Betty Boop's Hallowe'en Party USA,
NR, 7 m, 1933
The Fleischer Brothers have lots of fun and games with All Hallows Eve in the
surrealistic short Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party. Don’t expect much
coherence from this thing; it’s just a hodgepodge of weird bits. But it’s
all stunningly animated (by Fleischer Studio regulars Willard Bowsky and Myron
Waldman), and there’s even some pre-Hays Code humor that might be looked at by
some viewers as almost prurient. It’s Halloween night. Pillowy clouds pass over the huge
and looming harvest moon, their black silhouettes taking on the shapes of
witches and bats. (Could the latter have been a source of inspiration for the
Bat Signal?) Jack Frost flies overhead in his iced-up aircraft, dumping rime on
the cornfield below. Shaking frenziedly, the field’s scarecrow slips on his
ratty overcoat. But before he can get back to frightening away the feathered
freeloaders, a bitter gust of wind delivers him a handwritten note. It reads:
“Hallowe’en dinner party at Betty Boop’s house. Right away! P.S. Bring
your lunch.” The hodmedod pulls himself down from his post and bounds for Miss
Boop’s abode. But his wobbly legs make for some tough going. As he tumbles and
twirls down the road, you may be reminded of Ray Bolger’s similarly graceless
gait in The Wizard of Oz. In spite of his bendy gams, the scarecrow is the first to
arrive at the celebration. Betty Boop, our shapely hostess with the oversized
noggin and painted-on little black dress, invites him in to warm up by the
fireplace. Of course, allowing a dude made out of straw to kick it with the
Devil’s only friend is like telling an emphysema patient with a leaking oxygen
tank to smoke it if he’s got it. Sure enough, as the tattie-bogle holds his
patties over the open flame, he goes up in smoke. Thank goodness there’s a
pale of water located nearby! Meanwhile, Betty has taken to carving up some pumpkins in
the kitchen. With a little help from her animal friends, a mass of
jack-o’-lanterns is quickly produced in an assembly-line fashion. First, a
kitten cleans out the pumpkins’ guts with an eggbeater that he cranks with his
tiny feetsies. Then a bossy (wearing a neck bell) sticks her head through the
window and uses her horns to incise silly faces into the gourds. And finally
Betty puts candles in the pumpkins’ mouths, which the inexplicably animated
fruit proceed to suck on like cigars. The cartoon’s big money shot occurs when Betty goes to
her front door and bends over, her tiny skirt rising up over her booty, which
she wiggles to the delight of randy boys everywhere. A bunch of oversized mice
(at least I think that’s what they are) race in and start to boogie down.
Eventually they all gather in a circle (along with some squirrels, bunnies and
other critters I wouldn’t dare try to identify) and follow Betty’s lead in a
round of “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing.” Some bobbing for Granny
Smith apples, then a round of spin-the-bottle, and finally a game of strip poker
follow the sing-a-long. (Okay, most of that was baloney. They were Gala apples.) Everything goes south for Betty and her fuzzy friends when
a vulgar, muscle-bound gorilla crashes the party. He devours all the apples,
knocks about the smaller merrymakers, and tries to help himself to some of
Betty’s boop-oop-a-doop. But our heroine gets away after she whacks the beast
in his face and kills the lights. Just then all sorts of ghouls and goblins
encircle the ape. As he makes a run for it, paintings of witches leap off the
wall and fly after him, hurling pumpkins at his fat head. Is this some sort of
cosmic revenge? Or is Betty somehow behind all this? I’m not about to spoil
this lip-smacking Halloween treat by telling you. January 19,
2008 © Copyright 2008 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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