Saturday, March 26, 2005
99 Cent Review
Like the plague I have been avoiding the whole Mel-O-Toons series. But nothing new was on the racks this last Friday, I had a dollar seven burning a hole in my pocket, and I had just taught my last class for the semester and I was feeling like something cartoon to unwind with. So I took a second look.
Anybody that reads these pages knows that I am addicted to the DVD rack at my local 99 Cent Only Store. And you just might have heard that I think that Genius Entertainment does a good job most times in transferring to DVD.
I have been passing up their Adventure Tales Volume One because of the cover illustration. It is taken from Little Hawk Mel-O-Toon, the regurgitated, recondensed, 60`s kids record set to very limited crap animation with a narrator that has more action in his droning voice then ever appears on screen.
True there are 4 Mel-O-Toon cartoons (sic) on this disk and they are as bad as I remembered them. Worse if they break into song, which 2 of them do. Then there are 3 Famous Cartoons that are a step or 5 above them. I already have copies of all other these either on VHS or DVD. The real payoff is the opening and closing Cinecolor toons.
Adventure Tales Volume 1 opens with a great Fleischer cinecolor Ants in the Plants, a fun romp in the insect world with an anteater as the villain.
The DVD ends with a Van Beuren Molly Moo-Cow The Hunting Season. I like Molly, even if she is utterly deformed, she doesn`t have one. Here she becomes friends with 2 ducks and then takes on a hunter to save them from the dinner table.
Because of these two Cinecolor films and only because of them I am giving this disk a passing grade. It is worth the $1.07 and the wait in line behind 2 people. If there had be 3 people in line that would have been a different story.
2 Cinecolor Toons Makes this DVD Worth $1.07
Anybody that reads these pages knows that I am addicted to the DVD rack at my local 99 Cent Only Store. And you just might have heard that I think that Genius Entertainment does a good job most times in transferring to DVD.
I have been passing up their Adventure Tales Volume One because of the cover illustration. It is taken from Little Hawk Mel-O-Toon, the regurgitated, recondensed, 60`s kids record set to very limited crap animation with a narrator that has more action in his droning voice then ever appears on screen.
True there are 4 Mel-O-Toon cartoons (sic) on this disk and they are as bad as I remembered them. Worse if they break into song, which 2 of them do. Then there are 3 Famous Cartoons that are a step or 5 above them. I already have copies of all other these either on VHS or DVD. The real payoff is the opening and closing Cinecolor toons.
NOTE: Cinecolor, a 2 color process with a orange layer printed on one side of the film and a blue layer printed on the other side of the film, owes a lot to Walt Disney who gained exclusive rights for animation to the 3 color Technicolor process thus locking out other animation studios until his exclusive ran out in the mid 30`s
Adventure Tales Volume 1 opens with a great Fleischer cinecolor Ants in the Plants, a fun romp in the insect world with an anteater as the villain.
The DVD ends with a Van Beuren Molly Moo-Cow The Hunting Season. I like Molly, even if she is utterly deformed, she doesn`t have one. Here she becomes friends with 2 ducks and then takes on a hunter to save them from the dinner table.
Because of these two Cinecolor films and only because of them I am giving this disk a passing grade. It is worth the $1.07 and the wait in line behind 2 people. If there had be 3 people in line that would have been a different story.
2 Cinecolor Toons Makes this DVD Worth $1.07
- Ants in the Plants (Fleischer - Cinecolor - 1940)
- Much Ado About Mutton (Famous - 1949)
- Hector`s Hectic Life (Famous - 1948)
- A Mutt in a Rut (Famous - 1949)
- Little Hawk (Mel-O-Toon - 60`s)
- Paul Bunyan (Mel-O-Toon - 60`s)
- Robin Hood (Mel-O-Toon - 60`s)
- Tom Sawyer (Mel-O-Toon - 60`s)
- The Hunting Season (Van Beuren - Molly Moo-Cow - 1935)
