Watching a very odd entry from Republic Pictures' low-budget Jerky Journeys series brings to mind the topic of very odd animated cartoons. We'll start with the most inexplicably odd but hilarious cartoon from Tex Avery's lengthy career, the Walter Lantz opus SH-HHHHH, supposedly based on a popular - and very odd - comedy recording (The Okeh Laughing Record).
Ted Eshbaugh's classic cartoons, especially his 1933 take on The Wizard Of Oz, are wonderful while invariably a bit odd.
Ted Eshbaugh's oddest cartoon may be his Cinecolor tale of a truly abominable snowman. The title character is not a nice guy!
Arguably both among the oddest but most beautiful animated cartoons is John Hubley's "Frankie & Johnny" sendup and ultra-stylish post-modernist musical Rooty Toot Toot.
Entirely on the other side of the artistic spectrum is this very odd one-shot Aesop's Fable from the Van Beuren studio, frequent producers of the oddest of the odd from early 1930's Cartoonland. It's primitive. weirdly imaginative and weirdly compelling; saw the audience at one of the Psychotronix Film Festivals give the 1933 cartoon, as well as Eshbaugh's The Wizard Of Oz, a rousing response.
The only cartoon to feature a caricature of Oscar Levant and also spoof the Information Please radio show, THE HERRING MURDER MYSTERY is another favorite. Dun Roman, later of Jay Ward Productions, directed this wonderfully odd musical one-shot with originality and panache.
Another very odd one-shot from the Columbia Color Rhapsodies series, THE DISILLUSIONED BLUEBIRD, is a calypso musical. The main character is a jerk - that may be why this cartoon is a one-shot - but the music carries the day.
Less musical but also clever and definitely odd is the film noir spoof Flora, just one of a slew of very odd cartoons written with perverse glee by wacky Screen Gems Studio storymen Cal Howard and Dave Monahan.
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