When I was a child in the `80's, the first VHS tape that my family ever owned was one of those low-budget, EP mode-using, approximately 30-minutes-in-length hodgepodge of (bad prints of) vintage animated shorts that had fallen into the public domain, released by small VHS entrepreneurs and sold in department stores. Specifically, it was a
Popeye-exclusive tape, consisting of the two classic color Fleischer featurettes (17 minutes each), "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor" and "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves". Within the next year or two, I watched both countless. But in the two-plus decades since, whenever I revisit them, I appreciate them all the more. The animation is fluid (the Fleischer-invented technique of rotoscoping was surely used at times), the comic sensibilities and timing are delightful, and the three-dimensional miniature model sets used for select scenes are ingenuous. (I believe that the cels were shot between two upright glass panes placed at the appropriate point upon these sets, or something like that.)
Here's Popeye and the Forty Thieves' leader, "Abu Hassan" ("played" by Bluto), in a standoff:
(Note: This is
not one of the scenes using the miniature sets.)
I was delighted to find that IDW's
Popeye #6, released last week (and which, like every issue thus far, comes
highly recommended by this blog), pays visual tribute to "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves"! (But I won't spoil it, in a specific way!)
If you're at all a Popeye fan, buy this thing (and any other
IDW's
Popeye and
Popeye Classics that you can!)
-- Ryan
