I have an unruly collection of films and TV shows based on comics so I thought I’d do an occasional review. (I haven’t done reviews since college, but I still have opinions. Just ask anyone I’ve gone to the movies with in the last 20 years.) And rather than review modern movies (in other words: ones you might have seen), I figured I just do semi-obscure ones. (That way it’ll be harder for anyone to disagree with me.) This first one is not from my collection but from the library.
Last weekend the wife and I threw in a DVD of a Marx Brothers movie and, in the special features, there were three cartoons. The first one was based on the comic strip “The Captain and the Kids.” It was called Old Smokey (1938) and concerned the John Henry-ish battle between a old fire horse and a new fire engine when flames engulf Mama’s house. (The Captain appears to be the fire chief.) It wasn’t that good. And, oddly enough, “the kids” don’t show up at all. They did show up in the second cartoon, Mama’s New Hat (1939). Hans and Fritz buy Mama a hat for Mother’s Day, ruin it by dropping it in the mud, steal a horse’s hat (that’s right – the hat of a horse) and said horse spends the rest of the cartoon trying to get it back. There are some good gags in this one, but I started to wonder who in the MGM animation studio had the obsession with horses. I thought it was all just in my head but then I got to the third (non-“C & the K”) cartoon and…IT WAS ALL ABOUT HORSES!
That’s when it dawned on me.
The DVD was “A Day at the Races” and, thus, about horses.
Tags: cartoons, comics, entertainment, humor, Movies
Kovaleski (the blog of a cartoonist named John) 
May 19, 2009 at 8:19 am
Your blog entry came up while I was searching for any information about The Captain and The Kids animations. I’m still looking for them to be released on DVD but – somewhere! – I have one episode called ‘Blue Monday’ on a VHS tape.
May 19, 2009 at 8:50 am
As I said, I found these on a DVD of the Marx Brothers’ Day at the Races. There might be others on other film DVDs – I’m afraid I don’t know more than that.