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AWESOME-tober-fest 2020: Betty Boop in Red Hot Mama (1934)

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Blog Series, cartoons, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, The Devil with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2020, Betty Boop, cartoons, Halloween, Lucifer, pop culture, The Devil on October 12, 2020 by Paxton

Today I wanted to look at another vintage cartoon to sort of echo the Silly Symphony cartoon I showed you last week. So let’s go all the way back to the 30s and a Betty Boop cartoon. Yes, at one point, Betty Boop met the Devil.

Betty Boop as a character began in 1930 in one of the Fleischer Studios‘ Talkartoons shorts. Betty Boop actually started off as a French poodle character, then slowly transitioned into a caricature of a Jazz Age flapper. By 1932, Betty was the sole star of Talkartoons and she became one of the most recognizable characters in the world. In 1934, Fleischer Studios released Betty Boop in Red Hot Mama. In this short, Betty was voiced by Bonnie Poe, who would also voice Olive Oyl in the Fleischer Popeye series.

In this cartoon, Betty Boop travels to Hell and confronts the Devil and his minions. Like in Disney’s Hell’s Bells, the Devil here isn’t really fleshed out much more than “he’s the ruler of Hell”. No negotiations for souls, no pranky shenanigans, and he doesn’t really do anything evil that we get to see.

It’s a mostly musical cartoon that relies on the visuals to tell the story. Let’s take a look at the cartoon “Red Hot Mama” from 1934.

Title cards. As you can see, this short was presented by Max Fleischer and directed by Dave Fleischer, owners of the famous Fleischer Bros Studios.

And it stars, of course, the adorable Betty Boop.

The short starts with Betty, for some reason, sleeping with the windows WIDE ASS OPEN in the middle of a blizzard. At first, she just adjusts her blanket. THEN she decides that maybe she should shut the windows.

Betty decides to throw a bunch of logs and coal into the fireplace and start a fire. She then moves to right in front of the fireplace.

Suddenly the room becomes blazing hot. You know it’s super hot because the thermostat rises all the way to the top and then explodes.

Betty has a picture of an Eskimo posing with a fish in front of an igloo. Not exactly sure why, but it’s there. Well, the room is so hot that the Eskimo takes off his jacket and the igloo melts.

Suddenly the fireplace becomes overrun with flames and a PORTAL TO HELL opens up within.

Betty, seemingly not concerned about the open portal to Hell, just walks right in. We get a cheeky shot of her in a sheer nightgown walking in front of flames. She trips and falls and, like AC/DC, rings “Hell’s Bells”.

Betty sees new souls coming into Hell. They are called “Freshman”. They drop down the chute, land in a devil suit, then have their tail and horns attached. Notice the new guys are white, while all the other devils are black.

The white Freshman are led into “Freshman Hall”, which looks like a giant Viking helmet. A devil fire brigade shows up and, using a dragon hose, they set fire to Freshman Hall and turn all the white devils black. Lots of imagery going on here.

Next, we finally get to meet the Devil himself, wearing a crown, surrounded by flames, and eating a flame cone. Then he walks over to Hell’s Furnace and cranks up the heat from “warm”, to “hot”, and finally to “hotter”.

Once they spot her, all of the devils become fascinated by Betty. They surround her and it looks like their intentions aren’t good.

However, Betty’s been in this situation before. She turns and gives them a cold shoulder so ice cold it freezes all the devils solid. You can see the block of ice on her shoulder in the picture.

Then the devil comes swaggering over like a big dog to take his turn, but Betty just gives him the cold stare and freezes him solid.

And then all of Hell freezes over from Betty Boop’s cold stare. *Mic drop*

AWESOME-tober-fest 2020: Silly Symphony Hell’s Bells

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Blog Series, cartoons, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, The Devil with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2020, cartoons, Disney, Halloween, Lucifer, pop culture, The Devil on October 5, 2020 by Paxton

Welcome back to week 2 of AWESOME-tober-fest! Starting this week updates will be on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Lots of good Devil content still to get through this month so why don’t we get started?

Today I’m looking at an old Disney cartoon from Disney’s Silly Symphony series. The Silly Symphony series was created between 1929 and 1939. The Silly Symphonies were separate from the story based Mickey Mouse cartoons. As the name implies, the Silly Symphonies were created as funny visual companions to pieces of music. They were largely self contained, however a few of the shorts did have followups. Donald Duck actually made his first appearance in a Silly Symphony in 1934.

The entry I’m looking at today is Hell’s Bells, which was released on October 30, 1929. It was directed by Walt Disney and drawn by Ub Iwerks.

The depiction of the Devil we see in this cartoon is very simple; “the largest Devil who rules Hell”. Since there’s no dialogue you don’t see him do anything like negotiating for souls, or anything else truly evil.

Let’s take a look at the cartoon.

Silly Symphonies’ Hell’s Bells from 1929. Title Card.

This is Disney’s version of Cerebus, the three headed dog that guards the gates of Hell.

There are lots of monsters creeping around this version of Hell. And the music that’s playing for a lot of this cartoon is a version of the same funeral march that Alfred Hitchcock used on his TV show (which started in 1955). It’s called Funeral March of a Marionette.

Here’s the Devil himself, sitting on his throne, listening to some sweet tunes played by his little devil band. He looks similar to the other smaller devils, only larger. He rules this underworld like a king, even sitting on a throne, and the other smaller devils serve him.

Here’s a closer look at that band. They are playing instruments that look to be made from human remains. Like skeleton bones. That bass player is using a spinal column.

At first I didn’t know what the hell to make of this. This creature that looks like a cross between a dragon and a cow, stands up and the little devil servants MILK HIM into a bowl. What they are milking out looks like fire. Then that bowl of milked fire is given to the Devil who eats it like it was his last meal. I swear, these early Disney cartoons go to some weird places.

one of the smaller devils revolts against the Devil. The Devil chases him around Hell trying to catch him and punish him. The smaller devil catches the Devil off guard and kicks him off a cliff.

While hanging off the cliff, flame arms grab at the Devil, pull down his…fur?…and give him a spanking. I have to assume these flames are manifestations of the damned souls from below. Ultimately they reach up and grab the Devil pull him down below. This is very reminiscent of what happens to Hades at the end of Disney’s Hercules (1997).

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2017: The Six Million Dollar Man – The Secret of Bigfoot (1976)

Posted in cartoons, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, Awesome-tober-fest 2017, Bigfoot, Bionic Review, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, TV show on October 25, 2017 by Paxton

I’ve always been fascinated by cryptozoology and the idea of monsters roaming the Earth. I’ve listened to a few cryptid podcasts and I’ve followed a few blogs. It’s fascinating stuff. I’ve wanted to do an entire month of urban legends and mythical monsters for AWESOME-tober-fest for many years now. I’d planned articles on Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, the Jersey Devil, and Mothman. There’s an abundance of Sasquatch, Nessie, and UFO material, but the other stuff is a bit thin pop culture wise aside from a movie or TV program here and there. So, I’d sort of sat on it.

Well, now I get to do one. Today, I want to talk about Bigfoot. Specifically, I want to talk about the Bionic Bigfoot from The Six Million Dollar Man. Bigfoot appeared a couple times but I’m going to talk about Season 3, episodes 16-17. The Secret of Bigfoot. His first bionic appearance.

OSI is escorting a couple of scientists to a remote mountain forest to study seismic activity. The scientists are attacked and taken by a beast who turns out to possibly be the Sasquatch of legend. Steve Austin, while looking for the missing scientists, is also taken hostage and gets to meet his strange captors. Meanwhile Oscar is back at base camp facing a level 7 earthquake strike in seven hours to the entire California coast and is planning to detonate a nuclear bomb under the mountain to relive the geologic pressure and prevent the massive quake. Can he find Steve in time?

There really is a lot going on in this one. But it’s a fun episode.

SMDM title card Bigfoot title card
These episodes first aired in 1976. The story is a two parter.

In these two episodes Bigfoot is played by Andre the Giant. Bigfoot would return in season 4 for another two episode story, but that time he’d be played by Lurch himself, Ted Cassidy.

Steve and Oscar escort these scientists into the mountains. The scientists have experimental OSI sensing equipment. While setting up they are attacked by the creature.

Steve finds this footprint and goes after the scientists. He uses his bionics to run and jump all over the forest looking for the missing people. It has been established in previous episodes that Steve is the worst secret keeper when it comes to his bionics.

While Steve is galavanting around the forest showing off his bionics there is a shady group watching his every move. Marveling at his abilities.

Steve encounters Bigfoot and has a pretty epic battle against him. The “trees are picked up and used as baseball bats” kind of epic.

Steve tracks Bigfoot to a cave where it disappears. But Steve TEARS DOWN PART OF THE MOUNTAIN to find a hidden door. How’d he know to look there? Then he has to walk through this amazing gizmo. I’m not even sure what that is. A revolving ice tunnel? As soon as Steve walks in he collapses to the floor. All I know is it looks exactly like the ice tunnel from the Misfits of Science pilot. However, they show that tunnel in this episode several times. You get several LOOOONG looks. I totally get that, they should be proud. It’s an amazing set piece.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2017: Goober and the Ghost Chasers (1973)

Posted in cartoons, ghosts, monsters, pop culture, TV shows, Uncategorized with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, Awesome-tober-fest 2017, cartoons, ghosts, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, TV show on October 17, 2017 by Paxton

Today I’m going to talk about the cartoon series Goober and the Ghost Chasers. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera and aired in late 1973. It was created to capitalize on the popularity of Scooby-Doo.

Much like Scooby-Doo, the show involved a group of teenagers and their dog driving around solving mysteries.

Goober, obviously, was the dog. He had similar mannerisms to Scooby. Sort of a coward. Very goofy and jokey. He talked. But it’s interesting, it’s not directly acknowledged in the cartoon if the teens can understand Goober when he talks. They talk to Goober, but when Goober talks, it’s usually directly to camera and the teens never give any indication that he talked or that they heard he talked. It’s weird. The teens were Ted, Tina and Gilly. The teens worked for a supernatural investigation magazine called Ghost Chasers. Obviously Ted = Fred. Tina is very much a cross between Daphne and Velma. And Gilly is sort of his own thing. He’s Goober’s closest human companion. He’s not a stoner or a coward. He doesn’t love to eat. He’s the photographer for the magazine. In some ways like Shaggy but in most ways he’s different. Gilly is probably the most annoying. I like everyone else.

The mysteries this crew investigate usually wind up having a real supernatural aspect to them. As in real ghosts and real monsters as opposed to Scooby in which the mysteries had a basis in reality. Plus, for some reason, Goober can turn invisible. He can’t control it, and it usually happens when he gets scared, but it happens.

Like Scooby, many episodes would have “special guests” show up to help solve crimes. For at least half of the one and only season the Ghost Chasers crew were joined by the Partridge Kids (Danny, Laurie, Tracy, Chris, seen below in the middle).

The Partridge kids were voiced by the actual actors; Danny Bonaduce, Susan Dey, Suzanne Crough and Brian Forster. For some reason, around episode 11, the Partridge Kids disappear and never make another appearance. However, don’t feel bad for them, about a year later they would get their own cartoon series.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2017: The Real Ghostbusters S4E2 – Flip Side

Posted in cartoons, pop culture, TV shows with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, Awesome-tober-fest 2017, cartoons, Ghostbusters, ghosts, Halloween, holiday, monsters, TV shows on October 12, 2017 by Paxton

Okay, so the last two episodes of The Real Ghostbusters I talked about (Take Two, Citizen Ghost) were super meta and attempted to deal with some issues of canon pertaining to the cartoons and the movie. They were fun and interesting episodes.

Now, let’s take a look at a later episode that isn’t all “canon-y” and is just a cool episode that I had heard about but never seen.

Season 4 Episode 2 – Flip Side. I forget where I first heard of this episode. I thought it was over on Shawn’s website when he was doing animation cels for Halloween several years ago. I could have sworn he had a Peoplebusters animation cel. The Peoplebusters are the ghost world version of the Ghostbusters. It was such an awesome concept that I’ve been wanting to watch the episode in which they were introduced for years. But I couldn’t find the animation cel on Shawn’s site, so maybe it was in the comments of an unrelated episode of the show. I’m not sure.

This particular episode is during one of the later seasons where they changed the show name to Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters.

In this episode the guys are taken via a dimensional storm to an alternate New York called Boo York, aka The Big Pumpkin. It’s a flip universe populated by ghosts.

The guys go to their headquarters to figure out what’s going on and see things are very different. I love that the Peoplebusters sign has Egon in the cross bar.

The guys walk into the building and they run into this universe’s version of themselves…The Peoplebusters! Yes! Ghosts who hunt people! I’ve always loved the idea of antagonists that are the reverse of the protagonists. Sherlock Holmes/Moriarty. Flash/Reverse Flash. Ghostbusters/Peoplebusters. I love it.

Since the Ghostbusters are humans in the ghost world, they seem to have all the abilities that ghosts do in our world. The very first of which is, they can fly. The guys spend the episode learning about being people in a ghost world all while being chased by the Peoplebusters.

Here’s the containment unit the Peoplebusters use. It’s a giant awesome metal skull that “eats” the humans.

This is the Peoplebuster’s Ecto-1. And I think it’s kind of badass. The Ghostbusters really need to take notes on this one. It’s like a Mad Max vehicle raped a Batmobile.