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(More customer reviews)The Van Beuren studio made some very interesting cartoons during 1929-1936.
This collection includes several black-and-white Aesop's Fables cartoons, which, although unsuccessful at the time, they are real gems. The B/W cartoons are a combination of bizarre, surreal gags with basic animation. Some good cartoons in this category includes "In a Cartoon Studio", a spoof on the making of a cartoon, and "Candy Town", where two cats eats all the candy contained inside the moon, only to be chased by a bottle of castor oil and a spoon! Strange, but brilliant!
Also, the DVD includes the original Tom & Jerry (no, not the cat & mouse, but a tall, thin man and a short, fat guy). Although the characters themselves are bland, the cartoon themselves still shows off the odd sense of humour that is typical of the studio. One example is in the cartoon "Piano Tooners", where Tom plays a bad note on the piano, only for Jerry to "catch" the note, and then flushes it down an off-screen toilet! Another Tom & Jerry cartoon is "Wot a Night" (their first cartoon), which is a spooky but very weird cartoon.
However, the B/W cartoons were not successful, and so Van Beuren assigned Burt Gillett (who directed Walt Disney's "Three Little Pigs") to create a new colour cartoon series called "Rainbow Parade". Gillett tried to make these cartoons as good as his previous boss, but that's why these cartoons are generally not as good as they should be (although they are not terrible), because he tried to imitate Disney rather than innovate. Characters like Molly Moo Cow and Toonerville Trolley were not good choices, and neither was the return of Felix the Cat, as he was turned into a goody two-shoes kind of a character. Oddly enough, the Felix cartoons were some of the best efforts of the series. Perhaps the best cartoon was "The Sunshine Makers", where the happy elves tries to bring happiness to a bunch of gloomy elves by bombarding them with sunshine milk. The series ended in 1936 when the Van Beuren studios closed down, due to its distributors RKO switching to Walt Disney for their cartoons!
There are 21 cartoons in total, and all are of good picture and sound quality considering they are public domain cartoons. Most of the Rainbow Parade cartoons have their original titles restored, with only a few B/W cartoons retaining their original titles.
Overall, this is good collection of rare cartoons, and is still an essential purchase for classic animation lovers. Personally, they should have included a few more B/W cartoons, but I'm more than happy with this DVD!
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