Skeleton Frolics (1937)

Truly Dreadful Film

Such a frustrating disappointment

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I really wanted to love this short, because it's by Ub Iwerks and it revisits one of his greatest projects from his first stint at Disney. It was enjoyable, but nothing special. There will be mild spoilers:This short is a poor man's Skeleton Dance. It is good, but has a few flaws which keep it from being anything more than an amusing variation on a theme, forever in the long shadow cast by its predecessor. The greatest of these flaws is the decision to do the short in color as opposed to black and white. Color robs this short of an atmosphere more appropriate for skeletons engaging in a frolic in and around a graveyard in the dead of night. The visuals are nice, but the situations are almost pedestrian given the tone created by the colors, which are too bright at times. Some bits are nice, if predictable because they were hardly novel even 76 years ago. Images of skeletons dancing or playing instruments are not exactly new and they really weren't new in 1937, You can be predictable and still be entertaining or even remarkable if there's enough there to grab the audience's attention. That really isn't the case here. It's fun to watch at least once, but doesn't really grab the viewer's attention steadily. Worth seeing, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Skeleton Frolics (1937) *** (out of 4) Columbia's Technicolor remake of Disney's The Skeleton Dance once against has Iwerks directing. This time out a group of skeletons come back to life just in time to do some dancing and scaring. While this isn't as fun as the original film it's still worth watching for several reasons. The biggest reason is the use of Technicolor, which really makes the skeletons jump off the screen. Iwerks uses the color to his benefit to make for some great visuals including his use of the orange colors. There are some very funny scenes including one, borrowed from the original film, where the skeletons come across a black cat. What happens is slightly different in this version but it still works well.

In 1929, director Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks changed the face of animation with the release of the very first installment of their "Silly Symphonies" series, "The Skeleton Dance". Iwerks and Disney had been collaborating together since the early 20s, in Disney's "Laugh-O-Gram" cartoon series; however, their friendship suffered a tremendous blow when Iwerks accepted an offer by a competitor to leave Disney and start his own animation studio. That was the birth of Celebrity Productions, where Iwerks continued developing his style and technique (and where he created the character of Flip the Frog). While his work kept the same high quality, it wasn't really popular and by 1936 the studio was closed. Later that year, Iwerks was hired by Columbia Pictures, and Iwerks decided to return to his old skeletons for another dance, this time in color.1937's "Skeleton Frolics" is essentially, a remake of the 1929 classic "The Skeleton Dance", the movie that borough him fame and fortune. Like that short film, it is set on an abandoned graveyard, where at midnight the creatures of the night come alive and begin to play. The dead rise from their coffins, ready for the show that's about to begin, as a group of skeletons has formed an orchestra, and begin to play a happy tune. Now, it's not easy to be a musician made of just bones, as some of the orchestra members have problems with their body parts, however, the band manages to put a good show and another group of skeletons begin to dance. A lovely couple of them faces the same problems that troubled the orchestra: it's hard to dance with loose body parts. Everything ends at dawn, and just when the sun is about to rise again, the skeletons run towards their graves.Directed and animated by Ub Iwerks himself, "Skeleton Frolics" follows faithfully the pattern set by "The Skeleton Dance" years before, although with a crucial difference: Iwerks did the whole film in Technicolor. The bright tonalities allowed Iwerks to create a more visually appealing film, and also to use the many new techniques he had been practicing since leaving Disney, creating even better effects of depth and dynamism than those he conceived before. It is certainly a more experimental film than "The Skeleton Dance", although sadly, this doesn't mean it's necessarily a better film. For starters, the film is practically identical to the one he did with Disney, with the only differences being the music (more on that later) and the color effects. It looks beautiful, no doubt about it, but it definitely feels kind of unoriginal after all.However, it is not the unoriginality of the concept what truly hurts the film (after all, Iwerks executes it in a wonderful way), but the fact that the musical melody created by Joe DeNat for the film is pretty uninteresting and lacks the charming elegance and whimsical fun of the one done by Carl W. Stalling for "The Skeleton Dance". In other words, while DeNat's tune is effective and appropriate for the theme, it's easy to forget about it rapidly while Stalling's song has a unique personality that makes it unforgettable. Being a musical film, this is of high importance, and so the mediocrity of the music brings down Iwerk's flawless work of animation. Personally, I think that with a better musical accompaniment, "Skeleton Frolics" would be remembered as fondly as "The Skeleton Dance despite not being as groundbreaking, as it's still a fun film to watch.It's kind of sad that most of the work Iwerks did after leaving Disney is now forgotten due to his poor success, however, it must be said that if Iwerks lacked the popularity of Disney or Fleischer (Disney's main rival), he did not lack the quality of those companies' films. It was probably just a case of bad luck what made the man who gave life to Disney's mouse for the first time to face failure out of Disney. Despite its shortcomings, "Skeleton Frolics" is a very funny and visually breathtaking film, that while not exactly the most original and fresh film (one just can't help but thinking of "The Skeleton Dance" while watching it), it definitely reminds us that Iwerk's skeletons are still here to haunt us, and inspire us.8/10

Walt Disney had vision and a grand horizon, but no one ever credited him with genius in the drawing and animation department. His early successes were due to this guy. Ub Iwerks. His 1929 "Skeleton Dance" was probably the first great animated film — clever in so many ways.Creative differences drove him away from Disney where he had his own shop for a while. But lacking the promotion skills of Disney, he floundered. Eventually he was to come back to Disney, Inc.But in the last throes of his independence, he remade "Skeleton Dance" in color and with some new effects he had invented. You need to see the two together, especially if you are a student of special effects in films.This seemed a bit sad: it referenced a work of art so original for its time it seemed pale by comparison and taking into account all the progress made since by others.Yet, it is nice and clever and important.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.