Chess-Nuts (1932)

"♫Hel-lo, King-y! Mm-mm, King-y! Oh-oh, king-y! Hel-lo, King-y!♫" -Betty Boop

Conflict is a-brewin' in chessboard land. The black queen Betty Boop is being controlled and forced against her will to be courted by that lecherous-old-man (Old King Cole) antagonist again, who's got fire in his eyes for the Boop. Who is tasked with the daunting but rewarding duty of saving her? Bimbo the dog (the white king, I mean) of course! ♫B-I-M-B-O; ♫B-I-M-B-O, ♫B-I-M-B-O! ♫Bimbo is his name♫. And Koko the Clown is along for the ride, too.  

A live action/animated segment as well as a stop motion animation part with dueling chess pieces start things off. I do dig the whole chess-world theme, which I thought was mildly reminiscent of Through the Looking Glass (1871). Bimbo and Koko are fighting with Old King Cole in order to free Queen Betty from the tower, where Betty dances and sings in the window as a kind of cheerleader when the fight evolves from Chess to Bowling and then to Football. The segment when Bimbo runs for a touchdown with a lit-fuse-bomb in place of a football is funny and sort of exciting.

Chess Nuts, though perhaps lacking a little in the memorable music bits, embodies the best of Pre-Code Betty Boop cartoon shorts with humorous takes on mature themes that are admittedly in poor taste at times, but that is part of what makes this so peculiar. Plus the pacing is nice, with something comedic happening nearly every few seconds, and the brief 3D animation segments are a marvel even today. As usual, and understandable for a cartoon a little over six minutes long, things wrap up too quickly and too nicely, but Chess Nuts is still a grande little time in a surreal chess dreamland and a personal favorite Betty Boop cartoon of mine.

The Dancing Fool (1932)

"♫C'mon, baby, don't hesitate! C'mon, baby, cooperate! Gee, you're swell-o, hello, hello baby!♫" -Betty Boop

Nothing really seems to stand out to me in this cartoon that much, aside from when Betty shows up a little later to do her song and dance thing. I feel a bit remiss dismissing the rest of the episode so outright, but the cartoon just doesn't seem all that inspired until Batty takes over shortly before the four-minute mark, which is too long to wait for Betty, considering the cartoon is a little over seven minutes long.

Still, it is cool to see Betty, Bimbo, and Koko together, and more regularly at this point (I believe their previous adventure was Swim or Sink with the next one being Chess Nuts); that trio is Pre-Code legend. They are all good friends, but Bimbo and Koko sometimes compete for Betty's attention. Betty, Bimbo, and Koko's dancing at the end of the cartoon together literally brings down the house, er, I mean, brings down the building. Betty's dance school is high atop a skyscraper and is filled with none other than the ever lovable cartoon animals that populate Betty's world.

So, yes, Betty saves this one from being forgettable, as Bimbo and Koko's comedy routine at the beginning together just wasn't quite on the mark, but the magic happens when Betty joins and all three are together.

See you next time for Chess Nuts.

Crazy-Town (1932)

"♫Foolish facts, foolish facts, foolish things, and silly acts. But we have nothing else to do, so let's go crazy.♫" -Betty Boop

In this Talkartoon, Crazy-Town, Betty and Bimbo take an incidental trip to the bizarro world, where everything is pretty much backwards, giving the animators ample opportunity to explore a large number of gags where things occur opposite of how you'd expect. Even Betty and Bimbo's presence here seems a bit incidental.

I got to admit to being pretty ho-hum about this one, that is until the quick but morbid scene in the beauty parlor, where instead of having their hair styled by a qualified cosmetologist, women can just come into the parlor and decapitate themselves of their old heads (and toss it in the trash!?) and put on a completely new, beautifully made-over head, just like Princess Mombi from Return to Oz (1985), or rather Princess Langwidere from the book Ozma of Oz (1907) by L. Frank Baum, of which the film Return to Oz was partially based on. Like Dorothy, Betty even refuses to give up her head when a customer takes a fancy to her, resulting in Betty making a brief run for her life. At the end of the adventure, Bimbo gets a couple nice wet kisses from Betty.

Betty's chipper singing (by Mae Questel) heard over the credits at the beginning is just too cute, particularly when she screams "crazy town!". As is usual, there are a few high quality song and dance numbers, with Betty performing a lovely rotoscoped dance (while singing Foolish Facts) with Bimbo on Piano in front of several enthusiastic Crazy Town denizens, towards the end.

The meowing rhino-hippo thing was kind of funny, but aside from the morbid beauty parlor, the bizarro (opposite world) gags just kind of passed by without much response from me. Crazy-Town is still a pretty weird episode that I just recently saw for the first time. It's got its moments that make it worth the near seven minutes of your time to watch it.   

I was playing around with the Betty Boop Snap and Share app on my phone, and I decided to edit a picture I took that commemorated my finally finishing the original Metroid on the NES Classic. Hooray! Unfinished childhood business complete!..
A meeting between Samus and Betty Boop? Now that's a universe crossover worthy of Crazy Town.