It’s been a pretty good week here so far here at Thunderbean – and almost non-stop. We have the last group of films in cleanup for the ‘Rainbow Parade, Volume 2 set right now, with all hands on deck in digital restoration. We’re trying hard to everything done for the set this month and send it out to replication. The Mid Century Modern 3 blu-ray is coming back from replication and will finally be out this month, and we’re working hard to get the Lou Bunin set done this summer as well. The other sets in various stages of production take up the extra time, so it’s never a blank slate for anyone here.

The Comi-Colors series is one of those other projects. It’s so nice being able to work from original negatives on these things and having restorations of the films that look better than anything we’ve seen, since we’re going back to the material that hasn’t been used since the early 40s. Every time we make progress it makes me want to work as fast as we can to get as many things here done so we can attempt to get some of the other holy grails going. There’s never enough time!

Working with a great team really helps a lot; I’m hoping we can all be in the same physical place a little more often in the future, expanding the size of the office and what we’re able to do. It would be nice to have lunch with the whole team sometimes!

As I was reviewing the work from this week and late last week, I really have to smile. These last 21 years working on these DVDs, and especially the last 11 working on Blu-rays, have been wonderful, and I hope to have many more years working on many more. Right now, the additional opportunities related to Thunderbean are exciting, and while I always wish everything would more *just a little faster*, I’m grateful all these things have worked the way they have. This community here plays a giant role in not only the appreciation of classic animation, but in having a big hand in supporting these small but mighty efforts.

I’ll be keeping everyone updated as these things are moving forward – and can’t wait to get some of these things in the can soon…

Ok, Ok, now on to the cartoon:

You know, I think the Columbia “Phantasy” cartoon series may very well be the most outright bizarre cartoons of the early 40s. The writing on some of them seems more like a radio show than a cartoon, and it even seems like the animation team is struggling to come up with interesting visuals to go with the nearly nonstop dialouge. The Fly in the Ointment (1943) is a prime example of these, and is as much of a potboiler as any cartoon ever, I think.

The film starts out with a typical dutched shot of a castle tower As we pull in and bats fly by, two bats (who have to be a caricature of someone) lament the opening, saying “Do all spook pictures have to start out this way?!?!”. Honestly, that may be the best gag in the whole film.

The rest of the footage features a spider arguing with a fly about being his dinner. That is literally all that happens. At the end of the film, those two same bats lament how every spook show ends the same way, too.

This cartoon is from the little period where Dave Fleischer was supervising production. Paul Sommer directs, with Dun Roman writing (the same writer who is responsible for almost all the super dialogue heavy Phantasy cartoons). As a fan of classic animation, it’s always fun to see some animation you haven’t seen.

Have a good week everyone!