Countdown to Halloween: Spooks (1930)

For the month of October, Cinema 4: Cel Bloc is taking part in an annual internet celebration known as the Countdown to Halloween. This is the fourth year that I have participated in this countdown, but the first with my Cel Bloc site. To find out more about the Countdown to Halloween, and to see a list of participating websites and blogs, go to http://countdowntohalloween.blogspot.com/.

Spooks (Universal, 1930) 
Dir.: Walter Lantz 
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

As the first offering of several Halloween-themed cartoons that I plan to feature throughout the month of October, I felt it was important to go with a film that captures an overall Halloween mood, rather than one that concentrates on a single featured character. Yes, Spooks, a 1930 short directed by Walter Lantz (he of Woody Woodpecker fame) does eventually settle into a full-on parody of Lon Chaney's version of The Phantom of the Opera, and indeed, that action is built around series star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. But Oswald is really a secondary character in his own cartoon, and much of the shenanigans are built around other characters instead.

And as for setting the Halloween mood, the early portions of this film have it in spades. Over the title card, we hear whistling wind effects as an orchestra sputters and seems to churn to life. An actor attempting to replicate the supposed voice of a ghostly apparition repeats the title word "spooks" twice, and on the second turn, pronounced harder and louder than the first, the letters in the title quiver in place. After the credits card, a black curtain seems to be drawn across the screen, and then the blackness transforms into the shadowy branch of a tree overlooking a cemetery.

The orchestra, with the wind effects still whispering along in the background, begins to play Charles Gounod now-famous Funeral March of a Marionette, which gained even greater popularity starting in the mid-1950s as it was chosen to be the theme song of Alfred Hitchcock's television series for a solid decade. In fact, for me, it has been hard to see any image of Hitchcock without immediately thinking of that theme music, so hearing it in a cartoon that was released twenty-five years earlier than the first episode of the show – and about a year after Hitchcock released his very first sound feature, Blackmail, in 1929 – seemed to hold some special importance (even though it really doesn't).

After we see the branch wave about in the wind as we view the marvelously sketchy background image of the graveyard (and not the first time that a Lantz Oswald film has reminded me somewhat of a Herriman Krazy Kat drawing, also of that relative time), the action begins with a visit to a coffin sitting upright from the ground. The door swings open, and a skeleton lets his fully fleshed black cat out for the evening. The cat, who has been hung out by the tail, yowls at its master and stomps away with its head in the air, blowing a raspberry at the skeleton at the last second. The skeleton then puts out an empty milk bottle on what I presume would serve as his doorstep, the mound of dirt over the grave. He drops a nickel into the milk bottle as payment, closes the door to the coffin, and through a window on its door, we see the shadow of the skeleton blow out a candle, creating a second blackened frame effect.

This time, the blackness pulls itself away from the borders of the frame into the dark cloak of a masked and hatted figure with tall, skinny legs marching through the cemetery. "I'm the Phantom!" says a voice beneath the mask, as his cloak trails out high in the wind behind him. On a branch in a tree, an owl surrounding by the outline of the moon makes its trademark "Who?" noise in the direction of the figure. The Phantom looks up and points a finger at the bird, yelling "Not you, you fat-faced buzzed!" The bird stretches his neck towards the camera until its bulbous eyes overtake the screen, its pupils making somewhat of a kaleidoscopic effect in the middle of each eyeball. The owl then retracts it neck and resumes its usual perch on the branch.

Nearby sits a low-rent looking Opera House, where we are shown the stage door. The Phantom stalks across the screen to the door, and when it opens on its own, he lifts his cape and almost seems to fly through the door. Inside, a small orchestra comprised of various animals is rehearsing. On the kettle drums, holding a pair of sticks, is a small mouse who looks almost exactly like Mickey Mouse, the character who replaced Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks's shorts when Disney left Charles Mintz's employ a couple of years earlier. (To be clear, Lantz did not steal Oswald; he was merely directing the character after Universal gained the rights to him. Mintz is the culprit, who basically conned Disney out of a job and thus, his main creation to that point. Lantz went on to produce over 140 Oswald shorts.)

Of course, the kettle drums that the Mickey doppelgänger is playing is nothing more than the ample rear end of the conductor, who doesn't seem to mind having his hindquarters used in such a way as he leads the rest of the orchestra in the pit before the stage. The cats and dogs in the band play the overture wildly, and then the curtain grinds open to reveal Oswald the Lucky Rabbit wearing a small hat and standing next to a female hippopotamus. The hippo lady grasps her hands together and starts to sing in an operatic voice. The gag here is that the hippo sings the low parts, while Oswald sings the higher parts...

Hippo: "Oh my heart cries out to you dear..."
Oswald: "Oh my heart cries!"
Hippo: "Oh my heart cries!"
Oswald: "Oh my har-har-har-har-heart!"
Hippo: "Har-har-har-har-heart!"
Both: "H-E-A-R-T! Heaaaarrrrt! Ooohhhh!"

On the final note, both of their heads jut out toward the viewer, much like the strange owl had earlier, thereby distorting their features wildly. As the voice of the hippo is none other than Pinto Colvig, it is not hard to hear his eventual character of Walt Disney's Goofy in some of the intonations.

Backstage, a female cat named, somewhat unsurprisingly for the day, Kitty (who today is now known as Ortensia, Oswald's beloved) cries into her paws at the performance. She is jealous of the hippo being onstage and desperately wants to be the star of the opera. Enter the Phantom of the Opera, who slithers up and out of a crack in the floorboards and opens his arms wide to greet the crying kitten. Animated hearts flutter from his chest in great profusion, telling us of his stalker-like affection for the girl. "What behooves thee, fair maiden?" asks the Phantom into her ear, as her back is still turned to him. She stops crying and points to the stage. She tries to tell the Phantom her troubles, but a closeup of her head and open mouth reveals a long tongue that is tied completely in knots, so that everything comes out as gibberish. But the Phantom knows precisely what she desires, and after thinking for a second, says "Hmmm... fear thee not!" and then disappears as swiftly as he arrived.

On the stage, the hippo is singing an aria, but the Phantom's long arm shoots up through a knothole in the floorboards. Bearing a knife, his hand thrusts towards the hippo's prodigious rear end and stabs it with the knife. Air escapes the hippo like a balloon being deflated, and the opera sings flattens out completely on the stage. (Take it for what it is – after all, none of this was ever meant to be taken seriously – but taken from a logical view, we have essentially seen a murder in a cartoon, since we never see the hippo again for the remainder of the cartoon to know that she is alright.) Backstage again, the Phantom reappears to Kitty, who seems only briefly shocked at the demise of her rival. The Phantom announces, with a grand flourish, "I will make you a great singer!" but when he does, another Mickey doppelgänger, or perhaps even the same one from before, pops up through the floorboards and blows a raspberry at them.

This only distracts the Phantom for the briefest of seconds, for as Kitty turns her back to him, he tries to lift up her skirt. She stops him, and shoots the Phantom down with a glare, as she taps her foot and drops her fists to her hips. He whispers to Kitty what he was actually planning to do, and she agrees. Shockingly, she sticks her butt high up in the air, and he turns around to place a large phonograph inside her stretched-out skirt. The Phantom puts the phonograph needle to the record on its turntable and sends her to take her place as the opera's new star. Kitty takes the stage and starts to sing, "For I am the queen of the Mayflower--" but after the third go at the lyric, the needle on the record starts to skip after the word "May". Each time it skips, it causes Kitty's rear end to sway from one side to the other, while her arms flail about in panic.

In the opera's gallery section, so noted because that is what is written across its front, a pair of jokers (while a third sleeps several rows behind them) start to mock her and begin counting down the months following May: "June... July... August... September... Merry... Christmas!" Back onstage, Kitty is still flailing about while the record continues to skip. The Phantom's hand reaches from stage left and resets the needle, which shortly corrects the skipping, but then the music starts to wind down slower and slower, until Kitty collapses into a puddle on the stage, much like when the hippo was deflated with a knife earlier. Unlike the hippo, however, Kitty is resurrected by the Phantom reaching in and cranking the lever on the phonograph so that the music can continue once again to play unabated. Kitty finishes the performance, and somehow receives "Bravos" from the audience in triumph.

Backstage, Kitty is greeted by the Phantom and Oswald, who are applauding wildly. When the Phantom says, "My beloved!" to her, though, she leaps completely over his outstretched arms and into the arms of Oswald instead. The two embrace happily, and Oswald says, "Gee, Kitty! You were wonderful!" The Phantom growls at this, and yells "Curses!" in the classic villain mold. He grabs Kitty and pulls her completely out of her bloomers, which are left sitting in Oswald's hands, who doesn't even realize she is gone until he opens his eyes and realizes in shock he is holding her clothing. Crying out, "Kitty, where are you?," Oswald pokes his head through the flap of her drawers while looking about for his beloved.

Spooks then makes an absolutely dead-on reference to the 1925 Chaney version of The Phantom of the Opera by staging its own replica of the film's arguably most recognizable scene: the unmasking of the Phantom as he plays the organ. (True, thin plot elements were involved before this, but this section is very on target.) The Phantom drops the girl on the ground and then takes his place at the instrument, but before he begins playing, he turns to Kitty and warns her, "If you ever remove this mask, I'll---!" and then drags a finger across his throat to signify cutting it. He starts to play the organ, and of course, Kitty cannot help but try to remove the mask. He sneaks forward, her legs stretching higher and higher so she can reach his face, and when she reaches a certain point, her bloomers fall down from under her skirt. (Somehow, she got another pair between being kidnapped and now.) The Phantom turns and catches her in the act, growling at her, but she tap dances back to her original spot singing "La la la la la" and then kisses both of her hands, to the tune of Shave and a Haircut.

The Phantom returns to playing on the organ, and this time, Kitty makes it all the way to the bow of his mask tied behind his head. Tentatively, she undoes the knot, and the mask drops away. The Phantom turns around and roars at her as his skeleton-style face is revealed. Kitty cries in fright, and the Phantom clasps her hands about her neck and ankles and starts to stretch her apart. Suddenly, a knock arrives at the Phantom's door, provided by a knocker set into the wood just below a small window. Yet another Mickey-type mouse answers the window, and Oswald's angry face is seen through it. The mouse closes the window and alerts the Phantom on a small trumpet. He opens the window to show Oswald to the Phantom, but the Phantom floats straight through the window, his frightening visage sending Oswald scurrying away. Yet again, blackness starts to fill the screen as portions of the Phantom's strange body continue to cascade through the window on the door.

Oswald is shown running as fast as he can from the terrible Phantom, but the villain keeps attempting to grab the rabbit by the ankles, failing each time. Oswald finally leaps down through a long shaft, where he bounces off several ledges along the wall, yelling "Ouch!" over and over again. He lands on the upturned shoes of a giant spider, who is stretched across a web at the body. The spider dwarfs Oswald several times over, so you really have to wonder what other horrors lie below this Opera House? Well, we find out quickly, as the spider – to a variation on Funeral March of a Marionette – tires of juggling Oswald atop his numerous shoes and kicks him away. No sooner does Oswald land on the floor than he finds a series of dragons running through his legs. Each dragon has several sharp-looking scales along its spine and as they make their pass between the Oswald's legs, he screams in pain over and over again as the scale seem to break right off when they hit his crotch. ("Lucky Rabbit" indeed...) The last dragon in the line is completely black, and though it produces the same painful result as the others, the dragon is ultimately revealed to be the Phantom instead.

The Phantom continues to chase Oswald faster and faster through the creep-inducing atmosphere of the Opera House underground, until at last he stops the rabbit by placing a large gloved hand about the poor lad's neck. The music stops as well, and then, surprisingly, the Phantom asks Oswald this question: "What does a chicken say when it lays a square egg?" Oswald is mystified by this, and scratches his head, as sputters as he fails to come up with a proper answer. The Phantom slaps Oswald hard across the face, and the rabbit yells out, "OUCH!" "'OUCH!' is correct!" responds the Phantom, and then gives the camera a goofy look. The villain then squares himself up and disappears in place, like a pair of elevator doors closing into nothingness. Oswald turns to the camera and gives a smile and then a curtain closes on the whole affair. We see a cartoonist’s version of the Universal Pictures globe logo, and then we hear…

“Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
That's Oswald!"

Sure, the final gag drops with a thud. But that aside, this film rocks as a spoof of The Phantom of the Opera, released only five years earlier than this short and at the time (1930) was itself in a national rerelease, which included some added sound sequences. Spooks may not be as accurate as a Phantom fan would wish, with only a light touch on a couple of prime scenes, but the intent was never more than a gentle ribbing here, happy to hopefully warrant a little more attention by tying itself to a highly popular film of its day.

The one element that I find the most intriguing about Spooks is that the character of the Phantom of the Opera is truly allowed to be quite scary, at least by the standards of a 1930s cartoon villain. I was expecting him to be unmasked in a far more comic fashion, where perhaps he would turn out to be some recognizable celebrity/actor of the day, but instead they pretty much, except for Kitty's underwear falling to the floor, play it for the full scare of the movie version. The Phantom does not have a pleasant countenance underneath the mask, and is exactly the disfigured, cadaverous-looking monster that is revealed à la Chaney.

And he never lets up being scary until that very last gag. He is almost always angry at everyone, murderously jealous of Kitty, stabs the hippo, strangles Oswald and Kitty at separate times, curses out the owl, slaps Oswald in the face and growls menacingly at him in another scene, and seems to have a corps of hideous monsters at his beck and call. He can shapeshift into other forms, flight seems to be a power at his beck and call, as is disappearing at will. In other Oswald cartoons, the lucky rabbit often takes on the hero role and when danger rears its head, he often is up to the task. But in Spooks, you get the very real feeling that they simply had to end the film on a truly stupid joke because there was no other way out for them. The Phantom was simply too powerful to stop, and even though Oswald gets his Irish up when Kitty is kidnapped by the villain, the second he actually confronts the roaring, drooling cretin, any pretense of being a hero wilts away from Oswald's being. He hightails it and is pretty much on the run for the remainder of the picture. 

Until that slap and the stupid joke bit, that is. I suppose if they had found some lame weakness for their villain, and had Oswald blunder into stopping him cold at the last second, I probably would have taken it even harder than simply ending the film on an old vaudeville punchline. I suppose for comedy's sake, or even to bring the film back into the general vicinity of comedy and not animated terror, they had to thrown in that last joke. I suppose that I will have to make my peace with it after all.

Putting this aside, as a film rife with Halloween atmosphere, this fits right in to what I wanted to kick off the month. A graveyard, spooky noises, skeletons, black cats, coffins, owls, creepy music, gentle mocking of a horror film classic, spiders, dragons, and a genuinely fright-inducing villain... Spooks is a pretty enjoyable start to any Halloween celebration. I have several other grand shorts, some quite famous, some not so much, chosen for the spotlight in counting down to Halloween throughout October here on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc. I hope you will join me through the month for more animated fun!

RTJ

*****

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

The Shark Film Office Special Edition: Rabbitson Crusoe (1956)

[For the month of September 2016, I am writing a series of shared posts in conjunction with another of my websites, The Shark Film Office, about cartoons that feature sharks in them. You can read the reviews on either site, but please do visit the other one if you like the content I have to offer.]

Rabbitson Crusoe (1956)
Dir.: Friz Freleng
TC4P Rating: 7/9
Species: a purple shark named Dopey Dick, who is a little bit dopey and kind of a dick.

Believe it or not, I still own my very first edition of Daniel Defoe's classic novel, Robinson Crusoe. Please don't read that incorrectly. I do not own the first edition of Robinson Crusoe. Considering that the novel is just a hair under three hundred years old – having been first published in 1719, and thought by many scholars to be the first true novel in the English language – that would now make me a multi-thousand-aire, at least (and I am definitely not that at the moment).

No, the first edition of Robinson Crusoe that I ever owned was – and is – a Junior Literary Guild Book Club edition from the early 1970s, itself a reprinting of a 1945 edition of the book, illustrated in a still appealing way by Fritz Kredel. I read and reread this volume multiple times as a child, and it definitely would have to count as one of my early literary influences. To this day, sitting on my library shelves, I still have a few other books from my time in that book club (the first of many) as a kid: Daniel Boone - Wilderness Scout by Stewart Edward White, 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, Paul Bunyan and His Great Blue Ox by Wallace Wordsworth (which has been missing its cover so long that I can no longer summon an image of it in my mind), and Rascal by Sterling North (also sans cover, but I remember what that one looked like). Some have made it through the years better than others, but only one of those Book Club volumes has gotten a full rereading since I became an adult (and has, thus, remained in the best shape due to my attention to it), even though I owned both a paperback edition and a more recent, handsomely bound edition. That book is Robinson Crusoe.

Though my politics and viewpoint towards the book (and mankind in general) have changed greatly since my early, youthful exposure to the story, I still find Robinson Crusoe a rousing adventure novel, not least of which is its location and setting, that of a man stranded on what we would term a "deserted" or "desert" island, though it is anything but a desert nor does it turn out to be deserted. The notion of a tiny little island with just sand and a palm tree is really the province of cartoonists, filmmakers, and sketch comedians, though when we hear the name "Robinson Crusoe," you would not be charged with wrongheadedness were you to summon up such a simple image at first. Of course, you would tend to add a slave in the form of a "Man Friday" to do Crusoe's bidding, but otherwise, the brevity of your casual daydream would be forgiven.

The book, of course, is far more robust and detailed, and the island is equally lush and laden with the resources necessary for decades of survival, as long as Crusoe and his eventual co-habitant are willing to work for them. The book was so popular it created its own sub-genre – the Robinsonade – and all further stories of humans lost at sea and abandoned to the islands of the world's oceans have Defoe's book (and its two quickly written sequels, neither of which have I ever read) as its wellspring. Do you think the novel, The Swiss Family Robinson, written almost a full century later, is named that for little reason? (The name is meant to be evocative of Defoe's book. It is not the name of the family in the original German printing, that's for sure. The family is well aware of the novel Robinson Crusoe, and mention it and its title character several times within their own adventures.)

Getting back to that original novel, Defoe really started something in the imaginations of men, women, and children all over the world. And despite what happens to the characters being stranded for so long from civilization on their own island before Crusoe is eventually rescued, the book itself evokes a romantic feeling for the notion of being lost and stranded at sea, however actually tragic such an occurrence often is for the victim. That's why when musing about getting away from the rat race of modernity, we discuss "desert island" lists, books, albums, and romantic partners. The notion of being trapped on a small circle of jungle-cropped land to choose between Ginger and Mary Ann is endlessly appealing to most men. (The answer, for me, is "both," though Mary Ann is the clear choice when all is said and done. Way cuter, smarter, and ultimately hotter than the overly made up and high maintenance movie star.)

Yes, I still recall the novel quite fondly myself, and know that at some point in the near future I may settle into a couch somewhere and give it another good read. I have yet to find a feature film version of the story that I have considered completely satisfying, though I am certain filmmakers will continue trying. (And please do...) Many of the details of the book are thoroughly burned into my subconscious by this point, that it sometimes feels that I have actually absorbed the book into my bones as well. And yet, when presented with a small story detail, such as the presence of sharks within the framework of the novel, I had to think about it briefly. "Are there sharks in Robinson Crusoe?" I wondered. My mind told me, "Well, yes, there certainly must be," but I couldn't recall for sure. Inside, a mild panic started to bounce around my brain. "Good god, man! For the sake of The Shark Film Office, you need to figure this out!"

This issue gets confused even further for me when other adaptations – and even parodies and spoofs – of Robinson Crusoe are released which do include sharks in the details. The book that I thought I knew so well starts to get muddled even further. And sometimes, these additions are so clearly out of bounds that they become ridiculous. This is fine when a comedic adaptation is meant, but sometimes creative license in straight dramatic versions can go just a little bit too far. But here is what I do know: Nowhere, in that original book, do I recall that its main character had to fend off the murderous advances of a man-eating shark named Dopey Dick.

To find Dopey Dick, you have to go to the cartoons. You have to track down the Warner Bros. short titled Rabbitson Crusoe, directed by Friz Freleng, which was released as part of its Looney Tunes series in 1956. Lovers of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show in the 1960s and 1970s will remember seeing this cartoon a zillion times, and frankly, this particular short was not of my favorites at the time. This owed nothing to the general excellence of the short's construction but more to the very company it was keeping. It is hard to be thought of in such grand terms when What's Opera, Doc?, The Rabbit of Seville, and A Froggy Evening are living right next door. But Rabbitson Crusoe has grown on me over the years, and within the reasons for such a thing to occur, the most important is its portrayal of the sneaky, ravenously hungry shark, Dopey Dick.

The title of the film appears over a cartographer's rendition of an island on any ol' map. An orchestral version of the pop standard Trade Winds by Cliff Friend and Charles Tobias plays over the credits (and this is not by accident, as it will come into play later in the film). Mel Blanc's familiar voice as Yosemite Sam fills the soundtrack after the end of the credits as the story opens with Robinson Crusoe's narration of his diary. "A low tide and high rock caused my predicament. The ship's supplies used up, my only food supply was a lonely coconut tree."

Trade Winds continues to play in the background as the camera pans from a shipwreck sitting high in the water, over to a series of rocks leading to a small island whose only feature is a hut on stilts with a ladder, and then another series of rocks, and finally another small island upon which stands the lonely coconut tree mentioned in the narration. Sam continues to spin his yarn as the camera zooms in on the island with the tree, saying "Gathering coconuts was a problem because of a dangerous, man-eating shark named Dopey Dick." (See? I got it from somewhere...)

Amongst the rocks, we see a shark's large black dorsal fin swim into view, ominously swirling about in a circular motion. Sam as Robinson Crusoe, on the island with the hut, walks to the edge of the water and looks around the rocks to gauge any potential places where the shark might be lying in wait for him. A closeup on the rocks reveals Dopey Dick to have his head up out of the water as he peers around one large rock to eye his intended prey. Sam does not see the giant fish, and so starts to hop in a rather cute way across the first few rocks, almost like a small child attempting a playground skipping game. Suddenly, he spins his head around behind him to see the shark advancing on him, snapping its jaws as it chases him across the remaining rocks to the other island!

Once there, the shark follows Sam straight up the low-bending trunk of the coconut tree, almost like a toothy guard dog. Far up the tree, Sam reaches to a hook on the trunk from which a large mallet hangs suspended. He starts to beat Dopey Dick hard on the head over and over again, yelling, "Back! Back! Back! Down, ya shark-livered varmint!" (Well, he is a shark, so it stands to reason he may be "shark-livered," unless he had some form of transplant.) Dopey Dick yelps sharply like a beaten dog and beats a hasty retreat to the safety of the ocean. "Danged ol' fin-flappin' flounder," mutters Sam as he hangs the mallet back onto its hook.

Sam pulls down a coconut and walks back to the rocks. He looks about for safety's sake, and seeing nothing, gingerly tiptoes onto the rocks. Almost immediately, there is a splash and Dopey Dick is giving him chase again, snapping his huge jaws over and over at Sam's heels. Sam reaches the shore of the other island, where he has a rack filled with numerous baseball bats, sitting there for the sole purpose (presumably) of smacking Dopey Dick on the head. Sam grabs some pine and charges back at the shark, who sees Sam coming and beats it once more for the ocean. "Twenty years tryin' and ya missed me again!" Ya shovel-nosed mackerel!" yells Sam, raising his fist at the water and then swinging his bat. "No good bushwhackin' barracuda!"

A short while later, we are shown a cookbook that reads 1000 Ways to Prepare Coconuts, and we then see Sam sitting down to a meal entirely comprised of them. At first, he seems happy with this spread: "Mmm... tossed coconut salad. Fresh coconut milk. New England boiled coconut." After he sniffs his main course and replaces the lid on the serving tray, he has a change of mind though. "Ooh... I HATES COCONUTS! Twenty years of coconuts! I can't stand coconuts!" He brushes the entire meal, dishes and all, away with an angry swipe of his stubby little forearm and then starts to beat his head hard against the bamboo support of his hut. All of a sudden though, he hears another voice in the near distance singing the song Trade Winds. It is the wonderful voice of Bugs Bunny, also provided by the talented Mel Blanc...

"Down where the trade winds play
Down where you lose the day
We found a new world where paradise starts..."

When Sam looks to the ocean, he sees (as we do too) a small box floating on the waves, in which Bugs Bunny is draped casually as he chews carrots one by one, leaving the carrot tops to float lazily in the water in his wake. Sam recognizes a stewing rabbit, of course, but calls out to the rabbit all friendly-like, summoning him to shore. Bugs is overjoyed at this, believing he is "saved at last" and starts to paddle in that direction. Soon, he is riding the box at the top of a large wave that threatens to crash down hard on Sam, but all that happens is that Bugs drops out of the box into Sam's waiting arms.

"Oh, boy! Dry land!" exclaims Bugs. "It sure feels good to be dry again!" But no sooner does he say this than Sam drops the critter into a large kettle sitting atop a bed of firewood. As Sam lights the fire, Bugs asks, "What's the big idea? What's up, doc?" Sam announces his intention to make rabbit stew out of Bugs and asks, "Get the idea?" and then laughs wickedly. Bugs response is to say he does get the idea and then starts to mock Sam's laugh, losing steam halfway through at the possibility of his own demise. Bugs asks how long until dinner is ready, and Sam tells him it will be just a few minutes, barring accidents. Bugs says, "Oops!" and pours an entire ladle of water from the kettle onto the firewood, putting out the fire. "Foist accident," he says calmly, tucking his hand under his chin as he rests his elbow on the edge of the pot. Sam is livid. "D'oh! Ya stupid id'jit rabbit! Don't ya know matches is scarce on this island?"

Sam now has to march across the rocks to the shipwreck to get another match. At the water's edge, he carefully starts to step onto the first small black rock, but it turns out to be Dopey Dick lying in wait for him. The shark snaps its jaws down hard, and when Sam pulls back his foot, the front half of his tiny brown boot is missing. He sticks a single toe out of what remains and has it look around the corner of the boot for more trouble. Finally, he sticks his remaining toes out with it. "Ha! Missed again, ya hammerhead halibut!" Sam picks up a small bone and whistles to the shark as if he were a pet dog. "Here, boy! Here, go get it!" He throws the bone towards the horizon and the shark speeds off after it. Sam races across the rocks to the ship and runs into the cabin. He opens the safe and then pulls out a small drawer, inside of which are numerous matches. Sam grabs a single match and then races back across the rocks.

When he reaches his island, he races back to the stewing kettle to relight the fire. But he suddenly realizes the rabbit is no longer in sight. When he goes to look over the edge of the kettle, the shark leaps up out of it and gulps Sam down its maw in a single gulp. Well, everything but Sam's legs, which carry Dopey Dick upside down around the island in a staggered, clumsy walk. Sam finally (somehow) is able to find a mallet and start bashing the shark in the head with it. Dopey Dick quickly leaps off of Sam's body and rushes yelping once more for the water, leaving Sam to bash himself in the face with the mallet several times, after which he is left seeing stars.

Once Sam finally gets his sights righted, he starts to wonder where the rabbit went. "Yoo-hoo!" yells Bugs, sitting out on Sam's ship. "Mr. Robinson!" (This is the first and only time that there is a direct reference to Sam having this name in the cartoon.) Sam sees where the rabbit is and goes bonkers. "I'll get ya, ya long-eared galoot!" he yells, "Shark or no shark!" Sam disappears from view and then runs back into frame with a surfboard. He dives into the water and doesn't make it very far until he realizes that he is sliding straight into the open, waiting mouth of Dopey Dick. After it closes its jaws, the head of the gigantic fish is contorted by Sam's efforts to free himself, and then he zips out, still lying on his surfboard, and he paddles fast for the shore.

Back on the ship, Bugs lies draped along the bow and sings a couple of lines from the then popular ballad, Secret Love (written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster)...

"Once I had a secret love
That lived within the heart of me.
All too soon my secret love 
Became impatient to be free..."

While Bugs croons, Sam makes preparations to attack the ship. He ties a large pink balloon to himself and says, "This time, I'll outsmart both of 'em!" He holds a wet finger in the air and realizes the wind is just right, and so Sam pushes a large rock off the string that ties him to the balloon so he can float into the air. When Sam starts to float down towards Bugs on the ship and cackles maniacally in victory, Bugs kicks open a hatch and Sam suddenly finds he is floating straight down towards Dopey Dick, who sits patiently down in the water inside the submerged hold. (It's actually a nice little detail that they remembered they were running around a shipwreck.) Bugs leans calmly on the hatch's edge as Dopey Dick and Sam duke it out in the water unseen. Finally, Sam comes up the stairs beating the shark away with a club while he yells, "Down, down, down, ya sharp-toothed salmon!"

Sam shuts the door to the stairwell, and then goes after Bugs who is hopping lightly across the rocks to the island. Sam catches up to him and grabs the varmint. He throws Bugs back into the kettle, relights the fire, and then picks up his cookbook for instructions. Bugs points behind Sam and shouts, "Look, it's a tidal wave!" but Sam doesn't believe him, thinking it is meant as a distraction. (To be fair, Bugs does say it somewhat insincerely, probably his worst line reading.) Sam yells back at the rabbit, "Shaddup and start simmerin'!!" but as soon as he does, Sam hears the loud rush of water behind his back. There is a neat shot of the silhouetted pair against the massive wave heading in their direction, and then they are swept away, with Bugs still inside the kettle.

"Holy, carrot sticks!" says Bugs in astonishment. "The island's gone!" Sam swims up screaming for help as the shark chases him in circles around the kettle. He begs the rabbit to pull him in, and Bugs agrees, telling Sam to "keep his shoit on!" Bugs pulls a boat hook out of the kettle (who knew he had one of those?) and lifts Sam out of the water by his shirt. Sam demands to be pulled into the kettle, but Bugs wants to cut a deal. Sam refuses so Bugs puts him back into the water. Sam swiftly agrees to the deal, and the next thing we see is Sam slowly paddling the kettle through the water as he hangs from the end of the hook, still several feet out of the kettle. Dopey Dick follows close behind, his dorsal fin sticking up out of the water. "After all, a deal's a deal," says Bugs. They pass a sign that reads, "San Francisco – 2736 Miles". As Dopey Dick chases them, Sam starts to paddle even faster towards the horizon as California, Here I Come is played on the soundtrack. Iris out.

I find Rabbitson Crusoe a lot more fun now than I did when I was younger, and that probably has something to do with the end of my close obsession only with Chuck Jones cartoons in my early days (though, honestly, when I watched them on Saturday mornings, the individual shorts did not have credits). But I could tell the different styles apart, and it turned out that the Warner Bros. cartoons which I revered the most in childhood were the Jones' offerings. I also loved a lot of the Friz Freleng shorts as well, but this one got booted aside. Now, I find it completely endearing, and as I mentioned earlier, Dopey Dick is the main reason.

This is one of the rare earlier cartoons where the shark is a fully developed main character along with the other two in the film. He gets fairly equal screentime with the Bugs and Sam, and is given a chance to be both sinister and funny as well. Like any hungry predator in a Warner Bros. cartoon, we simultaneously want Dopey Dick to succeed in his life's mission but also want him to fail in largely comic ways. Sam is so annoying and downright villainous in his own right that he completely deserves to be eaten by Dopey Dick, far more so than Bugs deserves to be eaten by Sam. After all, according to Sam's own dialogue, Dopey Dick has been trying for some twenty years to capture his prey. Why shouldn't he?

As for design, this is one of my favorite cartoon sharks. He does get to give a couple of early menacing looks, but for the most part, Dopey Dick is kind of goofy looking. Especially in profile, with his grandly elongated snout and widely spaced teeth that hang down almost like vampire's fangs, though there are usually three to five of them. There are couple of shots where it almost appears as if his dorsal fin works like a hat atop his head rather than in the middle of back, which is easier to do when your mouth is drawn in most cases to take up anywhere from the front third to a full half of your body length. (Those shots also happen to be when he is standing on his tail and his back is arched, which further adds to the impression of a sharp, pointed hat resting atop a big bald head.) His is a really simple design, but quite effective, and adds a lot to the comedy, where he is just rubbery enough to get some good reactions to Sam's outbursts of reactive violence. Another nice touch is the constant reminder that the shark really serves as some sort of stray dog loose in Sam's neighborhood, and Sam has adjusted his own behavior (and thus, the shark's) accordingly. Naming the shark Dopey Dick after yet another literary monument, that of Moby-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville, is also rather a fun move.

In bringing this back around to Robinson Crusoe, a quick search of the novel online finds no mention of the word "shark" within its text, and I also did searches for the word "fish," thinking that Defoe, writing in an earlier age where the word "shark" was not quite as prevalent or even immediately as prone to invoking fear, might have opted for "giant fish" or some other such sobriquet. No such luck, just some mentions of being taught to fish in his youth, etc. It really does appear that I will need to sit right back down and actually reread Robinson Crusoe once again to get my query resolved for good.

If only I had a decent copy lying around...

RTJ

[Editor's note: Rabbitson Crusoe has yet to appear on DVD or Blu-ray from Warner Bros. It was released on laserdisc and VHS back in the day, though I am unable to locate my own VHS copy for whatever reason. It does appear online in a couple of places, but I am unwilling to link directly to them in this post as they do not appear on YouTube. You can do a search and find them. If you do, keep in mind that one version out there on Vimeo is fully dubbed in Italian, which makes for a really interesting contrast against the English version. Have fun with that.]