'Polar Pals' may leave you a bit cold

Polar Pals (1931)
Starring: Anonymous singers and voice actors
Directors: John Foster and George Rufle
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Tom and Jerry are shipwrecked and wash up on the frozen shores of a land inhabited by music-loving animals, such as walruses, penguins, and bears

"Polar Pals" is at the middle-to-low end of the quality scale of the episodes in the Tom & Jerry series. There is no plot to speak of, the gags are simple (simplistic even), and nothing makes any sense, even within a world where animals are fully sentient and they just happen to have pianos around for if humans get shipwrecked who are able to play them. And then there's the way the film deals with the environment: Characters are swimming in the frigid polar waters, but don't get cold until they notice they are in a polar environment. It makes no sense.

Even more damning is the indifferent quality of the animation. Simple or non-existent backgrounds are common in "Tom & Jerry" cartoons, but the character animation here is as sloppy as anything I've seen in any entries in this series. It's so bad that a walrus's tusks disappear, reappear, and disappear again, because they reuse cells where the animators couldn't be bothered to draw the tusks and no one would be bothered to fix the error. (I thought initially that perhaps I was missing a joke, but I watched that bit three times, and I am convinced it was just a sloppy error that no cared to spend the time or money to fix.)

I think the nature of this, the second "Tom & Jerry" cartoon, is also the first sign that the Van Beuren team didn't have a clear idea of who the target audience was for this series. The level of humor and story-telling in this cartoon seems squarely aimed at young children, while the opening installment felt more like something for older kids or young teenagers. Other entries in the series feel like they are for older teens, or, perhaps still for a young audience with some multi-layered jokes thrown in to keep adults entertained as well, like "Doughnuts". Finally, a few, such as "Spanish Twist" and "Piano Tooners" feel like they were going for the same adult audience that the Fleischer Studio was trying to appeal to with the "Betty Boop" cartoons. 

Ultimately, the highlight of "Polar Pals" is the musical number that forms its climax. The animation is nothing to cheer about, but the music is upbeat and the animal dance party it brings about it cute. As with many of the "Tom and Jerry" episodes, the music is the primary reason for watching. No matter how weak everything else may be, generally the songs are enough of a reward for the time spent watching the screen. Also, for all my complaining above about the mostly non-existent and completely nonsensical plot, I did appreciate the fact that this film actually gives a solid ending. (It's even sort of amusing.)

But why don't you check out "Polar Pals" for yourself and see if you agree with my take on it. It's only seven minutes long, and who knows? My estimation may be completely offbase, and you may find this to be the greatest cartoon you've ever seen. If that's the case, be sure to tell me below, or on my Facebook page.

Saturday Serial: Jenna of the Jungle

Continuing Don Hudson's "Jenna of the Jungle" (and including a random bonus jungle girl afterwards). Click on any panel for a larger version, and come back next Saturday for Part Six.


JENNA OF THE JUNGLE: PART FIVE
By Don Hudson

To Be Continued...

Girls of the Jungle

By Mitch Foust

Happy birthday to Alana De La Garza

Actress Alana De La Garza, best known for her roles on Dick Wolf-created television series "Law & Order" and "FBI", turns 44 years old today, June 18. Here's a small gallery of photos of her in celebration!

Wonder Woman Wednesday!

Wonder Woman is ready to spring into action at any moment! And here's a gallery of art to prove it. (And we're going to present another collection of portraits of everyone's favorite Amazon every other Wednesday, as we count down the weeks to the release of "Wonder Woman '84" in October!)

By Cliff Chiang

By Phil Jimenez

By Jose Luis Garcia Lopez

'The Ghastly Ones': Fun early reader spoofs

The Ghastly Ones & Other Fiendish Frolics (1995, Manic D Press)

Writing & Art: Richard Sala

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Richard Sala spoofs children's picture books in an anthology collecting four horror-themed short items. (Three are narratives constructed using verse and drawings while the fourth one is a series of couplets paired with portraits of murderers and monsters.)

"The Ghastly Ones & Other Fiendish Frolics" was written and illustrated by Sala during a period when he reportedly had grown frustrated with working in comics. It stands a unique entry in his body of work, and shows off his playful side more strongly than his other efforts. It's also a quick read; each page of text has at most a couple of paragraphs, and they are generally followed by a full page illustration.

The book leads off with "The Ghastly Ones", in which a creepy fan of serial killers goes to interview an arrogant detective who hunts them and other monsters. The verses describe 20 serial killers, their preferred victims and sometimes their methods, as well as their fate. An illustration of the killers posing with victims, or otherwise showing their evil natures, is included with each. One of the killers is still on the loose, and he appears at the very end of the narrative to bring it to a grimly amusing, entirely fitting close.

The second included tale, "The Morbid Musings of Malcolm deMulch", is the briefest of them, consisting of just six pages. It feels very much like a dark Dr. Seuss book, or something from Edward Gorey, with each page containing a drawing and a rhyme with Malcolm wondering about how and when he will die. It was originally intended for an anthology where it was to have been a single page comic story. Sala reworked it slightly and turned each panel into an individual page for the inclusion in this volume. (You can see the original version of the story at the bottom of this post. Click on it to enlarge it.) 

Next up is "The Skulkers". Like "The Ghastly Ones", it's a catalogue of murderers and monsters, but it has no narrative framework. Instead, readers are treated to literal portraits of 10 killers, with each subject  revealing a little bit about him- or herself in a couplet. Like the other sections in the book, it's equal parts cute, amusing, and disturbing. On the downside, Richard Sala engages in his love of drawing grotesquely misshapen noses; this is admittedly a personal issue, but it's my least favorite aspect of his art and he provides a concentrated dose of it here.

Closing out the book is "Beware! Beware!", another perfect spoof of an early reader book. In it, an elderly woman is warning a child about all the homicidal maniacs that are lurking outside the safety of their home. The illustrations and the rhythm and repetitiveness of the writing captures the feel of an early reader book designed to both amuse and educate... but it's bizarre and twisted throughout. It also has an excellent, evil-chuckle-worthy ending, so it makes it the perfect capper for this unusual book.

If you enjoy darkly humorous works and fine illustrations, I think you'll get a kick out of "The Ghastly Ones"... and I think you'll be even more amused if you've ever read books aloud to little kids while they followed along.

The Original Morbid Musings of Malcolm deMulch

Musical Monday with whenyoung

Whenyoung is an Irish band from Limerick who has been taking the indie music scene by storm. They released their first full-length album in 2019, and "A Labour of Love" is one of the songs included on it. The clever video for it feels like it might be a 1970s or early 1980s crime drama, but it's really about something entirely different. Check it out below, and get your week off to a good start with some great music!

It's Flag Day

Susan Morrow is flying the U.S. flag as high in the sky as she can for us today!

Saturday Serial: Jenna of the Jungle

Continuing Don Hudson's "Jenna of the Jungle" (and including a random bonus jungle girl afterwards). Click on the individual panels for larger versions, and come back next Saturday for Part Five.



JENNA OF THE JUNGLE: PART FOUR
By Don Hudson

To Be Continued...

Girls of the Jungle

By Ed Tadem

Firearms Friday with Denise Coward

Born in 1955, Denise Coward is an Australian beauty queen (Miss Australia 1978) turned actress. She had a brief television and film career during the mid-1980s, with a recurring role on the mystery-based soap opera "The Edge of Night" during its closing years in 1983; and starring roles in B-movies "Sudden Death" (1985) and "Battle for the Lost Planet" (1986).

Coward retired from show-business and married actor/producer John James in 1989.

'Somewhere in Turkey' is dated but fun

Somewhere in Turkey (1918)
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels, William Blaisdell, and Harry Pollard
Director: Alf Goulding
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

An explorer (Lloyd) and a beautiful castaway (Daniels) fall in love while imprisoned by an idol-worshipping sultan (Blaisdell).

"Somewhere in Turkey" may be one of those films that the passage of time has left behind... or maybe it's just not that good and even audiences in 1918 might have felt a little disappointed. While it's probably both, I think it's more of the latter than the former.

First, while the film has many strong slapstick moments (several involving literal slapping), most of the comedic routines are stretched to the point they stop being funny and start being repetitive; this is not a good thing for any film, but it's Very Bad when we're talking about something with a running-time of 10 minutes. Second, the story is sloppily constructed with Harry Pollard's character just vanishing about 2/3rds of the way through... and Lloyd's character doesn't seem to give him a second thought as he rides off with his new lady-friend. It's actually unusual for these comedies to leave such a huge element unresolved. (Of course, since the version I viewed--which is embedded below--is 10 minutes in length, and various sources report that it's 12 minutes long, so maybe Pollard's fate is explained in that missing footage.)

As for the film being left behind by the passage of time, I think there are some things that modern viewers will find distracting that might not have bothered audiences a century ago. For example, there's an executioner in the sultan's palace that appears in straight-up minstrel show black face instead of a black actor playing the part--something which probably shouldn't have been so far-fetched an idea, since less than two years later, black characters were being played by in films headlined by Buster Keaton, such as "Convict 13".

I have some further nitpicks about the costuming choices for this film. The characters look more Arab or Tunisian than Turkish, but that's all those are... nitpicks, and I probably wouldn't even have thought about it if not for a far bigger problem in the film:

It's a major plot point that the Sultan's court are idol-worshippers, in spite of the setting being northern Turkey and the Sultan ruling over Muslim. Even for a goofy comedy, this really stretched my disbelief, even allowing for Turkey being more "secular" in those days. Maybe audiences of 1918 didn't have the same level of cultural insights we have today--or maybe it's me that's over-educated in this matter--but more so than anything that bothered me about this film. (It's possible that the Sultan and his inner circle are secret idol-worshippers, as this is something that's hinted at in the manner Lloyd' and Pollard's characters end up in the mortal danger, but it seems more likely to me that this is just another artifact of indifferent writing. These problems could have been avoided if the film's setting had been a fictitious nation, It's a problem that could have been avoided if the location had been an imaginary one, such as in "His Royal Slyness", a 1919 film also starring Lloyd. That said, it's entirely possible that the film originally was set in a fictitious country, but was "relocated" due to Turkey being an enemy of U.S. and allies in World War I.)

For all the negativity I've just heaped on "Somewhere in Turkey", I have to say that Lloyd and Daniels are excellent together as always (once they finally get to share the screen). In fact, Daniels is front and center in all the best scenes in the film, from her melodramatic posturing when captured at the beginning of the film; to her confrontation with the Sultan; and her imprisonment and escape with Lloyd's character at the end, the scenes are all cute, funny, and to the point. In fact, I think that Daniels' presence, more than anything else, makes this film worth your taking a few minutes to check out. (And you can do so right now, since it's embedded below.)