First television showing : May 18, 2002

Synopsis

Mickey, Minnie and Mortimer are kidnapped while performing their vaudeville act by the mysterious Goatman.

Characters

Mickey Mouse

Minnie Mouse

Mortimer Mouse

The Goatman

Television

House of Mouse : "Dennis the Duck"

Comments

From Lee Suggs : Its wonderful to see Mickey, Minnie, and Mortimer drawn again in the classic style. Just like in the old days Mickey is down and out, reduced to performing as Mortimer's vaudeville show sidekick. He loses even this when Mortimer dumps him so he can give Minnie a ride. It seems like things can't get any worse when Mickey is captured by...the Goatman. This is a large and scary character who "keeps everything he likes". It turns out the Goatman has also captured Mortimer and Minnie. He takes everyone to his creepy wreck of a house. There he forces Mortimer and Mickey to do their act. (Fortunately Minnie whispers to Mickey to be REALLY bad.) When they finish the Goatman decides he only likes Mortimer, and so he tosses Mickey and Minnie into the street. Of course, this is exactly what Mickey and Minnie wanted and they hit the road to Hollywoodland.

The rest is history.

This wasn't the greatest of the MouseWorks shorts, but it sure was great to see Mickey and Minnie acting and looking like they did in the early 1930's. The animators even put fake scratches, on the film, so the cartoon would look old. Of course, the best part was the classic title card giving credit to Ub Iwerks!

From Juan F. Lara : I quickly noticed that characters talked a lot in this short. Lots of talking about making plans. But note that in the authentic black and white short shown before there was almost NO talking. The great gags in "The Whoopee Party" all came from the animation and the music, the same as in the best of Disney's black and white shorts. In "Goat Man" characters were standing and talking instead of doing gags, making for a very boring short.

The Goat Man seemed an underdevelopped character. He didn't have the sense of menace he'd need to make his collecting obsession be threatening. I think maybe because the animation wasn't lively enough to give him that charisma. So instead of being scared by the Goat Man I was wondering why he love collecting stuff. Honestly, that joke after the short where HoM guest Goat Man suddenly started eating his table was funnier than anything in this short.

DYN: The opener was made just like how black and white Disney shorts opened, with the credits fading until only the title remained. But I wish they didn't put in that "by Ub Iwerks" false credit. This short wasn't anything like the work Ub Iwerks would make.

DYN2: Mortimer and Mickey performed at the "Hyperion Vaudeville Show".

From John : It was okay. The goatman character was slightly enjoyable but one thing that really bugged me was that Mortimer starred in it. Mortimer was never in any black and white shorts or any other short for that matter, he was great as a one off character in mickey\'s rival but I find that he gets a bit tedious and am slightly dissapointed that they use him as a reoccuring charcter in HoM.

From Mouseworks Fan : Keen-eared viewers will notice that the not only picture is made to look scratchy, but the audio is also scratchy to simulate the narrow frequency response of the rather primitive film-sound recorders of the early 1930's. I loved that!

Cartoon Network also successfully attempted to combine scratchy video and scratchy audio on their B&W toon tribute episode of Billy and Mandy entitled "Hill Billy" (which BTW has an interesting homage/ripoff of 1929's "Skeleton Dance"). I understood how to make the cartoon look old (with plugins like CineLook ) but how do you make it SOUND old? It took me a while to figure out, but I after years of restoring old records onto CD, finally arrived at the concept of putting the recording's frequency spectrum out of balance on a graphic equalizer.

If you were to analyze the sound of any vintage cartoon with a spectrascope (a device that measures the volume levels for the individual frequency bands) you will notice the midtones are accellerated above the "normal" level, while (depending on the film's age) bass and trebel are almost nonexistent. Set your EQ sliders to simulate this and Viola! I use this often when viewing "mock B&W" shorts on my Animaniacs DVD's on my computer. In the early-to-mid 90's they didn't have the technology, and although there is no way to make the picture scratchy, I can at least set my EQ to make it sound vintage!

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