Filmography: Happy Halloween!

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Today our volunteers are hard at work processing image scans for our database, but I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. Cartoons have been giving moviegoers "the willies" all the way back to Disney's Skeleton Dance. Just about every studio made great cartoons featuring ghosts, skeletons and witches. One of the rarest is the cartoon we are presenting today.


In 1932, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising made a pair of cartoons starring a character named "Piggy". These two cartoons are among the best of the early Warner Bros. titles, featuring jazzy soundtracks by Abe Lyman and Frank Marsales. The first was titled You Don't Know What You're Doing, and if you've ever seen it, you'll never forget the surreal, drunken motorcycle ride through city streets that forms the climax of the picture.


Piggy's second, and last starring outing was Hitting The Trail For Hallelujah Land. A sequence involving "Uncle Tom" being terrorized by skeletons in a graveyard has kept this cartoon off television for many years, but when it comes right down to it, there's nothing really offensive about this cartoon.


It is, however a masterful example of musical timing. Every scene swings to the beat, and the overall pacing of the film has a musical structure with a statement of theme, followed by variations, a scary bridge sequence and hot finish. (For more information on this technique, see our previous post on Musical Timing Rediscovered.)


Hitting The Trail For Hallelujah Land (Warner/1932)
(Quicktime 7 / 15.8 megs)

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Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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