Wednesday, March 4, 2015

A CARTOON TO DIE FOR

I freaked out. A 1938 Russian cartoon that begins with a li'l hunter shooting & bagging critters ends in a full-scale battle with Mickey Mouse glove-wearing, American propaganda-looking Japanese.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It probably should be noted that in both 1938 (Lake Khasan) and 1939 (Khalkhin Gol), there were serious clashes between Japanese forces in the Manchuria-Mongolia area and Red Army forces. In both cases, the Red Army (in spite of the ongoing purges) won.

In this light, it would be very interesting to know precisely when in 1938 this was released.

Mark Kausler said...

I wouldn't die for it, but I really enjoyed this cartoon of the Ruskis versus the Nipponese soldiers! The way the Nips moved reminded me of the Glooms in "The Sunshine Makers", they just needed gloom gas spray guns instead of rifles! An interesting combination of attemped realism (the Russian hunters and the boy and his dog) and extreme caricature, the Nipponese soldiers. Especially painful was the scene in which the log rolls over the Nip soldiers, crushing them into little pools of white and grey paint. Thanks so much for posting this, Milton. Is there a website devoted to early Soviet animation? I stayed around after the cartoon you posted to view another one from 1942 featuring a bad fox that takes over a little rabbit's birch tree cottage. He retakes his house from the fox with the help of a bear and a rooster. Do you know the name of this cartoon?

Milton Knight said...

Hi, Mark;

I'm only aware of one official Soyuzmultfilm site; how far they go past just the titles, I'm not sure.

I'm unfamiliar with the 'evil fox' cartoon you mention (there are probably hundreds of them). The best I can suggest is entering the text into Google translator for English.

More of these can be found by subscribing to the uploaders' YT pages.

Best,
Milt