Walt Disney gets credit for a whole lot of things - some of which he even did! - but he rarely gets enough credit for his voice performance as Mickey. Not to be outdone in the surreal horror department, the Doctor himself cuts Pluto’s shadow in half. The skeletons have a grand old time fucking up Mickey’s shit, most horrifyingly when one of them engulfs the mouse in its ribcage then falls limp and dead, leaving him trapped. But hey, with animation this impressive, you may as well get your money’s worth. That’s true of the exterior - a Gothic castle on a wave-lashed, skull-shaped rock, like the one King Kong inhabited the same year or Disney would adapt from Peter Pan decades later - and the skeleton-packed interior.ĭisney does cut a few corners - the scene of Mickey creeping through the castle hall and getting spooked by a ceiling slab falling behind him is copied, soundtrack and all, from their 1931 Silly Symphony Egyptian Melodies. Years later, Gottfredson would introduce an even more durable villain named the Phantom Blot, who looks suspiciously like the Mad Doctor in the all-covering, inky-black cloak he wears to abduct Pluto.īut the real star here is the Mad Doctor’s castle, realized in shadowy ink washes as effective as the greatest live-action horror films of the era. No wonder this cartoon was such an inspiration to the Mickey Mouse comic strip, drawn at the time by the great Floyd Gottfredson, who ran with the “Doctor XXX” nameplate on the lab’s door and created three mad-scientist monkeys for his tie-in storyline: Doctors Ecks, Double Ecks, and Triple Ecks, who’ve remained a part of the comics cast to this day. As for the facial design, it’s most unsettling in one scene where he begins cackling and advancing on the audience with a butcher knife until his face fills the screen. He’s more likely to crouch so severely his head is level with waist than stand up straight. He doesn’t just bend like a hose, he undulates like a sea-dwelling invertebrate. Most animated characters were virtually boneless until Disney started sending his animators to art school during this period, but the mad doctor takes the “rubber hose” style of animation to its limits. The titular doctor is a brilliant creation, playing up the unsettling effect of the enormous eyes and ragdoll movements that were cartoon SOP at the time for all they’re worth. And there are few better examples than The Mad Doctor, which, if not Snow White’s equal, is darned close. Better to say Flesicher was the neighborhood combo in a seedy bar Disney was big band swing for the black-tie set.īut, as anyone who’s been forever haunted by Dumbo’s pink elephants or Pinocchio’s donkey-based body horror, or even Disney’s own version of Snow White, can tell you, the studio was more than capable of the nightmare surrealism of the ’33 Snow White. You could call Disney the classical to the Flesischers’ jazz, and that’s certainly reflected in their respective soundtracks, but it also overstates the point. Originally published on The Solute as part of Year of the Monthĭisney shorts were, for the most part, better crafted but safer and staider than the Fleischers’.
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