Friday, May 09, 2008

A. Flea - "An Itch In Time" and "A Horsefly Fleas"

Here's the two cartoons starring Bob Clampett's A. Flea, "An Itch In Time" and "A Horsefly Fleas". Clampett directed the far superior "An Itch In Time", while Bob McKimson directed "A Horsefly Fleas".




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4 comments:

CartoonSteve said...

Great post! Has, or could anyone do breakdowns of these? Looks like plenty of Scribner in Itch. It would be interesting to compare and see which scenes McKimson did. He was an awesome animator but definitely inferior to Clampett as a director. Was it the timing or funny drawings which made Itch so much better? or both?

5/10/2008 3:42 PM
Kevin W. Martinez said...

This is bizarre. A McKimson cartoon that's more-or-less a sequel to a CLampett cartoon, using the song, the flea, and a McKimson-unit version of the dog.

We've already seen Sahara Hare be unfavorably compared to buckaroo Bugs. Home Much longer till John does the inevitable comparison between these two?

5/11/2008 12:33 AM
Michael J. Ruocco said...

I haven't seen this cartoon since it was on CN years ago. Now I got that monotonous yet catchy song stuck in my head. Thanks!

This is actually the first time I've seen Horsefly, so to me it was pretty interesting to watch (although it's not as memorable as Itch). Itch has some of the funniest poses & expressions, especially with the dog. As an animator, Itch has a lot more eye candy than Horsefly, but they both stand on their own.

5/11/2008 10:10 PM
Nick said...

Up untill now, "A Horsefly Fleas" was one of the few Warner Bros cartoons from this period I had never seen.

One thing that struck me about it was that McKimson doesn't seem to be very enthusiastic about reprising a character from a cartoon he had worked on a few years before. Its quite flatly directed, most of the jokes being lifted from "An Itch In Time" and less emphasis on the reactions of the dog. The horsefly added nothing to the cartoon other than to give the rather personalitly less flea someone to talk to. The ending with the circus was pretty good, but this is undoubtly one of the weakest entries from the '40s.

Don't get me wrong, I love McKimson's cartoons, but he fared better with stronger characters rather than bland one shots like the flea.

5/12/2008 12:42 PM

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