quizzically, and then ascends up its length to take his place alongside the Kat for the show. Krazy's tail continues to dance around a little before the camera switches angles. We next see Krazy put her arm around her beloved, but Ignatz takes a look around and then hurriedly hides in fear behind Krazy, peeking out a couple of times at what is coming towards them.

A dog, no larger than crazy herself, walks into the frame, and stops in front of Krazy and looks up at her. Krazy greets the dog with "Hello! Lynxie How is it by you?" The dog responds, "Oh, putty nice! Seen any nice fat mice about, Krazy I'm hungry as a bear?" [Note: The punctuation use is as it appears in the word balloons.] Krazy, worried for Ignatz's life, shakes her head back and forth to tell the dog "No". Lynxie responds, "Well if you see any let me know even if they ain't so fat!" The dog wanders off and out of the picture for good.

Ignatz ducks back out from behind Krazy, runs forward to watch the dog depart, and we see his knees quake in fear. Krazy asks him, "Ignatz why is mice sech cowards?" in her strange argot. "Fool I ain't a coward!" he replies instantly, but we see his knees rattle together once more to negate his statement. Krazy picks up on this and challenges him. "You gota show me!" she says. "Poof I'll show you Krazy!" he spits back. 

The scene cuts to a series of dressing room doors outside, with the large circus tent as the only feature in the background. Ignatz marches with purpose up to the door in the middle, marked with a number "2" and a large star. He leaps up and peers through the keyhole, and we see the legs and bottom torso of a seated human female preparing for the show. Ignatz breaks the fourth wall and turns and gives a wink and a knowing smile to the audience. Then, without even knocking, he pulls open the door to the dressing room and runs into it.

He flies up to the female and throws his arms into the air, yelling "Boo!" at her. We must assume there is a scream, for the only reaction we see if that the circus star pulls up the hem of her dressing garment and reveals two shapely legs clads in stockings. Her knees also rattle together briefly, and then she steps up on stool to get out of the reach of the invading mouse fiend. A word balloon spells out "POLICE HELP!" as Ignatz casually strolls out of the dressing room.

Krazy asks, "Well?" and then follows up with, "Shux that ain't brave Anyone can scare a mere womans". Ignatz replies, "All right Krazy Let's see you do it!" Krazy walks into the dressing room, points her fingers at the female like guns, and yells, "SPOOF!" The next thing she knows, Krazy is swatted hard into the ground with a broom. She is told to "Skat" and then pushed down with the broom again and again. The End.

Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus is only three minutes in length, and never tries to do too much within that span. It gives us a simple comic situation and carries it through. It never comes close to approaching the complexity or far more robust language of the comic strip, and granted, this is pretty much a given considering the severe limitations of the animated art form in 1916. There were relatively few studios and animators growing the art form at that time, and conveying a storyline based around the joys of linguistic gymnastics would also have been impossible in the silent era as well.

So you have to take your pleasures where you may. I may be disappointed that the true possibilities of Krazy, Ignatz, and the missing member of the love triangle, Offisa Pupp, were never really explored onscreen, except in a couple of brief instances (those would be the 1936 Charles Mintz cartoon, L'il Ainjll -- which I will be writing about next week -- and a short cartoon that appeared on Sesame Street in the early 1970s, where brick-throwing explains the word "love" to the prepubescent audience. (That wouldn't happen just a few years later, and it may explain why, apart from possible copyright violations, the Sesame Street piece has sadly disappeared from view, even on DVD reissues.) 

But if you want to see Krazy and Ignatz where they still look something like the Krazy and Ignatz in the strips, then you need to take advantage of the few silent cartoons that have survived. Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus may not be Herriman's vision, nor gives us much in the way of circus antics, but it's better than nothing.

***

For my first take on the later cartoons of Krazy Kat and my love for the original comic strip, visit my post from May 11, 2006 at http://cinema4celbloc.blogspot.com/2006/05/bars-and-stripes-1931.

Felix Finds Out (1924)

Felix Finds Out (A Pat Sullivan Comic, 1924, silent) 

Dir.: Otto Messmer

TC4P Rating: 7/9

An extremely impatient narrative, Felix Finds Out, released in 1924, seems to have committed to no certain plotline for the bulk of its length. It meanders here and there with only the slightest connection between its imaginative sections; it is only at the end does one realize that a) there is a purpose and goal in mind, and b) the film is, in essence, a shaggy dog story, and that the purpose and goal in mind is to get to a single punchline or concept, and that everything else that comes before it is just hay. This, of course, wins it a spot in my heart, which has an entire wing devoted to such trifles, including many stories and productions of my own, constructed in exactly the same freewheeling, ambling fashion.

Some would point at the film and its walking hot dogs, drunkenly personable moon, and human-like cat with the extremely prehensile and utilitarian tail, and describe the whole affair as being "surreal". This word is bandied out quite frequently, especially these days, when everything above and including standing on one's tippy-toes during urination is labeled "X-Treme"; similarly, it seems any random bit of weirdness is described as "surreal", as in "Wow, dude, that was surreal!" And they would be, generally, wrong in most circumstances. Merely weird or odd is not necessarily surreal, and as such, this film is not necessarily surreal. It never approaches the dreamlike state of which most surrealism is composed (at least, until the drinking scenes); while the film seems oddly contrived to fit three separate sections together, there is a common line of sense, mentioned through title cards representing the character's dialogue, that flows throughout the thing; and the switches between scenes are not that jarring as juxtapositions. There is a slight feeling of the film being composed of non-sequiturs, but by film's end, you realize that the filmmakers knew exactly where they were going and how they were going to get there. The true narrative path is actually just a slightly erratic line with a few charming bits of oddness thrown into the mix.

A kid named Willie is worried about completing his lessons in time for the school bell, but pal Felix the Cat discovers a nickel while Willie is busy studying. Willie decides they should buy a hot dog with the nickel. Felix is hungry (as usual) and agrees with him, and they run off to the hot dog stand. Once they spend their money, Willie at first refuses to share but then flips a coin to decide who gets the snack. The coin lands on its edge, so they decide to split it 50-50. The hot dog, laying on the ground during the proceedings, will have none of it. The hot dog barks loudly, stands up (who knew that they had thin little legs and feet, let alone that they could bark?), dances a hasty jig, bows to his pair of would-be devourers, and runs back to the hot dog stand from whence he came. He jumps back up on the counter and lays back down with his fellow hot dogs. (At this rate, the cart owner is never going to run out of supplies, but he is also never going to make a dime.)

Felix initiates a plan to capture all of the hot dogs by behaving in exactly the sort of way he never does: like an actual cat would. Felix lowers himself to the regular standards of his species and meows loudly and then struts in front of the hot dogs, who begin to growl and then give chase to Felix. Our hero runs into a doghouse, with the hot dogs fast on his trail, and they go in after him. A terrific though unseen battle takes place, and then Felix motions Willie to step into the doghouse. The two of them come out of the shelter with their happy stomachs full of the vanquished hot dogs.

The school bell then rings, and Willie suddenly realizes that he is in trouble for failing to learn his lessons. Once in class, however, Felix tries to help his pal out with his mathematics problems by sitting on the window sill and forming the answers with his amazingly talented tail. Luckily, both answers are of the single digit variety, so that Felix doesn't have to stretch his powers too much; unluckily, the teacher catches on to their little racket rather quickly. Because of this, Willie is given a tough homework assignment to do that evening. It turns out to be this question: "What makes the moon shine?" Finally, we understand the title of the film: Felix has to find out the answer to this question.

That evening, Felix goes to ask the Man in the Moon about the answer. The Moon is angry about being disturbed, and he frightens Felix at first when he moves in closer to the cat, but lightens up instantly because he is actually a jolly sort. Felix asks him what makes the moon shine, but the Moon only winks and laughs at him. Felix punches the Moon right in the nose, and the Moon drifts back up into the sky. Frustrated, Felix leans against a dead tree to ponder the question further;, but the tree begins to walk away! Felix follows the tree across the field, until the tree stops at a shack with a sign that reads "Try Our Moonshine". The tree knocks a branch on the wall, and then a window appears with a shady looking character in it. The tree asks for something with a dancing motion, and as the first window shuts and a second lower one opens, the man inside the tree costume pulls off his disguise and then ties it around his waist like an apron. He is clearly a bartender, and from out of the bottom window arrives a jug of moonshine. He picks up and kisses the jug, and then runs off.

Felix tries this same thing and is rewarded in the exact same way. He takes a swig from the jug, and almost instantly becomes drunk. He staggers and hiccups, and then a strange-looking, worm-like dragon briefly appears in his view. He takes another shot from the jug and is plagued by dots in his vision, and then the dragon reappears even larger and scarier than before. Felix takes several phantom blows at his non-existent opponent, but then something even weirder shows up: a large elephant (it would be pink, I presume, had the film been produced in color) with wings, and flashing, alternating stripes and dots. Felix tries to fight this aberration of nature, too, but the winged pachyderm disappears. He then staggers back to Willie's window, where the worried kid is still awaiting an answer to his homework. He asks Felix if he found out what makes the moon shine, and Felix responds, "Did I? I'll say I did!" He laughs uproariously, and the film irises out.

Silliness, but slyly innovative silliness from the early days of the cinema. It's amazing how much freedom Otto Messmer had with the character of Felix, who could prove to be most pliable to just about any situation in which they put him. There is no attempt in many of these films to affix any sort of coherent storyline to his adventures; mainly, situations are given simply so that the cat can pace and then think his way out of them. This is the true face of Felix the Cat, without a voice, and without a gimmicky magic bag of tricks; just a plucky cat with a sharp brain and an adaptable tail. (Why he needed a bag of tricks when he already had the tail is beyond me; I find the tail far more intriguing.) Cartoonists have tried to jam a lot more into some far less compelling characters. Felix, a major star already within the very adolescence of the American cinema, had everything you really needed…

RTJ

[This piece was edited and revised with new photos on September 15, 2016.]

Two-Lip Time (1926)

Two-Lip Time (Pat Sullivan, 1926, silent) 
Dir.: Otto Messmer
Cel Bloc Rating: 7/9

My cat Buster Keaton Ghidorah doesn't think. At least, he doesn't think like Felix the Cat. He doesn't pace back and forth, hands clenched together behind his lower back, scowling as if to scare that elusive strand of thought out from under the cupboard in his brain. My cat also doesn't have a tail that detaches from his body and forms a big black question mark whenever he sees something that draws his curiosity, or that can turn into any number of helpful tools whenever he needs a way out of a pinch. He also doesn't walk in a bipedal fashion like Felix, which would prove to be an unnerving sight if he were actually able to do that for even a stretch of three feet.

Lastly, he is not silent like Felix: he talks and talks and talks... and loudly! I remember a few years back where there was a glorious run of about two days after he was trapped out of the house (due to his own quick bolt as I was leaving; he was an outdoor cat, so I didn't think anything of it)... and couldn't meow, couldn't purr, couldn't squeak... for a blessedly low-key and pin-dropping quiet and sweet two days after my return. He would do his normal routine, but either something scared him or whatever, but he was my little quiet Felix for two wonderful days. When he did return to his boisterous yowling, demanding ways, it was in small increments, and so, the entire week was nearly silent in that regard.

Buster still didn't think like Felix either, even after that wake up call, though someone did plan and pull off the Great Post-Thanksgiving Refrigerator Robbery of 2001, in which every leftover given to me from three different households ended up down the gullets of both my cat and my equally sized dog, Blip Ignatz Mice. Either they worked in tandem to get that door open, or one of them had been planning that caper, but perhaps it was the delicious smell of all of that wonderful turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing that drove them to do such a crime. (I know that I'm that way about mashed potatoes too.) So, maybe he did pace back and forth on his hind legs, slouched and scowling, tail shaping into a lightbulb of discovery, and then finally unleashing his master break-in of the fridge.

Felix is definitely hungry at the start of Two-Lip Time, one of his adventures from 1926, but he is not seen thinking his way through the problem. Instead he is on a dock in a harbor, hot on the trail of his potential dinner victim: a tiny mouse. The mouse runs off on a rope leading to a massive ocean liner, and Felix follows suit. The problem comes when a sailor undoes the rope just after the pair run into the ship, and the liner takes to the open sea. Felix doesn't notice until the mouse disappears down a hole in the floor, and suddenly our hero realizes where he is: two portholes show the sloshing waves of the sea and the tilt of the ship's axis, and poor Felix slowly becomes seasick. He tries to concentrate on catching the now unseen mouse, but his stomach yearns for something else, and eventually he can no longer keep what few contents reside within intact anymore. He runs to the porthole, hangs his head out and throws up into the ocean. (We don’t actually see him throw up, of course; it is implied by the heaving of his body out of the porthole.)

A title card tells us that Felix is suddenly "IN DUTCH", and sure enough, the boat pulls into a port in Holland, with a horizon dotted with windmills, and with a couple dozen of the citizenry there to greet the unseen passengers on the liner. Felix takes in the strange surroundings, and then espies a cute little Dutch girl, complete with the stereotypical clogs, and swiftly forgets his stomach hunger and starts a new kind of craving. He instantly falls in love with the girl, and leaps from the porthole to join the girl on the ground. He asks if she would walk with him, and she agrees in kind. As they walk, Felix flirts with her and eventually kisses her. Unfortunately for the Cat, she has a little Dutch suitor, who shows his jealousy by confronting Felix and attacking him. Felix runs to a nearby car and retrieves a tire pump from it. He runs back to the boy and pumps air into his pants, turning the boy's bottom half into a balloon that rises into the clouds and carries Felix's rival away.

Felix then pulls out a banjo and makes to serenade his new beloved, but his strangled mewling wakes up a man who is asleep on the porch nearby house. The man is most decidedly not happy about this, and his wooden shoe at the Cat. As the man threatens to give chase to Felix, our hero uses the shoe as a boat, taking to a nearby river and turning an exclamation point over his head into a makeshift paddle. Felix stops rowing and looks back to check the man's progress, but the boat continues on without him, and he has to run on the air to catch up with it. He eventually finds safety on the other shore, swearing off the whole situation, including, apparently, his love for the girl.

In a nearby yard, Felix comes across a bottle of gin sitting on a table. He smells the liquor and finds it not to his liking, but then spies a bottle of milk enticing him from the sill of the house adjacent to him. After Felix makes an unsuccessful attempt to steal the milk, a man appears in the window, and Felix begs for the bottle. The man tells him that if Felix would water the flowers in the garden (tulips, naturally), then Felix will get the bottle of milk. The man departs, and Felix tips the table backwards so that the gin in the bottle pours into a conveniently placed water-can. He then profusely "waters" the tulips, and the little buds come to life instantly. One tulip even drinks the gin that forms into a pool on the ground; then all of the now besotted flowers beg for more of the precious "water". Felix then pours the gin onto the base of a tree, which instantly begins to act drunkenly, and then staggers and stumbles its way offscreen.

The man, meanwhile, has caught on to Felix's antics, and chases the cat through the countryside. They first spin round and round on one windmill, and then the man chases Felix to a second one. Here, Felix climbs to the very top, and then detaches his tail to use it as a hand-crank. He spins the blades of the windmill ever faster, until the entire thing is spinning like an enormous fan. A hurricane-strength wind arises from Felix's cranking, and his nemesis is blown out of sight. Felix puts his tail back on, looks at the camera, and laughs heartily to finish the picture.

I like the fact that the title has a double meaning in its use of "Two-Lip", and the details on individual characters are incredibly vivid. (The sequence of the man removing his shoe has a depth to its design that is quite astonishing for a film from the early days of animation.) The shipboard sickness scene does go on a little too long, but the starkness of the room combined with the two portholes with the sloshing seawater is a most memorable image. Felix has a swell character bit, where, after he has dumped the gin and is about to water the flowers, he does a silly straightening and flourish to his whiskers. I also like the fact that once Felix gets to Holland, he completely forgets his hunger, only rediscovering it once he has given up on the girl, and then sees the bottle of milk. Love can make you forget you are starving to death, I suppose.

Of course, he never does get to down anything in the cartoon, and this is where he definitely differs from my cat. I attribute this to Felix's silence: no matter how loud Felix yells in these films, they are silent movies, and he is going about the process all wrong. My cat, on the other hand, CAN'T... SHUT... UP...! The slightest twinge of hunger gets him yowling, and the only way to tone him down is to feed him. NOW!

If only it were possible to distract him with a little Dutch girl...

[This article was updated with new photos and edited on 11/23/2015.]