Just Spooks

The list of people who worked on this cartoon — Walter Lantz, Clyde Geronimi, Seamus Culhane and David Hand — is astonishing, but in this period, Bray was coming off a lock on American animation — the Bray-Hurd patents made cel animation possible. Within a short time, Bray would move out of animation and make his real money from licensing those patents.Unfortunately, this mixed live action/animation piece is a rather disjointed work with the animated portions of it drawn too simply to be of much interest. Walter Lantz paints an invisible picture; he sleeps and is tormented by a mosquito; and he is tormented by a ghost. At a total length of six minutes, that’s not enough to allow any interesting development. Most of the humor comes from the interaction between Lantz and the cartoon characters, with a little left over for early rubber-hose animation gags.Still, given the talent involved, it is interesting for historical purposes and for a survey of what was considered decent in 1925. People interested in the history of animation will be glad to see it. I can’t say as much for people who just enjoy good cartoons.