Laserdiscs
as a study guide for animation buffs. Twenty-five chapter marks are provided, and the side breaks are more unintrusive than usual for a CAV release. Also included is a 2m 24s theat­ rical trailer, presented in full­ screen; it may look fine at a glance, but compare individual shots to their presentation in the feature itself, and you’ll see what a truly amazing job THX performed in sweetening this film for disc. The stereo surround mix is
equally enchanting, not merely natural but supernatural in its heightened delivery. The sense of magic does not stop when you close your eyes.
CARTOONS THAT TIME FORGOT: THE UB IWERKS COLLECTION
Image Entertainment #!D2552DS, D, $124.98, 426m
CARTOONS THAT TIME FORGOT: FROM THE VAN BEUREN STUDIO
Image Entertainment #!D2553DS, D, $49.98, 155m
Readers attracted to our re­
view of Kino on Video’s CAR­ TOONS THAT TIME FORGOT series [VW 19:20-23] will be inter­ ested to know that Image Enter­ tainment, in association with the Blackhawk Films Collection, has now issued the entire seven-tape extravaganza—plus some—on laserdisc. Purchased together, these handsomely packaged digi­ tal presentations cost about $40 less than a complete set of Kino’s $29.95 tapes, and they sweeten the deal by including a half- dozen cartoons not included on Kino’s DOWN AND OUT WITH FLIP THE FROG compilation
61
and two left out of ALL-SING­ ING! ALL-DANCING! The additional Flip toons are
fairly inventive, and would appear to have been passed over by Kino due to uneven print quality, and the fact that Flip already had one entire tape to himself and had been featured in another (THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT s “The Cuckoo Murder Case”). The humor in these animated shorts is also exceedingly arcane and quirky. In “Laughing Gas,” Flip operates a dental clinic and services a reticent patient, from whose mouth he extracts, among other things, a skunk and a min­ iature automobile that shakes it­ self dry and drives away. Flip is a smiling hot dog salesman in “Cir­cus,” instructing living, barking frankfurters to “Roll over” in mus­ tard and “Play dead” on a bun. This cartoon includes a blunt splice, censoring a gag in which
a pickpocket (apparently) gooses a spinster while snatching her purse; in the final moments of this cartoon, the lady catches up with the thief—intent not on retrieving her purse, but on mak­ ing love! “Stormy Seas” finds Flip swabbing the decks, while spitting out humanoid blobs of tobacco juice that dance jigs at his side. It contains a memora­ bly delirious storm sequence, presided over by a macabre, chortling King Neptune. Unfor­ tunately, the most ambitious of all the extras—the Egyptian fan­ tasia “Coo Coo the Magician” (one of Iwerks’ later, just-plain- “Flip” cartoons)—is in dreadful condition, oscillating between scratchy and bleached-out foot­ age that distracts one from the plot twists and obscures its imaginative background detail. The final bonus shorts, “School Days” and “The Goal Rush,”
A half-dozen Flip the Frog cartoons have been added to the laserdisc edition of CARTOONS THAT TIME FORGOT!
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