8mm Forum: Mickey's Memorable Moments! Part 2 400ft.

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Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on January 29, 2007, 02:01 PM:

We now move onto the second of the Mickey 400ft. Digests.
This one, in many ways, is far more interesting, as the collect-ion of shorts are of the more rare variety. We usually see, The Brave Little Tailor and such, but these are the die-hard MIckey fans films to find. They are :

Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip
Thru the Mirror
The Little Whirlwind
Mickey's Parrot
Mickey's garden.

Mickey's Garden and Thru the Mirror are the earlier efforts, Mickey's garden was only the second colour film Mickey acted in (yes, Mickey is real to me!) and has a great hallucinagenic, (yeah, I know I mis-spelled it) scene of Mickey being small and being chased by the very bugs he was spraying with bug spray. This is the kind of thing that was very poular to do in a cartoon in the thirties, but would become very rare later on, the later films being more earthboud.

Thru the Mirror is another bending of reality cartoon where Mickey (dreaming this) goes thru his mirror and enters an "Alice in Wonderland" world where he is chased by cards and the like. It is a wonderful fantasy!

Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip is one of the early 40's cartoons where we have the later more modern looking Mickey, with Peg Leg Pete playing a nice juicy role. (Mickey as an Indian and pluto his "papoose" is quite cute.)

The Little Whirlwind is a real find, as I had personally never seen this one, and has some incredible animation of the
little playful whirlwind, given wonderful human qualities, something that can only happen in animation and is a great piece of animation. The large tornado, (the little whirlwinds brother), by the way, has a piece of stock footage used from "The Band Concert" (1935). This is also the very handsome early 40's animation of Mickey's ears in perspective, and i personally feel that this Mickey is the best version of MIckey.
Also, this is one of those rare cartoons where Mickey is the only actor, it is a solo Mickey effort, and that gets to be rare in the 40's.,

MIckey's Parrot is also one of the earlier films that one does not see as often, and has the funny bit where a pair of boots ends up on the back of his rifle, (a parrot sneaks into Mickey's house and over the radio, Mickey hears that a killer is running around, the parrot is thought to be the killer.)

All of these films are great fun, and, in some cases, I believe that this is the only place to find some of these films, (particularly in the case of the little whirlwind, unless I'm mistaken), which most certianly makes it a keeper and one to find. It also tends to be a little rarer than the
first of the Mickey Collections.

As with ther first collection, the print quality is outstanding, superior sharpness, grain and contrast are excel-
-lent, as is the sound, but then, these are taken from Disney
original negatives and not from endless dupes.

NOTE!!!!

Sadly, this is one of those early 80's prints that has the dreaded, VERY DREADED, EASTMAN fades. This was that last very poor stock that fades incredibly easily. I went thru three bad prints and have still not run into one with good to excellent colour. I'm hoping that the British prints of this have good KODAK SP stock and have held up well, as I would love to find a good print of this, but beware the stateside prints of this!

Good hunting and lots of fun!!

Posted by Stewart McSporran (Member # 128) on January 29, 2007, 04:17 PM:

Thanks Osi,

For years I've told friends about a Mickey Mouse cartoon where he's spraying the garden with weedkiller (I think the spray was marked LSD?) when it blows back on him and he goes on a trip. Nobody ever believed me. At last verification that I wasn't seeing things!

I'll have to get a copy of this.

Stewart

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on January 29, 2007, 09:26 PM:

Just remember Stewart, make sure that the copy you buy isn't the American version, with dreaded Eastman.

By the way, I do know that Disney, (in the original 80's super 8 craze) released "Mickey's garden" as a full short, (well, maybe complete, a lot of the time, Disney would edit out around 30 seconds of the cartoons for thier 200ft releases)

I'm not sure, but was "Mickey's Garden" released by Derann films? Anyone know out there?

Posted by Stewart McSporran (Member # 128) on March 08, 2007, 01:42 PM:

Well I got a copy from Derann's last list.

The colour is generally very good; perhaps slightly warm over about a minute, but well worth the asking price.

I'm amazed at the quality of the editing, in most of them you'd never know that they were from longer cartoons.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on March 08, 2007, 02:20 PM:

You got the copy I was looking at! Anyhow, I'm glad you got a pretty good copy of it. I'd love to get it for "Mickey's Little Whirlwind", which is a wonderful little cartoon, as well as quite rare.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on December 06, 2008, 02:28 PM:

Just wanted to add that I FINALLY found a very good print of this title from the UK, printed on FUJI stock and it has vintage PERFECT colour, so as Stewart found out earlier, (and I just found) there are good unfaded prints, but by all means, look for a UK printing of this title, as I doubt you would ever find a state-side print that isn't faded.]

It's worth the price of Admission just to see "Mickey's Little Whirlwind" which is just about my favorite later era Mickey.

It also appears that some of the cartoons have more footage from them. I notice that "Mr Mouse Takes a Vacation" is almost a whole four minutes, which is most of the cartoon. Others like
"Mickey's Garden" have less footage, but I'm glad that they gave more footage to the greater rarities.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 892) on December 06, 2008, 02:38 PM:

Is this UK print just a little softer in detail, as is typical of Fuji prints?

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on December 06, 2008, 04:41 PM:

Honestly Bill, I didn't personally see any difference in image quality. It's "Fuji film HP" Is that a specific grade of Fuji?

I wouldn't know, but I had suffered through many a Eastman fade print, and this just looks absolutely gorgeous!

BY the way, this release by Disney had a rare error, that I have noticed on all copies of this title. The soundtrack on this release starts about five or so seconds after the title comes on the screen, which is quite strange and rare. It seems like they just used the beginning title music for a Mickey cartoon, which didn't extend to the beginning of the titles. Curious.

[ December 12, 2008, 10:23 AM: Message edited by: Osi Osgood ]

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