Popeye the Sailor, Volume 3

The usual Warner Home Video disclaimer
for their vintage cartoon box sets warns viewers about racial and
sexual stereotypes that might be found in yesteryear’s short subjects.
That’s evident regarding two uncut offerings, You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap and Scrap the Japs,
which 60-odd years later still rate as jingoistic jaw-droppers,
although both propagandistic cartoons must have roused the hearts and
minds of World War II-era audiences. (These cartoons were routinely
yanked from circulation in TV syndication packages, and they rarely
turned up for broadcast when then-WSYR-Channel 3 had the Popeyes in the
early 1960s.) 

Still, the wartime cartoons boast tremendous visual energy and rip-roaring big-band swingin’ musical scores. Kickin’ the Conga Round
has Popeye and Bluto battling a Latino Olive Oyl, all to a sassy Cuban
beat with plenty of overt booty-shakin’ (“May I butt in?” asks punster
Popeye). Alona on the Sarong Seas, a parody of Dorothy Lamour’s
island princess movies, offers the priceless moment when a
nutmeg-complexioned Olive warbles the Sinatra song “Too Romantic.” The
art of animation is cleverly spoofed in Cartoons Ain’t Human, while Happy Birthdaze
introduces the short-lived bespectacled sidekick Shorty, an Arnold
Stang type who rivals MGM’s Screwy Squirrel in terms of go-for-broke
obnoxiousness. And since the Paramount logos have again been restored
for this edition’s batch, those pesky title cards from the syndicated
TV prints issued by Associated Artists Productions in the 1950s are
long gone, which means the punch line to The Hungry Goat can now be fully savored.

The source material betrays some
imperfections here and there, and the grays seem smudgy when compared
to the crisp black-and-white representations on the previous volumes.
Maybe these cartoons always looked this way, however, as possible
casualties of war that were speedily cranked out to feed a nation
hungry for entertainment. There are also audio commentaries that
accompany seven cartoons; in the worst track, Ren and Stimpy director John Kricfalusi and other cohorts sniff at the accomplishments of Me Musical Nephews,
a sassy, well-choreographed blast in which Pupeye, Pipeye, Peepeye and
Poopeye use makeshift instruments to prevent Popeye from getting some
shuteye. In the best tracks, animator Mark Kausler and director Bob
Jacques sing the praises of cultish head animator Jim Tyer in two
insane outings, Seein’ Red, White ’n’ Blue and Too Weak to Work.

The aforementioned running time does not
include the extras spread across both DVDs. There’s a seven-minute
salute to head animator Myron Waldman, noted for his
“personality-driven” touches; the eight-minute “Mighty Ensign” supplies
a clips-filled overview of Popeye’s Navy career in the Pacific Theater;
a four-minute vignette is devoted to the hazy history of Popeye’s
mischief-making nephews and their shared gene pool; 19 minutes of the
Fleischers’ pioneering Out of the Inkwell silent shorts showcase the brothers’ gifts for imagination in three 1920s-era cartoons; the 11-minute 1929 Finding His Voice
cartoon that the Fleischers produced for Western Electric demonstrates
the process of talking pictures (this short also appears on Warner Home
Video’s box set for The Jazz Singer); and the 28-minute
“Forging the Frame: The Roots of Animation, 1921-1930” concentrates
mostly on the Fleischers and Felix the Cat’s animator Otto Messmer,
with brief mentions of other ’toon titans such as Walter Lantz and Walt
Disney. With the forbidden fruit of long-censored cartoons as consumer
catnip, Popeye the Sailor, Vol. 3: 1941-1943 might be one of the yuletide’s most popular stocking stuffers.