Comedy and horror inevitably overlap in films where funnymen find themselves in haunted houses occupied with a surplus number of ghouls, mad scientists and ectoplasmic mayhem. The Bowery Boys had already run amok in such creepy settings during the 1940s with “Spooks Run Wild” and “Ghosts on the Loose,” back when they were under the East Side Kids banner. But this 1954 offering takes the old haunted house comedy into a wild, almost Dadaist environment.
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BOOTLEG FILES 939: “Putting on the Ritz” (1974 animated short by Antoinette Starkiewicz).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Perhaps as part of a collection of the filmmaker’s work.
Earlier this week, I did an essay on “International Animation Festival,” a PBS series that aired in the mid-1970s. That series, which was hosted by British actress Jean Marsh, introduced viewers to rarely-seen animated shorts from European, Canadian, and independent American animators.
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Mad as a Mars Hare (1963)
Directed by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble
Story by John Dunn
Animation by Ken Harris, Richard Thompson, Bob Bransford, Tom Ray, Harry Love
Music by Bill Lava
Marvin the Martian amuses himself by viewing the Earth through a telescope. He watches a rocket launch from the Florida peninsula – and within seconds, the spacecraft crashes through his observatory and lands on Mars. The rocket’s sole occupant is Astro-Rabbit Bugs Bunny, who claims the planet with a metal carrot-shaped canister that opens to wave a flag marked “Earth” and mechanized instruments that play “Yankee Doodle.” Marvin’s attempt to capture Bugs backfire when Bugs accidentally disintegrates him. Marvin tries again but uses one of his weapons incorrectly and turns Bugs into a behemothic “Neanderthal Rabbit” who crushes him.
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One of the most profoundly influential television shows – at least, in my life – was “International Animation Festival,” a PBS presentation that aired during the mid-1970s. Hosted by Jean Marsh of “Upstairs Downstairs” fame, this weekly half-hour series was the rare program that offered a glimpse into the animation universe existing beyond the realm of the standard Saturday morning shenanigans or the old Disney and Warner Bros. shorts that dominated television.
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BOOTLEG FILES 938: “Fred Flintstone & Barney Rubble in Songs from Mary Poppins” (1965 album mashing up the Disney and Hanna-Barbera classics).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None – but, then again, it is a spoken-word recording.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Clearing the rights to this would be nearly impossible.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It would be fun as a special feature on a Flintstones-related DVD, but that is unlikely.
This week’s entry is not about a film or television production, but instead focuses on a bootleg video that shares a rare example of cross-pollination between two rival animation studios – in this case, Hanna-Barbera characters promoting films made by the Walt Disney Company in a long-playing album.
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The Unmentionables (1963)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by John Dunn
Animation by Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross, Bob Matz, Art Leonardi, Lee Halpern
Music by Bill Lava
“The Unmentionables” is a spoof of the then-popular television series “The Untouchables,” with Bugs Bunny as the federal agent Elegant Mess (a riff on the series’ crime fighter Elliot Ness). He is tasked with bringing in the notorious underworld figures Rocky and Mugsy, but he does his job a little too well. Bugs handcuffs the miscreants to his wrists and marches them to justice, but winds up serving their prison sentence with them because he lost the handcuff keys.
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Beginning in the 1910s, the American Red Cross offered a high volume of fundraising films that highlighted its work. These films were mostly seen in nontheatrical settings – churches, schools, social clubs – and they offered a straightforward presentation of Red Cross workers helping those in physical and economic distress.
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