The first week at the school has proved to be exhausting, but I’m in good spirits as I dutifully report for this week’s Thunderbean Thursday. That said, I’m asking *you* to come up with a bunch of interesting and entertaining worsts. There is something great about finding the worst of each studio – and it’s actually more fun to think about and write about them than it is to actually have to watch them!
There’s no pressing Thunderbean news at the moment… work continues on finishing off the Rainbow Parades 2 set right now. Things are looking splendid.
And now, back to *your* least favorites….
Since it’s my fault you’ll be writing, it’s only fair that I start it out. There’s no rules in what you write, but I’ll start things out with my list of some of *my* leasts — and why.
1. Disney Studio: How to Sleep (1953). I have very specific reasons for this being my least favorite Disney theatrical cartoon. It’s beautifully animated. I don’t mind *that* part, but, even though I tried to enjoy it, I couldn’t find a single gag even remotely funny. It just seems like a misfire, and, somehow, because it’s trying so hard to be funny, I find it even more annoying. Click the title card below to watch it – if you dare.
2: Fleischer: There isn’t a Fleischer short that I’m personally *hating*, but if you want to annoy me at a showing of otherwise quality 16mm cartoons, show with Granite Hotel or The Wizard of Arts. To reiterate, I have no hate for either, but I’d rather see *anything* I haven’t ever seen from the classic cartoon era than have to watch either of these ever again (and I owned prints of both). Again, I don’t hate these- they’re just the last of the Fleischers I want to watch again. I posted this a little while back- feel free to look up the other if you’d like:
3. Terrytoons: I hate to disparage another cartoon with really great animation — but Gaston’s Baby (1958) really rubs me the wrong way. None of the characters are even slightly appealing to be, and every one is just mean to each other. Even Gaston isn’t interesting to me in his confusion between the kid and the parent. Maybe you’ll like it for its sheer bizarreness and a lot of really fun animated shots. I’m just not hip enough to get this one I guess.
4: Famous Studios: And So Tibet (1964)
I’ve owned a print of this cartoon *twice*- both times in a batch of other things. I must have a thing against angry characters, because here we have a story that really barely goes anywhere, some really uninspired character design and survivable animation. It’s also on my list of cartoons I’d rather never see again – and that’s a short list for Famous for me.
5: MGM: Mouse into Space (1962): I honestly could get through any of the MGM multiple times, but perhaps it’s because I saw this particular one over and over as a kid that I just would rather not see it again. In this Rembrandt Films/Gene Deitch produced short, Tom spends a majority of the cartoon reacting to objects hitting him or trying to avoid him while he’s running along with the rocket he was inside in space. There’s a cutaway once in a while with Jerry laughing at him, and then there’s a scene near the end where it looks like the animators were trying to emulate some scenes of 50’s Tom and Jerry cartoons in action and poses. It’s kind of a dud, and just about the least funny of this particular era of Tom and Jerry’s.
6: UPA: The Rise of Dutton Lang (1955) I don’t know where to start on this one. The basic plot is a man meeting a stranger at a cafe and telling him a story of a character that gets fatter and fatter,and is miserable as the story continues. There’s no happy ending for this character, just a story teller getting himself and another man drunk. I dislike *every* character in this film, and have trouble understanding why this was even a good idea to make. I like some of the design in this film, but never, ever understood the supposed sardonic, sophisticated humor in this mean-spirited cartoon. And yes, I know the title is supposed to sound like “Two Ton Lang” another completely unfunny and mean joke.
Ok- it’s your turn! Tell us all what not to watch please— and have a good week all!!!
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Hey Steve, I couldn’t resist responding to your request with a quartet of “Least Favorites” of my own.
I note you didn’t include a Lantz cartoon on your list. I recently lived through a telecast of the wretched 1968 Paul Smith Chilly Willy cartoon HIGHWAY HECKLERS – one of the worst drawn, ineptly animated 1960s Lantz cartoons I’ve ever seen. Laughable in how bad it is… but all the Smith/Lantz 60s cartoons are awful. But look at the drawings here, the animation – even Daws Butler’s line readings – there’s only one, very offensive, word for this short… and I’ll say it: retarded.
https://www.chillywillyfan.com/vid_highway.php
As a fan of 1960s Paramount cartoons I agree there are some awful ones (but I can argue that there are some we GREAT ones there as well) – but yeah, AND SO, TIBET is one of the bad ones. But I don’t think it falls into abyss as badly as two that were released in January 1966, both directed by Howard Post: OP POP WHAM AND BOP (I love the title – and the premise – of this one, but it’s so badly timed, badly animated, unfunny….) and SICK TRANSIT (starring “Roadhog” and “Rapid Rabbit” ). OMG this is an awful one – a perfect example of what I call a “Drive-In Cartoon” the kind of generic thing that will be on the screen while you were getting popcorn and soda, and your Dad is taking a piss (at the screen!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX__1Hb8h_M
Beyond those – there’s nothing that says “filler” more than the Fleischer Animated Antics (all of them) which really have no reason to exist. The 1940s equivalent of a 60s “drive-In” cartoons – this is what I call a “Newsreel Theater cartoon” – a short that played in those Newsreel theaters that existed in most major cities, downtown, that ran a program of comedy shorts in-between the major studio newsreels (but no features). The Animated Antics (and the Columbia “Phantasy” cartoons) really fit that description – a time filler.
UPA – I can easily agree with your choice of Duton Lang… but the one that gets under my skin is THE POPCORN STORY. Not funny, not interesting. Jim Backus’s voice only serves to remind us of how great he is in the Magoo films. There’s an incredible crew on this, Art Babbit, Grim Natwick, Willis Pyle, Jules Engel… but to me, Popcorn Story is a bigger dud….. Here, take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SwiDJ6niD0
Off-topic, but regarding Smith’s unit, is there a reason or theory why Les Kline animation skills (or lack thereof) rapidly deteriorated once he came back at Lantz? It’s a mystery that baffles me.
I think it had to do with age ultimately. From what I’ve heard when Kline finally retired in 1971, he could barely draw anymore. That and Kline always seemed to be, how should I put this, not quite as advanced as other animators of the era. Yes his pre-shutdown work was very lively, and he tried being experimental occasionally, but even then his work just didn’t pack the same punch as someone like LaVerne Harding or Emery Hawkins. It could’ve also been due to a health problem. After Lantz shut down, Kline would end up packing tomatoes in the hot sun for a few years, perhaps something happened during this period that affected Kline physically, as unlikely as that sounds.
“Sick Transit” was truly painful; the one good gag of the short, if it could even be called a gag, was Rapid Rabbit’s scarf. I did like Sharples’s score, though, or at least what I could hear of it over the noise of the vehicles.
Perhaps I should take this opportunity to mention (as others have posted the last time the mention of this cartoon came up) that sped-up clips of OP POP WHAM AND BOP are shown in the Steven Spielberg adventure-comedy “Explorers” during the scene where the kids are aboard the alien spaceship conversing with the aliens.
Explorers (1985) also has Sick Transit (the other short Jerry thinks is one of the worst Famous Studios cartoons), The Itch (1965) and Hiccup Hound.
Op, Pop, Wham and Bop also shows up in Pretty in Pink.
I might as well note here that Seymour Knietel’s final film “Space Kid” (1966) is in the Eddie Murphy hit “48 Hours” (1982).
How to Sleep (1953) and Mouse Into Space (1962)? I don’t agree. Both of those are fine cartoons IMO and I also don’t agree for the former that “because it’s trying so hard to be funny, I find it even more annoying” (granted I find it hard to hate ANY Jack Kinney Goofy but still).
Anyway here’s a list of my least favorites from all 6 studios you mentioned in this post:
Disney – Probably Pluto’s Party.
Fleischer – IDK maybe The Wizard of Arts?
Terrytoons – Any Luno cartoon.
Famous Studios – Hard to say.
MGM – Shutter Bugged Cat
UPA – Spare the Child.
We’ve played this game before, and it’s good fun. Negative reviews can be amusing enough to read that Roger Ebert compiled his most scathing ones into some of his best-selling books. But I don’t know, maybe I’m coming around to the view of our unfailingly positive contributors Messrs. Ehrbar and Lyons, who hold that life is too short and too precious to fritter away in negativity. UPA cartoons and Deitch era Terrytoons, for example, are generally not to my personal taste, but I see no point in wasting mental energy trying to single out one of them above (or should I say, below) all others. That goes double for late period Walter Lantz. Even for studios whose output I mostly enjoy, choosing a least favourite is not an easy task. Is “El Terrible Toreador” a worse Silly Symphony than “The Merry Dwarfs”, or “Playful Polar Bears” a worse Color Classic than “Hunky and Spunky”, or vice versa? Who cares? It’s like the old conundrum that kids used to pose when I was in junior high: which would you rather eat, a shit sandwich or a booger sandwich? I’ll have smoked salmon and tomato, thank you.
However, I will make an exception here for the one studio from which choosing a least favourite cartoon isn’t even a close contest.
Warner Bros., “Old Glory” (1939). Uncle Sam convinces Porky Pig that compelling rote expressions of patriotism from schoolchildren is what freedom is all about. Despicable.
I disagree as I thought this was a nice serious early short by Chuck Jones (admittingly, he’s my favorite director at Warners) and consider it a personal favorite.
Thank God somebody finally said it: “Old Glory” absolutely sucks–the worst Warner cartoon ever? I’d be happy to hear contrary opinions
It was in the 100 Greatest Looney Tunes book. Again, I thought it was well-done.
It’s worth again noting that “Old Glory” was not just a random decision by the Termite Terrace boys to give the kids a history lesson. Warner’s shorts division was at the time developing a niche in producing Technicolor patriotic historical dramatic shorts, many of which were of very high quality, and several of which can be found as bonus extras on many Warner DVD’s. “Old Glory” was the logical extension of that series – an attempt to see if the same kind of short could work in the field of animation. So to be fair to the Termite Terrace boys, they were probably saddled with the project by edict of the executive office. Putting their best draftsman Check Jones in charge showed they were at least really pitting their backs into following through on the project, and, had the film come out from another studio more well associated with serious works *such as perhaps Disney during the mid-1940’s war era), I would presume the short would be subject to far less criticism and more general acceptance as a product of its time. Whatever one says about it, the visuals are quite stunning and dramatic, and, since attempting to do Disney was not outside of the studio’s playbook at the time (witness other Jones productions like Sniffles the Mouse, Tom Thumb in Trouble), the fact that they were able to achieve, in advance of Disney, something that looked so much like one of Disney’s serious shorts is something to be commended. It’s just that the film is sandwiched into a seemingly endless package of titles with all laughs, no drama, that makes its differences from the rest so off-pitting. Isolate the film without studio affiliation, and judge it upon its own merits, and it remains an eye-catching achievement in a field all its own. But run it for the adults – not a pack of over-stimulated anxious kids wanting to root for Bugs Bunny.
I don’t see the hatred with “How to Sleep”. I admit “How to Dance” was better, but the former was still good. I especially enjoyed it (with Von Drake’s narration) in the anthology episode, “Square Pegs in Round Holes”.
As for least:
WB: Harried and Hurried
Lantz: Prehistoric Salesman
DFE: Pierre and Cottage Cheese
Terrytoons: The First Flying Fish
Fleischer: The Ugly Dino
Eh, I don’t agree with the Disney and Terrytoons choices, especially since the former has plenty of Plutos (including the later Mickey billed shorts) and Donald vs. Pint-Sized Animals to choose from, while the latter has many, many non-Deitch shorts before and after (especially after) to choose from. But hey, just opinions at the end of the day.
That said, Disney I’d replace with Crazy Over Daisy. Why Jack Hannah would go through the effort of dressing up a cartoon so much (even cameoing Goofy, Mickey and Minnie) just to aggressively make this into another run-of-the-mill Donald vs. Chip ‘n’ Dale short is beyond me. Insult to injury that Donald did nothing but look funny to Chip n Dale, and got punished in the end for it, the chipmunks essentially hijacked what could have been the most interesting Donald Duck short in years (as of 1950).
Terrytoons has too many 60s shorts to choose from, Bill Weiss did a thorough job stamping out whatever uniqueness Terrytoons had left and made it largely indistinguishable from the rest of the animation industry at the time.
In fact, while I mostly can’t name specific worst shorts from each studio, I do know that my least favorite of said studios would come from a specific era within. That said, here are my least favorites of other studios (or rather eras where my least favorites would be found):
UPA: Trees and Jamaica Daddy (a short of a white character dressing in brownface to sing how it’s “Man’s responsibility to have a baby” is automatic ‘no’ material for me, putting it lightly….also was nominated for the Oscars over What’s Opera Doc, let that sink in)
WB: Something from the Buddy era or DFE/Seven-Arts era
Fleischer: Miami-era
Famous: 60s era
MGM: Harman/Ising era and Chuck Jones era (the man’s talent was mostly wasted there keeping Tom and Jerry alive)
Screen Gems: post-1935 Scrappy and Krazy Kats
Lantz: Something from the post-1966 Paul Smith-only era.
For the record, “Crazy Over Daisy” was a favorite of Walt Disney Archive founder, Dave Smith. I think he enjoyed it because the title song’s melody was reworked for “Meet Me Down on Main Street” for Disneyland.
Yeah, and that’s what made the short even more frustrating for me. Nice tune, great animation and well-done 1890s theme that went to waste on it.
That said, the ‘Meet Me Down On Main Street’ rework of Crazy Over Daisy was very nice indeed.
TK, thank you for voicing everything wrong with Crazy Over Daisy. It is such a a miserable cartoon, easily those bastard chipmunks at their most despicable.
I feel like Jack Hannah had a weird thing about over-punishing Donald at times. This cartoon leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Also my least favorite Disney cartoon because of how mean spirited it is.
Wasn’t Barks guilty of over punishing Donald in some comics?
I’ve never read the comics Nic, so I couldn’t say. But Barks did write some excellent Donald Duck shorts when he was still in the animation department, like “Chef Donald”.
I think Barks introduced the nephews into the animated shorts, so I guess you could say he started the trend of making Donald the butt of the joke of a rogues gallery of cutesy characters- but I take the most issue with Chip n’ Dale. On paper they’re perfectly fine characters, but in execution, in the hands of Jack Hannah (great director btw, just slamming this particular formula) they often instigate the trouble with “The Duck”, and there was never a single short where they came out worse for wear due to their actions. It’s one of the few golden age cartoon setups that rubs me the wrong way more often than not (that said, some cartoons like “Up A Tree” are admittedly pretty darn funny).
I completely agree with you on the Donald vs. Chipmunks cartoons. There’s a Christmas one where Donald is essentially trying to protect his decorations and presents from the chipmunk burglars, and gets punished for it.
Robert McKimson’s godawful attempts to revive the “blackout gag” format, Dog Tales (1958) and Wild Wild World (1960) belong on the list, as well as all of the Format Films Road Runner shorts. Had I seen any of these abominations playing in a theater, I would have slashed up the screen until restrained.
I tend to think of horrible cartoons by series, rather than individual cartoons – particularly from my days as a wee youngster. One series I absolutely couldn’t understand why ANYBODY thought they were funny was a series called BUCKY AND PEPITO. Bleechhhh! Another series that was pretty awful for me was either BATFINK AND KARATE or COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE. I suspect it was the COURAGEOUS CAT series as I remember seeing really cheap and sloppy production values when you could see the edge of a plastic “cel” overlaid on another drawing – it was like Sam Katzman was producing TV cartoons. Just awful!
Maybe if I give this a little more thought, i’ll come up with some indvidual titles from Famous, Warner Bros., etc. As Mr. Stanchfield knows, I’ve grown to appreciate the better Famous Studio POPEYE cartoons as the years have gone by – ESPECIALLY, now that better prints of some of them have become available.
Unlike “TX,” I know there are some good Fleischer cartoons from the Miami, Florida era: THE SUPERMAN cartoons are probably the best examples of that! There were some good Harman-Ising cartoons from the MGM era, too!
Paul, knowing your dislike of just about anything patriotic about the good ol’ USA, i’m not surprised you are no fan of OLD GLORY! I still like animation of Porky and “Uncle Sam” and it would be a perfect cartoon to pacify all the “Karens” out there who complained – and continue to complain about violence in animated cartoons. I’d add MOUSE IN MANHATTAN to really shut them up on the subject – as the TOM AND JERRY series (Hanna-Barbera/MGM) usually gets singled out as being one of the most violent cartoon series of all time!
Disney: I never liked the Pluto cartoons. Pluto was too much like a real dog, and hearing him scream in pain when getting his paw in a mousetrap or getting a shock was like seeing a real animal being abused. When I was a kid, I saw “Cold Storage” in which a stork keeps Pluto out of his doghouse on a freezing cold day; I found it nightmarish. Perhaps we all have something we just can’t laugh at, and for me, it’s cruelty to dogs–even animated ones.
WB: “Goodnight Elmer”–comedy based on frustration; I just find it frustrating, not funny. I also always hated Pepe Le Pew.
Grumble, grumble.
Steve, I DARED to watch HOW TO SLEEP and all I can say is that I understand that for with you it is one of your “least favorite” Disney cartoons. Maybe I haven’t seen enough of them to judge, but to me, it’s a mediocre “spot gag” kind of cartoon, much like the “spot gag” cartoons Warner Bros. used to make in the late ’30s into the ’40s – often satires of newreels and travelogues, but usually a lot funnier than this cartoon.
WIZARD OF ARTS is probably one of the most mediocre of the later Fleischer cartoons. My best guess is that the Fleischer crew was so busy finishing up MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN that they quickly rushed this cartoon through to satisfy Paramount in getting a certain “quota” of cartoons out per their contract.
GASTON’S BABY? Well, I pretty much agree with you about the obnoxious characters. The mother is modeled on the persona of actress Tallulah Bankhead – which I’ve never much cared for. The father sounds as if he’s voiced by Allen Swift. Meh!
For the last three: AND SO TIBET is a blah cartoon, but not without merit. One of the scientists sounds like “Clyde Crashcup” – modelled after radio comeidan “Prof. Edwin Carp’ (aka actor Richard Haydn) from the later ’30s. I’ll take your word for MOUSE INTO SPACE as I’ve never been a fan of most of the post Hanna-Barbera.MGM TOM AND JERRY CARTOONS. As for THE RISE OF DUTON LANG, I’m in complete agreement with you!
I wouldn’t consider “How to Sleep” as a spot gag cartoon. The only Goofy shorts that closely resembles one would be “Victory Vehicles” and the first halves of both “The Art of Self-Defense” and “How to be a Sailor”.
There is a cool restaurant called the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater at Disney’s Hollywood Studios park in Florida, where cheesy science fiction clips are shown on a movie screen. An edited version of Mouse Into Space has been shown in this mix, every 60 minutes, since 1989. Steve, you might want to opt for the Hollywood Brown Derby for lunch.
Disney: “Mickey Down Under” (’48) – Uninspired and bland Mickey/Pluto yarn.
Warners: “Mad as a Mars Hare” (’63) – Bugs AND Chuck were going through the motions by this point.
Fleischer: “Be Human” (’36) – Hey, Uncle Max! Animal abusers aren’t funny!
MGM: “High Steaks” (’62) – That goes for you too, Gene!
Actually, it was the last short Chuck was working on before he got fired which might explain why it felt rushed.
Maybe there should be a category for most disappointing. There were certainly worse cartoons than many of the ones nominated here, but some titles are drawing contempt because the names behind them raised expectations.
UPA’s non-Magoos suffer now because content usually ran far behind what was then eyepopping visual innovations. Years later those innovations have been imitated to death and bastardized into limited animation, leaving center stage to perfunctory afterthought gags.
Disney shorts rarely disappointed because the expectation was comfort food and craftsmanship you could enjoy for its own sake. An actual laugh was a bonus. Whereas a Tex Avery with a single weak gag was a letdown.
A truly awful Fleischer cartoon is “The Raven”. Not only is it humorless, but it’s a double-length failure.
Some worthy bad candidates mentioned in the post and the comments; for most of them, even if I don’t agree that they’re a candidate for being among the worst of the worst of a studio, I can understand how others might say they really are that abysmal. I will admit I found “Gaston’s Baby” passable, at least; as annoying as the married couple are and as nonsensical as the story is, I enjoy much of the design and animation, and there’s a few good gags sprinkled throughout the cartoon.
For most of the studios, I would just be repeating cartoons already mentioned, which makes for dull reading. One studio where I could offer a contrarian opinion would be MGM. As annoying as I find “High Steaks” and “Down and Outing”, my pick for the worst of the studio would go back to its earlier days, with “Poor Little Me”. The character designs, which should be cute, are so over-detailed as to be off-putting, the lead character’s self-pity is grating, and the villain’s wild spasms when he smells the skunks are just plain weird (another area of the cartoon that would’ve benefited from less detail and more stylization). But the worst part is that, while it seems to be aiming for a moral of “don’t worry about having friends if you have a loving family” (which would be bad enough), it ends up more like “stick with your own kind”, the second-worst moral of the Happy Harmonies series. And all in a brisk runtime of nearly 11 minutes.
My Least Favorite Cartoons from each studio (Not all):
Warners – See Ya Later Gladiator, terrible visuals and sounds, Daffy being meaner than usual. Also Tokyo Jokio is just racism the worst way possible.
Fleischers – Flies Ain’t Bad, not terrible but more mediocre since it feels like a later Popeye short than an early one.
Lantz – Anything related to the Beary Family, I prefer Andy Panda any day.
MGM – High Steaks, pure animal abuse the cartoon.
Famous – You’re A Sap, Mr ***!, Not a good way to start a new era of Popeye.
Van Beuren – Plane Dumb, the peak of blatant racism.
Screen Gems – Wacky Quacky, Just the worst studios from the golden age ever from the 40s, so many rip offs.
Terrytoons – Luno The White Stallion, plain boring.
UPA – The Ham shorts are awful but the Hattie shorts are okayish.
If we count the TV ones then:
Nick – Big Sister Sam from Spongebob, just Patrick derailed as the worst way possible with an unlikable one shot character.
CN – A Third Dad Cartoon, Family Guy cutaway gags the short. Dexter’s Lab is not known for laziness.
Total Television – Cauliflower Cabby, preschool tier writing with stiff visuals.
Hanna Barbera – Any cartoons that The Great Gazoo appears. The Flintstones was ruined by season 6.
DIC – A tie for Hammerman and Wacky World Of Tex Avery, the former is just choppy animation galore and the latter being insulting.
Filmation – A tie for Fraidy Cat and Tom And Jerry 1980 version.
RobGems68 wrote:
The only thing I liked about DIC’s Tex Avery cartoon is the sexy cowgirl Chastity Knott. That’s it. A good character in an otherwise lousy series. Any cartoon with unreasonable domestic violence is a stinker. Same thing with animal abuse.
Here’s my random set of opinions:
UPA – Admittedly, the Ham and Hattie shorts are awful, though they would have seemed passable among episodes of “The Boing Boing Show”. “Duton Lang” would have never occurred to me as eligible for a worst list, as I had some familiarity with the original magazine story before seeing the film, and thought they did just about as good a job of adapting it to the screen as could be done from the work. To me, the ones that stick in my craw are a dead heat between “Ballet-Oop” and “Baby Boogie” for the worst. “Ballet-Oop” has a promising title, and you expect it to be six minutes of absolute dancing disaster. Instead, it generates nary a laugh or chuckle, and wastes at least half the cartoon upon a performance that is too avante-garde to have any appeal to a general audience, and could only be remotely appreciated by some doting parent absolutely obsessed with the medium, while his or her poor child acts as the long-suffering dolt forced to go through the motions. “Baby Boogie”, in spite of its musical syncopation and a few attempts at laughs, is to me a highly-disturbing film that must have been impossible to sit through for either parents or children – the parents squirming in their seats if accompanied to the theater by any kids, wondering how in the world to explain this film to their young ones, while the children get the bee put in their bonnet to question the parents’ veracity and pop them the question “Where do babies come from?” It’s not an easy subject to touch upon, and could have been handled in more playful and less-pointed ways, with the gentler touch of other studios. I am reminded particularly of the Hal Roach Our Gang short, “Bouncing Babies”, which milked comedy out of Wheezer’s belief that he can return his baby brother to the hospital and trade him for a goat. The Roach short was able to carry out this premise without inducing squirmishness or confrontation among the audience. It seems, however, that the producers of the UPA cartoon were on a campaign to revolutionize parenting through frank honesty – a method that I doubt would be properly understood by most children, nor leave parents at ease within their own home. Please, take your message to the streets – not the animated screen.
As for Warner, I’d rule out of the running any of the Rudy Larriva Road Runners despite their comparative lack of quality – as they are all eclipsed by what must be the bottom of the barrel of Daffy and Speedy pair-ups, “A-Haunting We Will Go”. I first saw this film as part of a television Halloween special compilation – and did not even recognize it as a theatrical short, thinking that it was new cheap animation used as filler for bridging purposes. When I found out it had actually had a theatrical release, I was shocked. A cheater to end all cheaters, thrown together in the most contrived and unnatural fashion, to reuse overly-large doses of old animation from “Broomstick Bunny” and “Duck Amuck”. Daffy recast in the role of trick-ot-treating Bugs Bunny was a miscast enough – but Speedy Gonzales transformed by spell into a Mexican-accented Witch Hazel? Oh, come on! The “plot” made absolutely no sense, ad it was such an utter disappointment to see Witch Hazel end her big-screen career on such an unoriginal and sour note. By the way, if you’re going to transform a Warner star into a Witch Hazel clone, couldn’t we have Porky Pig? Maybe Hazel’s lines would have sounded funnier if delivered with a stutter.
Lantz films are pretty hard to single out if you include the Paul Smith late 60’s era, as there were so many poor ones. “Woody the Freeloader” is one I detest, as Woody is so unlikable, his tricks not even registering in a positive comedic way. But if you were narrowing the topic to the pre-Smith days, I think I would forgive the formative years of the Oswalds, and turn to Burt Gillett’s “Adventures of Tom Thumb Jr.”, a short which I could rarely sit through, due to its visual merits being entirely overshadowed by a middle section in which Tom is mistaken by a normal-sized old lady for a baby. Tom is revealingly reduced for about two minutes of the film to total nudity, as the old lady attempts to tend to his needs. Considering that we know Tom is not a baby, the nudity seems shocking and gratuitous – and this point is driven home (like a stake to the heart) by Tom’s unheard shouts to the lady “I’m not a baby! I’m a man!” A plot point also seems to be addressed in a questionably harsh manner, by the old lady referring to herself as “a little deaf”. (Wouldn’t it have been gentler and less crude for her to say “hard of hearing”?) Just to close the sequence in unsettling fashion, we have to endure a shot where Tom’s grasshopper friend returns his clothes to him, remarking “Hello, baby”, while Tom responds “Don’t rub it in”, while pulling on his trousers on screen instead of from behind some object for modesty. Whatever preceded or followed this extended sequence seemed irrelevant after enduring this interlude, from which the film could never recover. I was repeatedly amazed when Channel 13 in the Los Angeles market would repeatedly run this film uncut, when milder things would go under the censor’s scissors. What were they thinking?
It’s difficult to single out a work from Disney. I would disagree with some assessments mentioned above. I thought “Pluto’s Party” was one of the more creative ideas of the Pluto series – an original concept, probably inspired by the experiences of an actual dog owner. All the traditions of a birthday party, familiar to humans – but how is a dog to understand and deal with them? I could imagine many a live dog going through only slightly less in trying to cope with some overanxious master’s well-intentioned efforts to make the pet the subject of celebration like one of the family, while the dog simply wonders, “Why me?” As for “Crazy Over Daisy”, I did notice the overly-mean and unprovoked behavior of the chipmunks, but still though the artwork, music, and several good gags carried the day – including the scene where Dale comes up with an idea in the form of a light bulb in a thought cloud, but Chip dosn’t think it’s bright enough, so Dale pills a cord to shut the bulb off – until he comes up with a larger bulb of an idea that must be using at least 100 watts in non-soft-white. Or Donald’s old-fashioned bike being pursued by a rolling cannonball, and compressed as the ball rolls over it into a flat strip of pipe. Even if the plotline was a stretch, Hannah’s timing still seemed sharp in my book. “Mickey Down Under” is certainly a possible candidate as Mickeys go, being clearly one of his weakest appearances short of cameo roles in titles under the Pluto banner, proving what someone at the studio once observed – Mickey on the run isn’t generally funny. But its artwork and colors (which were the main attraction hen I first acquired a super 8 print decades ago) save the film from a rating as absolute worst. Though it’s not the most abissmal cartoon ever made in general, I would tend to rank as at least most disappointing “Jack and Old Mac”, a cartoon that, despite its musical arrangements (which are better heard than seen) is entirely off-pitting when placed under the Disney shingle, as it appears to be the work of anyone but Disney. It is so fixated upon being UPA or “Mid-Century Modern” that it seems to entirely lose sight of quality (something that “Toot, Whistle, Pliunk, and Boom” never had to do), especially in the overly-long at four minutes “Old MacDonald Had a Band” number. When in all of the history of Disney did we see animators fall back upon a single repeating cycle of animation for the singers, poorly drawn to begin with, repeated over and over and over and over again for seemingly every verse? It’s worse than watching the same buildings or furniture in a Hanna-Barbera television cartoon pass the camera over and over again on a continuous panning loop.
I think I’d agree with one or more of the Paramount choices. I personally like seeing most of the anti-Japanese titles as a reflection of their time, even if mean-spirited – after all, this was war, and finding a laugh at such times, even at someone else-s expense, was probably a plus. But I’d definitely agree tha the Rapid Rabbit and Op art episodes referenced above were among the most truly rotten. Someone mentioned “Be Human” from the Fleischer days – but can you count that without including Popeye’s “Be Kind To Aminals” in the same breath? (Especially with the latter also hampered by that awful substitution for Popeye’s voice?) “Wizard of Arts” was indeed weak – though I’d lean more toward “The Playful Polar Bears” as an entire misfire upon laughs and heartstring-tugs – all the fun of going to a funeral (much worse so than the similar but redeeming “Song of the Birds”.) “Wizard of Arts” at least had a few good puns…
…and reminds me that, if we were to single-out a weakest Tex Avery from MGM, it might have to go to a similar one-joke film relying entirely on an endless string of visual puns – “The Farm of Tomorrow”, using every bad “We crossed a with a and got a “ riddle that probably circulated in the grade-school circuit. As for earlier MGM, I’d agree that “Poor Little Me” is hard to sit through – but its cloying nature and disturbing message seem matched by the later “The Little Mole”, where a pair of glasses reveal to our would-be hero that the “fairy palace” he’s been admiring on the next lot is nothing but a junk heap – yet he becomes content again, and so does his mother, when he returns home after a harrowing adventure, his glasses lost, and can see his “fairy palace” again. So is the moral to never observe the world for what it is, and be content with self-delusion? Were the writers forecasting the benefits of the lifestyle of Mr. Magoo? As for later MGM, I would agree that “Shutter-Bugged Cat”, and all three of the Deitch Tom and Jerry’s with the Allen Swift owner (nobody mentioned “Sorry Safari”) are pretty “sorry”.
Can’t single out a particular Columbia as least favorite, though some of their newsreel spoofs (some even passed off as Krazy Kat entries without the character appearing) would seem to be among the weakest in the industry. Terrytoons is another studio where it is difficult to single out a weakest film. Certainly among one of the most disappointing to me from the color period is “Flying Cups and Saucers” – what sounds like it will forecast an interesting sci-fi spoof, instead only delivers a pair of cats that seem no more sophisticated than Earth felines, and fall for the standard bag of tricks from the mice, And Dimwit’s appearance in the film is treated like so much excess baggage, developing no laughs.
I notice no one has brought up the Ub Iwerks studio, though someone in a previous post referred appropriately to “Puss In Boots” as including poor character design, a poor and nonsensical plot, and generally unappealing characters (I find myself rooting for the ogre over everyone else). Or George Pal, where perhaps we’d have to settle on “The Little Broadcast” as the disappointing and only pure cheater in the ranks of the Puppetoon output.
How about Van Beifren? “Happy Polo” or “Horse Cops” might rank among my choices for weakest released in the sound era. Just try to watch them, and you’ll see why.
Remember how I mentioned “Poor Little Me” having the secondworst moral of the MGM Happy Harmonies? “The Little Mole” has the worst; however, I love the visuals enough to rank it ahead of “Poor Little Me” when taken as a whole.
Nowadays, as an adult, I’m well aware of the historical importance of Gene Deitch’s work, but as a child, I simply hated his Tom and Jerry. Whenever one of his cartoons appeared on television, mixed in with the great ones by H&B and Chuck Jones, I knew it would be a festival of humorlessness, lack of rhythm, ugly character design, and pointless violence (I never found H&B’s T&J cartoons violent, by the way—to me, they were pure slapstick, something like The Three Stooges but better). One cartoon I particularly hated involved a sailor searching for a whale named “Dicky Moe” or something like that. Imagine my surprise when, as an adult, I discovered that the creator of such atrocities was such a beloved and respected figure in the métier. The adult world is funny, isn’t it?
I love this game!
I do agree that I usually think of crummy series rather than individual crummy cartoons, but not always…
Paramount: Has anybody mentioned the junk with Gabby in it?
Warners: Anything by Format Films, any Daffyspeedytoons. Also…
“The Lady in Red” (Freleng, 1935): If there is ONE question I would have liked to ask Freleng, it’s
‘WHY on EARTH did you make a cartoon about COCKROACHES???!!!!”
I don’t think “Old Glory” stinks, I just think it’s dull.
Almost all early Terrytoons. He wasn’t the Woolworth’s, he was the five-cent bargain bin in the bargain basement… One example: Check out “Jesse and James,” if you can stomach it…
I agree, Van Beuren’s “Plane Dumb” is a waste of time. (I know the whole story about it, from Hal Erickson’s 2020 book “A Van Beuren Production.”) And I can do without the Amos and Andy cartoons.
“Tokio Jokio,” “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips,” etc., etc…
I agree with Jerry Beck on this one: Warner’s last cartoon durig what I think of as the Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon era, McKimson’s “Injun Trouble” needs to be buried deep… Almost all of that Warners junk from the mid- to late 1960s…
Disney’s earliest stuff is pretty lame, but he was just getting started. Some of the combination live action and animation stuff in the early Alice cartoons just doesn’t work well at all.
I wouldn’t be too hard on Friz Freleng for “The Lady in Red”. Two of his competitors were already way ahead of him. Apparently, you have not seen Terry;s “Cocky Cockroach” (1932), a film with a first half ten times as disgusting as anything in Freleng’s – with the filthy bugs even stealing milk out of the bottle of a baby, then giving him back the nipple to suck. And perhaps you’ve also not seen Harman-Ising’s “When the Cat’s Away”, produced for MGM several months before Freleng’s film. The cockroaches come out of the woodworks when they hear the rhythm of a dripping faucet, to perform a production number of “La Cucaracha”. What us especially unnerving about H-I’s cockroach design is that they have a realistic six legs (emphasized when one roach plays the appendages on four of his limbs like castanets). Comparative to the other two films, I think Freleng’s presentation was comparatively mild, and much more entertaining.
YECCHHHH!!!
By the way, several years ago, when I finally figured out what “La Cucaracha” means, I decided I never wanted to hear that song again.
I guess the logic at the time was, “if ants, fleas and termites can get representation in animated cartoons, why can’t roaches?”. Perhaps it was merely an experiment, a case of attempting something unique themewise to see how audiences would react. (On a side note, at least we now have a better idea of the cumulative influences that inspired the MTV movie “Joe’s Apartment”!)
I’ll just say what I can for each studio. If I haven’t listed a particular one, it’s because either I can’t really decide from their filmography or haven’t watched anything from them that I would call bad or worse.
Disney: I don’t have a particular short but I never found the Pluto shorts to be that charming or entertaining, even as a kid. Maybe one day when I watch all of them there’s bound to be a diamond in the rough but I’m not sure. In Mickey’s case, it would have to be “Jungle Rhythm” for how much of a snooze-fest it is, even for a music-based cartoon.
WB: “Tokio Jokio” and “Angel Puss” are disgustingly offensive in my book. “The Tree’s Knees” is my least favorite Bosko short because much like “Jungle Rhythm” it’s more of an endurance test than an entertainment piece. Not every Buddy cartoon stinks so it’s a miracle that the first, “Buddy’s Day Out” managed to be the worst of them.
MGM: “Poor Little Me” tries way too hard at being Disney, mangles up it’s ending moral, and has really off-putting character designs. “Barnyard Babies” since there’s even less attempt at a story in that one. Of the Tom and Jerrys, maybe “High Steaks” though I’ll have to give the Gene Deitchs a rewatch because it’s been ages since I’ve last seen them.
Famous: The Howard Post ones from the mid-1960s are abysmal imitations of other character formulas, with the worst going to “Op, Pop, Wham, and Bop” for me.
Screen Gems: Having seen all the (available online) Scrappys, my least favorites are from the 1935 period (from “Happy Butterfly” to “Scrappy’s Trailer”) for being uninspired Disney wannabes, with exceptions being “Puppet Murder Case” and “Let’s Ring Doorbells”. I haven’t seen all the Krazy Kat shorts but the worst of them I’ve seen is “Railroad Rhythm” with it’s uncomfortable Stepin Fetchit caricature and nonsensical plotline. I can’t imagine the B&W 40s Columbia cartoons getting worse than “Dumb Like a Fox” and “Mass Mouse Meeting”.
Van Beuren: “Laundry Blues” for its stereotypes and utter monotony. “Fisherman’s Luck” is also pretty dull for me.
THE PUPPET MURDER CASE and LET’S RING DOORBELLS were both directed by Art Davis the last good director of the SCRAPPY cartoons. Consistently agile and experimental, if not entertaining in the “classic” sense of the word. I call them “Un-Cartoons”.
The ones by Allen Rose are hopeless, and he was the major director in the KRAZYs, too. The last KRAZY, THE MOUSE EXTERMINATOR, in a desperate attempt to give him (?) an identity, they made his voice an inappropriate Joe Penner imitation.
Any of those Mighty Mouse cartoons with the operetta-type scores. That treacly musical style was already LONG outdated by the 1940’s and 50’s. Even as a child parked in front of the “electronic babysitter,” I’d immediately change the channel whenever one of those audio atrocities came on.
When the staff composers at all the other cartoon studios were dishing up some really hot swing on the soundtracks, Philip Scheib at Terrytoons was serving some very old, cold porridge to the unfortunate theater patrons who had to sit through such dreck before the feature came on.
This music was Paul Terry’s choice— the music of his own youth in the early 1900’s. Deliberately or otherwise, he completely either missed or ignored the Swing Era, one of the genuine highest aesthetic peaks of American popular music.
The recent spate of Terrytoons that have been posted here hasn’t changed my opinion of them— pure chozzerai (that’s Yiddish for “garbage”), and the fact that Terry behaved miserably towards even his most loyal and long-term employees doesn’t improve my opinion of him and most of his products. Heckle and Jeckle had some good moments, but that’s about it.
I won’t attempt to change your mind about the Terrytoons, Tom, but Philip Scheib’s scores are a lot more stylistically diverse than you give them credit for, and many of them really swing: the jitterbug scene in “Mighty Mouse and the Wolf”, the jazzy trumpet obligato in “Wolf! Wolf!”, and on and on. Swing music itself has become as dated as operetta, but many people still enjoy it. For my own part, I’ve always preferred Franz Lehar and Victor Herbert over Glenn Miller and the Dorseys. As we say in Hebrew, “Kol echad bishlo [to each his own].”
A few picks from me.
WB – “Tokio Jokio.” Not because it’s propaganda; all studios were making propaganda at the time. Because it’s not funny. All the jokes fall flat.
UPA – “Trees and Jamaica Daddy.” Boring, unfunny. I could have named any of the “Ham and Hattie” cartoons from the then-dying UPA studio.
Columbia – “Giddy Yapping.” Endless dialog between a hungry horse and his owner, who refuses to feed him.
Fleischer – The aforementioned “Wizard of Arts” fits the bill. I could have named any of the Stone Age cartoons as well.
Famous – Not much for me to like here. Any Baby Huey, Herman and Katnip, or Casper cartoon. What a shame; the studio got off to a great start, then the bean counters got involved.
Lantz – Once Paul J. Smith was the only director left, everything was awful.
Fleischer–Two words: Wiffle Piffle.
MGM–The Gene Deitch & Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry cartoons. Not funny.
Famous–Too many to name
WB–Cartoons where Wile E. Coyote talks.
Lantz–later Woody Woodpecker toons
DFE–Blue Racer
A rich mine, indeed!
1935-1940 were, IMO, a listless period for studio cartoons. They were a high period for the Disney shorts, and the POPEYE series was going full blast, but the other studios and series got more literal and paced like molasses. Maybe they thought slow pacing was being Disney. BETTY BOOP suffered the touch of Myron Waldman, whose tastes ran to the staid and domestic. Compare the fast and furious Lantz humor from 1933 and their slumberous cartoons of three years later. Or Columbia’s shorts in those same three years. Even the scores by James Dietrich, which saved many a picture, made more “sense” and lost their life. No new characters were catching on and the studios lumbered about with generic non-entities. Every background looked like Pinocchio’s neighborhood. It took 1940’s triple whammy of Bugs, Woody, and Tom & Jerry to bring back the verve.
The Color Classic TIME FOR LOVE I cannot stand. The Fleischer cartoonists were in an urban environment, and the attempts at pastoral surroundings seem forced and insincere, like an Easter Egg diorama. The plot isn’t even worth reviewing, but the final shot is nauseating. More sugary and sticky sweet than Disney ever was. The competing studios misunderstood Disney’s appeal, and it’s too bad they felt they had to try. I find the Famous RAGGEDY ANNs depressing, particularly THE ENCHANTED SQUARE, which like THE LITTLE MOLE, conveyed the message that blindness makes for an ecstatic existence.
The live action marionettes in the Oswald THE PUPPET SHOW make it a blatant cheater, but they actually aren’t bad in themselves. It gets much worse when puppeteer Oswald gets hit on the head and dreams that one of the puppets comes to life as a Stepin Fetchit character who tries to mix with dolls. The non-conflict is that puppets don’t mix with dolls and the stupidity takes flight. Why would Oswald dream about one of his puppets without being in that dream? Pointless.
Lantz’s late 30s VOODOO IN HARLEM does its best to assure us it’s going to be an OUT OF THE INKWELL mix of animation and live action, but it’s merely a tedious melange of dance cycles over photos of the office. Even that makes it sound more exciting than it is. Many, o so Many More.
“No new characters were catching on”
What about Daffy Duck and Porky Pig? The Tex Avery cartoons were exceptions IMO.
U B right.
But even Avery slowed his pace by 1938-9. THE HAUNTED CAT was very methodical. His move to MGM went an amazing *ZIP*.
here goes nothin.
Disney – Mickey and the Seal (1948)
This one always bothered me growing up, Mickey is so needlessly and uncharacteristically cruel to Pluto in this short, which was a bit of a trend at this time.
Warner – Buddy’s Trolley Troubles (1934)
Truthfully I could’ve put in any Buddy cartoon but I think this might be the biggest offender to me. Not only does it “borrow” part of it’s title and plot from a far superior cartoon (and one Freleng also worked on no less), but everything about it just feels stale and forgettable, like even as I’m writing this I cannot remember a single thing that happened in it.
MGM – The two Chuck Jones cheater T&Js
If Jones’ run of Tom and Jerry wasn’t bad enough, making a clip show featuring cartoons from better days just makes me wish I was watching those instead.
Lantz – Doctor Oswald (1935)
Besides being one of the first Oswald shorts to use his hideous new design, this short is sluggish, boring, and frankly I’d actually rather watch a Buddy over this any day.
Fleischer – Rhythm on the Reservation (1939)
A rather pathetic way to end Betty Boop’s run if you ask me.
Famous – Insect to Injury (1956)
This doesn’t even feel remotely related to Popeye anymore besides the titular sailor appearing (he’s not even a sailor at this point anymore) and that’s a big problem a lot of the later Famous Popeyes had. It’s essentially a watered down Donald Duck cartoon. Stupid and pointless.
Terrytoons – any Luno short
This is coming from someone who enjoys the Paul Terry-era shorts for all their weirdness, regardless of how cheap they were turned out. I haven’t even bothered watching a Luno short in full cause I know I won’t enjoy it.
Columbia – Simple Siren (1945)
Makes absolutely no sense ontop of being a snooze fest. Not even Don Williams’ quirky animation can save this one.
UPA – Trees and Jamaica Daddy (1958)
Imagine a Jay Ward cartoon if it had absolutely nothing going on. No humor, no gags, no jokes, nothing at all. This is what you’d get.
DFE – Star Pink (1978)
Made for television technically but I’m still counting it. Total missed opportunity to make a Star Wars parody and instead is something I could probably use to help me fall asleep if I’m awake late at night.
Van Bueren – The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg (1936)
Granted this isn’t as bad as the 50s TV Felix, but good lord this is still Insufferable. At least Bold King Cole gave us the “You talk too much” song, which should be sung to everyone in this cartoon.
Pat Sullivan – April Maze (1930)
Among the final original Felix shorts, and they go out with a half baked Silly Symphonies knockoff.
“Disney – Mickey and the Seal (1948)
This one always bothered me growing up, Mickey is so needlessly and uncharacteristically cruel to Pluto in this short, which was a bit of a trend at this time.”
Honestly, I don’t think Mickey was cruel at Pluto in this cartoon. He was more annoyed with him (which is something a lot of pet owners could relate to).
“DFE – Star Pink (1978)
Made for television technically but I’m still counting it. Total missed opportunity to make a Star Wars parody and instead is something I could probably use to help me fall asleep if I’m awake late at night.”
I thought this was one of the better shorts of that era. Art still seemed more motivative to make a cartoon unlike Gerry who I’m not sure wanted to be a director in the first place (please correct me if I’m wrong).
I’m glad to see “April Maze” mentioned – I absolutely hated that short as a kid. It feels like it goes on forever and nothing happens. I’d sooner sit through an episode of the indescribably bizarre “Twisted Tales of Felix” series than sit through that one again.
Hooo boy do I have a few to talk about:
Warner Bros. Pre-Hysterical Hare (1958): So I was having a discussion with my friend once about whether the early 30s or late 60s was a worse time for WB in terms of cartoons but both had a reason why they weren’t up to par: The early shorts were merely vehicles to promote the Warner music library and the late 60s were the stomping grounds for DFE and to me, both have their charm. However, Pre-Hysterical Hare isn’t in either era and I consider it the worst of the bunch. One of the Seely 6 during the music strike, Arthur Q’s recent passing requiring an Elmer Fudd who sounds like if I hooked up a bee’s nest to a guitar amplifier, and “jokes” that falter scene by scene. It’s Pre-Hysterical alright, the cartoon ends before it gets funny.
MGM: Any of the Michael Lah directed Droopys (1955-58): Of all the classic studios, MGM is my favorite. I’d be hard pressed to find any cartoons that were total losses in every department since their high production value ensured that I’d at least have beautiful scenery and an expertly crafted score by Scott Bradley to look forward to if the jokes/plot fell flat, leastways in the era where MGM produced their cartoons in house. You could argue the Deitch/Jones Tom and Jerries were bad, but mind you, HB was a hard act to follow and both have their share of classics and stinkers. However I’m keeping my choice strictly in that 134-58 period and the first that came to mind were the Mike Lah-directed Cinemascope Droopy shorts. I feel like Avery was really the only director who knew what to do with the character and I understand he was still a major player for MGM when Tex left for Lantz, and like T&J with HB, Avery left big shoes to fill. The shorts aren’t bad, they’re entertaining and they still have the Bradley score I pined about earlier, but I always moan when I see one pop up on MeTV.
Fleischer: The Gabby shorts of the early 40s: Like MGM, I have an affinity for the Fleischers and consider them the best of the 30s/early 40s period. Their cartoons were always a treat to watch with inventive gags and animation, up to and including their masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels. It seems one character in particular, Gabby, must have taken the world by storm in that time since the Fleischers decided to give him his own spinoff series in their twilight years. They felt like low rent Donald Duck shorts except Gabby, ever the nosey and busy-bodied fellow, insists he know how to do something better and constantly fails. I liked him in Gullivers, but like a lot of things in life, too much of anything will wear out its welcome and the series is a rare blight on the Fleischer catalog.
Famous: The Suburban Popeyes of the 50s: Popeye as a character was one that I always saw as very timely. In the 30s his shorts reflected the Depression-era slums of New York and its inhabitants, the early 40s had our spinach sailor reenlist in the Navy to take on the Axis in a show of American morale, and then the 50s happened with the suburban expansion and subsequent neutering of the character reducing him to Donald Duck’s humansona. Someone already mentioned Insect to Injury but any short that has Popeye in a suburban environment like that where he’s taking on a pest or inconvenience like Saitama and the mosquito in One Punch Man makes me wonder exactly what kind of cartoon am I watching? It was an early indicator of what King Features would do on TV with the character, but worse since Famous was capable of so much more.
Lantz: Unpopular opinion but I kind of enjoy the later Drive In cartoons of the Lantz library. They’re the Totinos Pizza Rolls of cartoons: Objectively crappy, cheaply made and low quality, but you can’t help but love them. My pick for the least favorite short in their expansive catalog for me however is a part of that crop of shorts, and it has to be Show Biz Beagle. I can’t really say why I don’t care for it, maybe the lack of effort is the most apparent with this short, definitely one where I’d find the most enjoyment hearing it faintly from a crummy drive in speaker as I try to get another Eskimo Pie from the snack stand.
DFE: Any short with Crazylegs Crane. God I tried watching one of his shorts before and I mean this in the nicest way possible, getting a root canal was a more pleasurable experience. DFE has some great stuff in their library from Pink Panther and Ant and the Aardvark, even Tijauana Toads are great, but Crazylegs is a cartoon I wouldn’t watch before operating heavy machinery.
In my opinion:
Disney: I would say that “The Fox Hunt” (1939) is the worst, because while titled as a “Donald and Goofy” cartoon, Goofy didn’t even have enough screen time, and he disappeared and was never seen again. And Mickey’s cameo in the end makes me feel that it was originally supposed to be a Mickey cartoon with the classic Mickey-Donald-Goofy triangle, but the crew then decides to cut Mickey out. If this was true, then I think they should have kept it as a Mickey cartoon or completely reworked it as a solo Donald cartoon. “Crazy with the Heat” (1947) can come close to the second, it just feel rushed and abrupt.
WB: I guess the Buddy cartoons are the worst to me, I just feel them bland. Aside from these, “Fish Tales” (1936) is quite terrible too with its bizarre plot. Heck, even those DFE/W7 cartoons are better than these, since honestly, Bill Lava’s music (especially the title music) are quite catchy for me, and I feel sometimes some of these plots actually have some unique ideas (“The Wild Chase”, “The Solid Tin Coyote”, “Sugar and Spies”, “A Taste of Catnip”, “Norman Normal”), they were just executed terribly, but still better than Buddy.
MGM: Gene Deitch’s Tom and Jerry, while bizarre, they are unique to me and I can’t say I hate them. But, yeah, the three cartoons with that Clint Clobber rip-off are, of course, not in the list. For HB era, I don’t really enjoy “Blue Cat Blues”, because I simply don’t like the depressing plot and wants to murder those gold-digging girls. And I hate those two with that babysitter, too. For Chuck Jones, I think “The Brothers Carry-Mouse-Off” can be on the list, I think it has the weakest storyline in all Chuck Jones T&Js.
Fleischer: Hard to pick, but maybe “Be Kind to Animals” for the most obvious reason: Popeye’s voice.
Famous: I think most of Howard Post’s cartoons can be on the list. I can see that he was trying to bring some ideas, but most of the cartoons just came out as ripoffs of Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry. Still, compared to the Looney Tunes at that era, these feel more like the actual Looney Tunes.
Lantz: While most of the late 60s~70s cartoons directed by Paul Smith can be on the list. My least favorite ones, however, are the Woody Woodpecker cartoons during 1951, where Woody did not have ANY lines. The stories, animation and music are all good, but when Woody never talks, it just gave me a feeling that a part is missing. I know this was during the transition after the studio’s brief closure, Ben Hardaway’s departure and before Grace Stafford completely taking over the role of Woody, but still.
Terrytoons: Most of them are, well, quite mediocre and indistinguishable, so I guess it’s hard to pick a least favorite one.
Also, for Screen Gems, I’m unsure which one to pick, but cartoons directed by either Allen Rose or Alec Geiss can be put in the bottom, I think they’re the weakest ones among all Screen Gems directors.
And for UPA, it’s those Ham and Hattie cartoons, plain boring without real plots, that’s all what I want to say.
i wouldn’t say “The Fox Hunt” is THE worst Disney short, it’s got manny things going for it, Donald and the bloodhounds, Goofy and his horse (predating “How to ride a horse”) and the extra detail that went away by 1940 and the u.s joining WWII
The cameos are kinda random tho, maybe it would’ve been better as a full ansemble (a la: “The Band Concert”, “Mickeys Polo Team” and “Symphony Hour”)
I guess you’re right about its positive side, but somehow the picture still makes me feel it was kinda uncompleted, guess I was bitter about Goofy’s complete disappearance in the end. It was kinda like the problems of most of the other Mickey-Donald-Goofy cartoons where each of their sequence is compressed without interacting with each other until the end, and Fox Hunt seems to be the big one for me, even without Mickey.
SAD CAT-BIG GAME FISHING. I’ve never seen any other Sad Cat cartoons, so I don’t know how it compares, but I have never seen a more unlikable, annoyingly protaganist.
Personally My Least Favorite From The Big Animation Studios Are
UPA: Trees And Jamaica Daddy
MGM: Run Sheep Run
TerryToons: Lucky Dog
Disney: Plane Crazy
Famous Studios / Paramount Cartoon Studios: High But Not Dry
Fleischer: Raggedy Ann And Andy
Worsts-ok lemme see:
Warners-Jungle Jitters. Are you kidding?
Lantz-Beary Family Anything. Shrill nonsense.
Disney-Anything with Chip and Dale gives me hives.
Fleischer-Tokio-Jokio. Ow.
UPA-Any of the Magoos where Charlie is prominently featured. Why?
Terrytoons-Sad Cat. Terrible.
Paramount- Popeye and the Termites – I think it was 50s stuff- they junked a great character.
Screen Gems-All things Scrappy.
MGM-Duh!! Couple of the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry’s are Awful. The one in Space is as ‘good’ a pick as any.
Hanna-Barbara-Frankenstein Jr. Seriously guys? How many different people did you rip off for this one?
Filmation- Whacky and Packy is about as bad as you will see there.
Rankin Bass-Cricket and the Hearth. Dull dull dull.
Those kinda work.