Popeye The Sailor Man 75th
Anniversary set (VCI/Fleischer)
Picture: C Sound: C Extras: C+ Animated shorts: B
PLEASE NOTE THAT WARNER
HAS REISSUED UPGRADED VERSIONS OF THIS MATERIAL, WHICH YOU CAN ACCESS FROM THE
LINK BELOW, BUT IS ONE OF THE MORE AMBITIOUS SETS BEFORE ALL WERE RESTORED.
The Elsie Segar comic
strip icon Popeye The Sailor Man has reached his 75th Anniversary
and it is a strange milestone for the character. The last time he was in the news is when a TV
commercial had him running away with Brutus/Bluto (interchangeable names for
the same character) and leaving Olive Oyl behind in a way that extremists
decided to interpret as homosexual! Some
people are simply idiotic, but that is how regressive too many have become, but
it turns out this is only the latest in a long and winding road of bad bumps
Popeye has run into.
Instead of a major
label/movie studio celebrating the character, two smaller companies have
stepped in to do DVD sets to celebrate, beginning with the better of the two,
the Fleischer cartoons made at Paramount Pictures and the by Paramount’s Famous
Studios division during the characters theatrical film reign from VCI.
The two disc set is split
between the classic Fleischer Productions and the later, lesser Famous Studio
shorts that were all in color, but marked a noticeable decline in the
characters and the artwork. The three
shorts on the first DVD are the only three the Fleischer’s made in three-strip
dye-transfer Technicolor and are the only shorts in the set that have
commentary tracks by animation historian Jerry Beck:
DISC ONE:
POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS
SINDBAD THE SAILOR
I’M IN THE ARMY NOW
LITTLER SWEE’ PEA
POPEYE THE SAILOR MAN
MEETS ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES
I NEVER CHANGES MY ALTITUDE
PAINLESS WINDOW WASHER
DATE TO SKATE
CUSTOMERS WANTED
ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL
LAMP
DISC TWO:
ME MUSICAL NEPHEWS
ANCIENT FISTORY
BIG BAD SINDBAD (repeats the color
classic from Disc One)
SHUTEYE POPEYE
FLOOR FLUSHER
BRIDE AND GLOOM
COOKIN’ WITH GAGS
FRIGHT TO THE FINISH
GOPHER SPINACH
GREEK MIRTHOLOGY
POPEYE’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY
(with movie star cameos)
PRIVATE EYE POPEYE
TAXI-TURVY
ASSULT AND FLATTERY (a cheat toon
recycling older shorts as Brutus sues Popeye)
A HAUL IN ONE
I DON’T SCARE
INSECT TO INJURY
NEARLYWEDS
OUT TO PUNCH
PARLEZ VOUS WOO
PATRIOTIC POPEYE
POPEYE FOR PRESIDENT
THE CRYSTAL BRAWL
SPOOKY SWABS
SPREE LUNCH
The comparison
of the two eras is striking. This set
offers 34 of the 234 shorts made for theaters alone. Bigger than Mickey Mouse or Porky Pig, Popeye
became the biggest cartoon character of the 1930s, all because the new
censorship-crazy production codes drove Betty Boop out of her peak. His gritty, down to earth approach and
attitude was highly reflective of the Depression-era and marks one of the most
honest of all the commercially successful cartoon short series. Max & Dave Fleischer and their band of
great writers and artists are the reason, as is the case with all great animation
that the personalities and quirks of the creators are on the screen in their
work. The extreme detail in the 1930s
shorts on DVD 1 is still remarkable and when you add the mix of models and
hand-drawn animation on their famed and patented stereo-visual turntable, you
are talking some of the most important animation ever made.
Sadly, all but
the three here were made in black and white, but those are also great classics
that recently gained a whole new audience saw brand new prints made for
broadcast on Cartoon Network. VCI did
their best to get the best materials for the shorts that are here. They found the best 35mm and 16mm materials
they could track down and it is not bad, though none of the new prints from
Cartoon Network made this set. As a
result, the full frame picture quality varies throughout both discs, almost
like watching a documentary at times.
The color on Disc One is more complex that the shorts on Disc Two, but
though the color may be clearer at times on the later shorts, hardly any of
these have the color variety and quality three-strip, dye-transfer Technicolor
can yield. With that said, the
monochrome shorts on Disc One often look pretty good.
The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono on all the shorts are as varied as the picture quality, but it
is not bad for its age for most of them.
The sound is obviously better on the three Beck commentaries, including
the voice actress who did Betty Boop on one of the Beck commentaries for VCI’s
remarkable Somewhere In Dreamland – Max
Fleischer’s Color Classics DVD set (reviewed elsewhere on this site in its
new edition at http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3184/Somewhere+In+Dreamland)
is even better here doing Olive Oyl.
Read about more great animation at Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research website
(www.cartoonresearch.com). Other extras include a taped poster gallery
on both DVDs, and a booklet inside the case penned by beck that should have had
an equivalent on the Somewhere In
Dreamland set but did not, discussing the character in general. It is a good set and fans who like the
character will definitely want to own it.
Be warned that the shorts on the second DVD actually cleanse the
character of his grit, make him the stereotypical spinach junkie that ruined
the point of him that made him appealing to begin with, as much taking sex away
from Betty Boop ruined her character.
The
conservative feel of the post-war years, after putting Popeye in a U.S. Sailor
suit to fight the original Axis powers (none of the “war years” shorts are
included here) found him being ethnically cleansed of his rough beginnings, as
if to make him more suitable of an upscale audience in an imagined America
where everything was fine and no one went without. Paramount just wanted competent corporate
product to have with their films to fill in where M-G-M, Disney and especially
Warner Bros. were doing far better. Very
little good came of these shorts and they were dead by the late 1950s. VCI’s Popeye
The Sailor Man – 75th Anniversary set has appeal beyond the
character, which is rare for his first three quarters of a century.
For more on Popeye, try
these links to our previous DVD coverage:
Popeye The Sailor 1933 -
1938
(Warner/Fleischer animated set)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5857/Popeye+The+Sailor:+1933-1938
Popeye: 75th
Anniversary Collector's Edition (1960
– 61/Koch)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1314/Popeye+1960-61+set+(Koch)
- Nicholas Sheffo
