Betty & Crew has a cure for what ails YOU!

Betty Boop, M.D. (1932)
Starring: Mae Questal (voice of Betty Boop) and William Costello (voices of Bimbo and Ko-Ko)
Directors: Dave Fleischer and Willard Bosky

Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Bobo, Ko-ko, and Betty Boop are traveling snake-oil peddlers who use Betty's charms to seal their deals.

 
Nice music, weird plot, and even weirder cartoony results of the miracle tonic that Betty & Friends are hawking. All in all, another wildly creative and zany adventure from the Fleischer Studio. It's also one of those masterful bits of entertainment that needs to be experienced cold--I feel that any else I say about the plot and events of the film will ruin the experience.

Aside from the wild strangeness of this cartoon, I also love it because it lets me imagine Betty Boop's world a bit more clearly. There appears to be villages of humanoids like Bimbo in addition to the cities where humans like Betty live. (Heck, Betty's weird looks could be explained by her being a third kind of being... or maybe some sort of crossbreed? After all, when she was younger, she look a bit like a poodle... :) ) 

Musical Monday with Saro

Start your week off with something a little creepy from an artist I've just discovered. I THINK this a love song? Maybe it's about obsession? about drug use? Whatever it is, it's equal parts pretty and spooky and completely excellent. 

But the video... don't watch it with the lights off!

Please (2019)

Starring: Saro

Director: Alex Cook

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

It's Fanny Friday!

"Flapper Fanny Says" (later just "Flapper Fanny") was a daily single panel cartoon that rose and fell with the popularity of the pop culture popularity of the fun-loving, free-wheeling Flapper Girl. It ran in up to 500 newspapers across America from 1925 until 1940.

Gladys Parker was the second artist to draw the Flapper Fanny, taking over from Ethel Hays in 1930.

The Cave Clown is here, there, and everywhere!

The Disconnected Clown (aka "Mysterious Displacements") (1901)
Starring: Andre Deeds
Director: Georges Méliès

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A clown (Melies) joyously violates the laws of nature and reality in creepy ways.

This is another instance of stage-magician-turned-pioneering-filmmaker Georges Melies using special effects to bring magic tricks to the screen in a way that would be neigh impossible in a live performance. Generally, I favor his films that feature a bit more plot than this one, but the visual effects are so impressive in this one that I can't help but love it. (Plus, the rambunctious joy with which the clown performs his creepy show makes the film all the more fascinating and surreal.)

But don't just take my word for it. Click below and enjoy a couple minutes of pure weirdness and special effects that are pretty convincing even more than 120 years after this film was made.

March 1 is National Smile Day!

 Here are some random smiles in celebration, and to make this Picture Perfect Wednesday complete!

 

 

 
 
  
 
 

 

It's a Mohammed Monday!

THIS WEEK WITH JESUS & MO

Musical Monday with Fu-Schnickens

We try to mix a little education with the entertainment these parts. So, on this Musical Monday, we bring you a rap video from the early 1990s that answers a question you didn't even know you wanted answered: What is a True Fuschnick?

Click below, sit back, and prepare to be schooled!

Um... okay. Maybe we over-sold the educational value to that video... but it IS a very entertaining bit of rap from the early 1990s. (1992 to be exact, and the third single from what would prove to be their biggest album -- their debut album, "F.U.: Don't Take It Personal.")

You can read about the group's history at Wikipedia by clicking here. (Among the groundbreaking they can be credited with was defining a trail that the longer-lasting Wu-Tang Clan would soon follow.)

They don't make 'em like this anymore!

How to Get Killed in One Easy Lesson (1943)
Starring: Stephen McNally, Barry Nelson, and an Anonymous Narrator
Director: Anonymous
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A captured Japanese sniper explains how American soldiers make themselves easy targets.

I've had to sit through many, MANY training films and video presentations over the years... and very few have been as entertaining as "How to Get Killed in One Easy Lesson". Maybe if they were, I wouldn't feel like going to "training" was such a waste of time.

Take a few minutes out of your day to watch this WW2-era short film... maybe you, too, can learn how not to be seen! (I wonder if someone working on "Monte Python's Flying Circus" might have seen this film as a very young man? There are several similarities between it and some of the more famous sketches on the show.)

Fanny Friday

 

"Flapper Fanny Says" (later just "Flapper Fanny") ran as a single-panel daily cartoon from January 26, 1925 until June 29, 1940. The series was part of a wave of popular culture that focused on the flapper look and lifestyle, and it was created and initially drawn by Ethel Hays (1925-1930), then Gladys Parker (1930-1935), and finally Sylvia Sneldman (1935-1940).

Flapper Fanny will be appearing here at Shades of Gray, on every other Friday for the foreseeable future. We're kicking things off with the very first "Flapper Fanny Says" cartoon, although future weeks will bring a random selection of Hays' run on the strip (which was very Art Deco in style and consistently featured a flapper cartoon and a witticism), Parker (whose work on the series was more what in line with what is traditionally thought of as a comics strip format), and Sneldman (who combined elements of both her predecessors and increasingly drew upon an expanded cast of characters that had been introduced by Parker).

You can read a little more about the publishing history of Flapper Fanny here. 

Happy birthday, Emily Blunt!

Actress Emily Blunt turns 40 years old today. Here's a celebration in pictures!