031 G-Man Jitters

Title: G-Man Jitters
Studio: Terrytoons
Date: 3/10/39
Credits: None listed on print
Series: Gandy Goose (?)
Running time (of viewed version): 5:22

Synopsis: Gandy smokes his father's pipe and hallucinates that he is investigating a house full of ghosts, a vampire and a Frankenstein's monster; he saves them from, and then resubjects them to, a mouse; when he comes to, he has a book broken over his head for smoking.


















Comments: Ironically, Sherlock Holmes, who Gandy bases himself on, was not a government man at all, but a private type of investigator. Gandy ends up popping out the Frankenstein's monster's heart out of its torso, so I suppose he would have gotten the chair if he hadn't been hallucinating all of it. Speaking of which, a pipe full of tobacco seems unlikely to make you fall asleep and dream, or have waking hallucinations, so what exactly was in that thing? In 1939, cartoons taught the value of juveniles shooting guns and smoking pipes. This cartoon is full of ugly characters, but it is trying to do lots of different funny visuals. The print makes the ghosts more invisible than I think they were supposed to be. There's an interesting shot where they remove a painted background floor exposing a several story drop painted background behind it. Not a bad cartoon, but very ugly.