Well, I can see where the trend is going here, now that I can capture video from the DVR. This is too easy to do!
There was a major Sci-Fi craze during the 1950’s, helped along by the UFO sightings that began after WW2. Another 50’s fad, a brief one, was 3-D movies. The 1953 cartoon “Popeye, The Ace of Space” was released in 3-D. Keep that in mind while watching the video.
This cartoon contains a couple scenes of “alien experimentation” that upset me greatly as a child, despite Popeye escaping unharmed (thanks to spinach, of course). Scanning through some of the later Popeye cartoons released by Paramount, recorded by my Verizon DVR, it seems that someone at the studio had a real sadistic streak that crossed the line from cartoon mayhem into something darker and more disturbing.
As mentioned previously, I was big into Popeye cartoons as a kid. This sentiment was based on the black and white cartoons produced by the Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave, and not the color cartoons done by Famous, after Paramount took over the studio. But I watched those too, and last night my FiOS TV DVR caught one that I haven’t seen in 40 years.
It’s “Peep in the Deep,” from 1946. Here are a couple of minutes from the cartoon. Watch and see how the cartoonists set up the gag and got away with what they did, still earning a “G” rating by today’s standards. I got a real cheap thrill out of this one as a kid.
Even as a little kid I was bugged by the logical lapses in underwater cartoons. For example the air hoses go nowhere (I knew about SCUBA gear from Sea Hunt), and Popeye blows smoke from his pipe, etc. As insightful son Eric once said about fantasy, “We accept the impossible and question the improbable!”
I only vaguely have an awareness of country music singer Toby Keith. About all I can recall is the feud he had with the Dixie Chicks — who turned out to be right, of course, about George Bush. Stephen Colbert had Toby Keith on his show tonight. If Keith isn’t putting on a front, this guy is a total moron. The song Keith sings is the usual sort of unoriginal, by-the-numbers crap that guys like him do. Hey, talent like that goes only so far, y’know? Steve Earle he ain’t, musically or politically.
