NFR Project: 'Betty Boop in Snow-White' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Betty Boop in Snow-White’

Dir: Dave Fleischer

Animation: Roland Crandall

Premiere: March 31, 1933

7 min.

Next to Disney, the Fleischer Studio was the premier animation studio of the silent and early sound eras. Formed in 1929 by brothers Dave and Max, they created challenging and adept cartoons that leaned into the surreal and macabre, sparking many a child’sfantasies and  nightmares.

Their technical innovations – combining live action with animation, rotoscoping, and layering planes of action to give a 3-D effect – were combined with whimsical characters and absurd situations. Their biggest success was Popeye the Sailor; the next most memorable was the nifty Betty Boop.

Betty Boop was a brunette flapper-girl with a high, squeaky Brooklyn accent, fun-loving and kind, and unbearably sexy in a cartoony way. She and her allies, Koko the Clown and Bimbo the mutt, had wild, wide-ranging adventures.

Here she is Snow White, four years before Disney’s feature film version. She comes in out of a cold winter landscape to the castle of the grotesque-looking queen, who’s just asked her magic mirror if she’s fairest of them all. (Bimbo lays out a pair of long underwear at her feet, and out of a pocket pops a little creature that looks like Mickey Mouse! – hmmmm.)

Soon the mirror changes its tune, the queen gets mad, turns into a witch, and orders Snow White’s execution. Betty’s pleas soften the hearts of Koko and Bimbo, and she escapes. Koko, in the voice of Cab Calloway, sings “St. James Infirmary” as the witch changes his into a spirit. Eventually, the witch becomes a dragon and pursues the trio. It takes Bimbo turning her inside out to resolve the conflict.

The film can be attributed most definitely to the work of its animator, Roland Crandall. It is his transmogrifying imagination that morphs and mutates the character and their surrounds, making a dream world that grabs you and pulls you in. It would be decades before animation would get as adventurous again.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Sons of the Desert.

NFR Project: 'She Done Him Wrong' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘She Done Him Wrong’

Dir: Lowell Sherman

Scr: Harvey F. Thew, John Bright

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Alexander Hall

Premiere: Jan. 27, 1933

66 min.

Mae West was, in the parlance of her time, a temptress and a vixen. In today’s world she would be seen as incredibly liberated – and would probably still cause as much of a fuss as she did in her heyday.

She was born in Brooklyn in 1893. Her father was a cop. She was a performer from her youth, but she rapidly developed an outlook and a persona that stood out. She had a snappy style, she was funny, and she could write. Soon she developed, produced, wrote, and directed the play Sex, which got her sent to jail for six days for corrupting the virtue of New York.

She thrived on the publicity, and kept it up. Her suggestive and bawdy plays were hits, especially 1928’s Diamond Lil. It was this property that was turned into She Done Him Wrong.

Her persona was rough and tumble, a woman who had seen the worst in men, and who deigned to overcome them and live life on her own terms, sexually frank, available only to those she wanted – the complete opposite of what the well-brought-up young lady was taught. She cracked wise out of the corner of her mouth, her double entendres ricocheting around the room.

In this film, she is the lady Lou, songstress at an 1890’s beer hall. (West belts out three sexy songs, quite provocatively, during the film.) She is queen of the joint, and she juggles the many men in her life without breaking a sweat. The plot, such as it is, concerns illegal activity around the place and the police effort to squelch it. Lou, dripping with diamonds, knows all the principals in these transactions, but manages to keep above the fray.

Now what could be wrong with such a story? It’s full of dirty jokes, for one, as many as West could get past the censors. (It is said that this film triggered the strict enforcement of the Production Code.) The first shot we see of Lou is the completely nude painting of her over the bar – a gentleman’s head blocks the pubic area. She is constantly putting the make on a young Cary Grant, who plays a social reformer. She is relentless.

Ultimately, no one could handle her sexual candor, and her films became more and more tame, controlled buy the studio. She was kicked off radio for a sexy “Adam & Eve” skit she performed with Charlie McCarthy. Her opportunities dried up, so she turned to writing and to llive appearances. She was still performing, and making suggestive comments, in her 80s.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Snow White.

For Halloween: The top 100 horror films

 Hello! Since I wrote my books about horror films, people ask me what my favorite horror films are. These are many and mostly weird. I like such oddball choices as Island of Lost Souls, The Tingler, Society, Vampire Circus, and Quatermass and the Pit. 

However, when it comes to a definitive list, I was definitely scratching my head. Finally, I created a Top Ten for each decade of the horror film. Put these lists all together, and you have what I consider to be a pretty comprehensive assemblage of 100 films you can explore to your heart's content. 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1920s

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920)

Destiny (1921)

Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922)

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Waxworks (1924)

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

The Cat and the Canary (1927)

The Unknown (1927)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1930s

Dracula (1931)

Frankenstein (1931)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

M (1931)

The Mummy (1932)

Freaks (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

King Kong (1933)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Mad Love (1935)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1940s

The Wolf Man (1941)

Cat People (1942)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

The Seventh Victim (1943)

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Dead of Night (1945)

Hangover Square (1945)

Isle of the Dead (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Bedlam (1946)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1950s

The Thing (from Another World) (1951)

It Came from Outer Space (1951)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Godzilla (1954)

Them! (1954)

Night of the Hunter (1955)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

(The Horror of) Dracula (1958)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1960s

House of Usher (1960)

Jigoku (1960)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Psycho (1960)

The Innocents (1961)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Kill, Baby . . . Kill! (1966)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1970s

The Devils (1971)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Wicker Man (1973)

It’s Alive (1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Deep Red (1975)

Suspiria (1977)

Eraserhead (1977)

Halloween (1978)

Alien (1979)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1980s

Friday the 13^th (1980)

The Shining (1980)

The Howling (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Videodrome (1983)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Aliens (1986)

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)

Near Dark (1987)

They Live (1988)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1990s

It (1990)

Misery (1990)

The People Under the Stairs (1991)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Candyman (1992)

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Scream (1996)

Cure (1997)

Funny Games (1997)

I Stand Alone (1998)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE OUGHTS

American Psycho (2000)

Battle Royale (2000)

The Cell (2000)

Audition (2001)

The Others (2001)

28 Days Later . . . (2002)

May (2002)

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

The Host (2006)

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE TEENS

I Saw the Devil (2010)

John Dies at the End (2012)

We Are What We Are (2013)

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Crimson Peak (2015)

Green Room (2015)

Raw (2016)

Get Out (2017)

It Comes at Night (2017)

The Shape of Water (2017)