Tashlin indulges himself with various camera angles looking up at the settings to create a mood of suspense.
Tashlin and writer Tubby Millar apparently did their jobs too well. A theatre manager in Ligonier, Indiana complained to the Motion Picture Herald that “this story is all too scary for the subject of a cartoon which is primarily made for children.” Leon Schlesinger admitted in a newspaper interview that one of his cartoons had a villain that was too frightening and that would be toned down in future cartoons.
Sorry, theatre manager, but Billy Bletcher is wonderfully menacing as the lawyer-turned-monster and the artwork fits the horror scenario (with a comic ending). Ya big softie!
Volney White is the credited animator.
"The Case of the Stuttering Bishop," a Warner Bros. film adaptation of the Erle Stanley Gardner/Perry Mason mystery, came out four months before this cartoon was released, and was the likely source of the title.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's why in the 1968 colorized version they made the monster's outfit pink.
ReplyDelete