020 The Mummy Strikes

Title: The Mummy Strikes
Studio: Famous
Date: 02/19/43
Credits:
Direction:
I. Sparber
Animation:
Ron Waldman Graham Place
Story:
Jay Morton
Musical Arrangement:
Sammy Timberg
Series: Superman
Running time (of viewed version): 7:38
Commercial DVD Availability: Image Superman, official DVD, etc.

Synopsis: Clark and Lois do not keep the wrongly convicted from prison, just report when someone else does all the work, except for fighting the zombies.















Comments: Two Famous cartoons on one day. Great Mars Attacks worthy title card. Hypodermic needle; Fredric Wertham would be (and probably was) outraged. Silhouette shot. Johnny Exposition. Somehow, the miracle elixir didn't raise the mummies from the dead. Oh, wait, it totally did. Black Africans who aren't savages (just living mummies, and not stereotypically represented; well, not for cartoons; they may ufortunately count as bucks; at least it's a change from limited blackface depictions). "My mummy done told me" is a riff on the opening line of Blues in the Night ("My momma done tol' me"). They really got around having to animate much in this short. Still visually stunning for the backgrounds tho. 35 seconds panning across one background, with only a few seconds of minimal character animation over it at the end. Sadly it's a flat Egyptian style painting, not a lush depiction of statuary. Hard to believe this is the same studio that made Seein' Red, White 'n' Blue. I had to choose some random image of Superman, as he's almost not in the short, and none of the images are really worthwhile.

By the same reasoning I put the George Pal shorts in this blog (they're cartoons), I should exclude the Superman shorts (they're not cartoons, they're action animation). But I'm putting them here anyway. I'll get around to justifying that later. Or I'll just let it stand there.

Edit: Stats that showed up on eBay: