Hercules: NOT the Disney version!

Sad, bad - glad? Cartoons that will make you very happy

The less you say about cartoons like these, the better, but since I don't want to look like a total slacker, I should say something. This is the infamous Magic of Oz that came out of nowhere, still impenetrable after years of attempted internet analysis. Who is Robert Capeheart, and how has he avoided arrest up until now? Probably he's dead, because this looks really old, maybe 1940s or '50s. There is so little point to it: it doesn't appear to be a Part 1 or part ANYthing of something. It has no story and no discernible action, but it does have some dreadful songs in it. The voice synchronization is almost as bad as in Paddy Pelican (which see). I have never seen a more irritating collection of characters, but (to make it worse, and I know I am not the only one who has said this) there is something disturbingly familiar about them. Where have I seen that lion before? The eyes seem to suggest anime, but it didn't exist back then. Or maybe this is where anime came from.

This is a Spanish cartoon dubbed into German, and only a little bit of it, but if you don't mind a very loud Spanish guy shouting on top of the very loud Spanish sound track, you can find the whole 55-minute thing somewhere on YouTube. This clip gives you a pretty good idea of what it's like. The question is why.

This is the one that spoils me for all the rest - The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican, an exercise in WHAT THE FUCK????? if ever there was one. It defies all explanation in its sheer badness. As far as animation is concerned, you might as well take two pieces of paper with different drawings on them and switch them back and forth. The vocal characterizations are just dung, that's all they are. You've got to see this.

Spunky and Tadpole, a not-very-seminal cartoon (in spite of its semen-al name) that was mostly just '60s schlock, though I think it came out around 1959. 1959 was a shabby, dog-eared year. It couldn't quite decide what to be. Personally, I think everyone is terrified by "9" years because they are scared to death of what the next decade might bring, or not bring. In this case, they should have been more scared. I remember the title Spunky and Tadpole and probably watched them when I was three or four years old, so didn't understand anything I was seeing (any more than I understood Ernie Kovacs, one of my first incomprehensible life experiences). But the title stayed with me. Did I think these cartoons were good? What's good when you're four?

And here is the unavoidable, Jesusly-bad The Adventures of Clutch Cargo and his Pals, Spinner and Paddlefood (in another exciting adventure called blah, blah, blah, etc.) This is the one where there is a real mouth superimposed on top of a primitive drawing of a face, There is no hope or fear of animation here: it's just completely static drawings that are occasionally dragged stiffly across the screen to represent "action". The mouths look to be infected with herpes or at least really bad cold sores, or smeared with lipstick that won't wipe off. Awwww, Clutch!

This episode, or minisode or sod-off or whatever-it-is, features a Chinese Eskimo (as the Inuit were called by racist Americans back then) speaking in some sort of slurred Japanese/Filipino accent. I will not try to analyze the significance of this.

When you think about it, though - Clutch - Spunky and Tadpole - how Freudian can it get. No wonder I grew up to be this way.

This is U. S. Army propaganda in the form of a hysterically jolly exercise video. I wonder if anyone ever followed it. I have no idea where these old films come from. One would have hoped they would be destroyed after 1949 or so. It even pictures tanks rolling along, so maybe it's a wartime cartoon. Kind of like Hitler appearing in that Donald Duck thing. I have to ask you, though - why do these things always seem so - ? Homosexual? There is a note of hysterical gayness here that I simply cannot ignore.

Bucky and Pepito. Mediocre, with moments of excruciating grace. I like the fact that you always hear the same background music in EVERY cartoon ever made in the '60s. It's like the sound of the horse whinnying that's always the same, the sound of the car wreck, or even the canned laughter used in sitcoms where you can hear certain laughs over and over again. Soundtrack Central or something. I probably watched this but was too little to remember, or it was just too forgettable. It just sort of came on as I sat there on the floor with my fat little legs splayed out and and ate my Junket pudding.

Pow-wow. It was OK to make fun of Indians back then because they weren't considered real people. They really weren't. They were extras and background and "filler" in Westerns, where they appeared in hordes, always wearing elaborate headdresses that were never used except in ceremonial occasions, and then only by Plains tribes. The best gig they could get was as the Lone Ranger's sidekick. Don't get me started on Jay Silverheels, because I think he was magnificent and made the Ranger look like a old queen in spandex pants. Most Indians weren't played by Indians anyway, which must have been depressing. Even if a Jew didn't look Jewish, he could probably get away with playing an Indian.

This wasn't really labelled except as Dementia 5, but I figured out that it's from a particularly trippy episode of Rocket Robin Hood. Must be from the early '70s then, when acid trips were common knowledge: but really, Robin Hood and pals, out in space, tripping on acid?

Festival of Bad Animation, Part 1: Don't Eat the Mushrooms in Oz

What a strange labyrinth is YouTube. I often find stuff I haven't seen since I was preverbal. It strikes me very strangely now. Perhaps cartoons were my first language.

This one, though, Jesus Christ, who let this out of the bag? And WHAT is it, anyway - why can't  I find any information on it? It isn't just the bizarre non-animation, it's the disjointedness of it in general, the way songs inexplicably burst forth out of nowhere. And the creepiness, probably unintentional. It gives me the impression of an outline or rough draft, perhaps a trial balloon for some ambitious project involving actual animation. But even that would have to make a modicum of sense. This is just a truncated chunk of story, starting in the middle and ending a little further along in the middle. 

Perhaps this was shown at Masonic retreats, or at Shriners conventions before they brought on the dancing girls covered in whipped cream.

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Festival of Bad Animation, Part 2: The Completely Bizarre Adventures of Hercules

Do you-all remember those godawful Mighty Hercules cartoons ground out by Trans-Lux in the early 1960s? Believe me when I say that they'll look like Fantasia beside this strange thing. I can't figure it out, don't know what the story is supposed to be. The animation appears to be construction-paper shapes moved along by an invisible hand, or maybe there's a magnet on the back. It's all so unexplained. I want to know more, but in a funny sort of a way, I don't.

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In the clutches of a nightmare

My gif-making hobby appears to have hit a new low. For years I told my children about a bizarre cartoon series called The Adventures of Clutch Cargo (with his pals, Spinner and Paddlefoot). They not only doubted me, they thought I was totally loony.

This series had absolutely no animation in it whatsoever. In an evil process called Syncrovox, a real person's mouth was superimposed on a still picture of what might be a face.

The characters were basically cardboard cutouts mounted on a stick, and were moved along realistically by some poor sod in behind that bush-looking thing.

No one can quite guess the identity of this odd jungle-dwelling creature with the W. C. Fields nose and top hat. The horn-rims do look a mite familiar.

I used to wonder why you never saw their feet. Now I realize they had no feet. They had STICKS.

And now comes the uncomfortable issue of the relationship between Clutch Cargo and Spinner. Clutch isn't Spinner's uncle or Dad or anything, just some guy who wants an eight-year-old boy with him when he goes on his adventures. His name, too, is problematic. Just what does it mean? And why is Paddlefoot a dachschund instead of, say, a black lab or a Doberman pinscher? The mysteries just multiply with time. 

Clutch Cargo DID pass on a certain legacy. One of the strangest feats of animation I've ever seen is The Annoying Orange YouTube series, featuring a throng of loquacious fruits and vegetables (with the odd marshmallow thrown in). Obviously it uses the same Syncrovox technique, only with more prominent teeth (and the addition of eyes, even creepier than the mouth). As with Clutch and the gang, these characters can't walk and have no feet, though I suppose they can be thrown. With great force.

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