Righteo!!!! It’s Felix the cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat.
Now I’m not 60, but I remember Felix the Cat reruns from Saturday morning cartoon time “Down Under” in Australia, back in the 80s, so I was thrilled to have a sneak preview of this DVD. For anyone like me that wants to have all of their tele-visual childhood experiences on DVD to relive at any moment, to abuse as wondrous escapes from the harshness of an adult life (am I sharing too much?), this is a great buy.
The Golden Anniversary Edition DVD of Felix the Cat has all 31 episodes from the 1958-59 TV series, plus an AWESOME short film made in 1920 that is tagged as the precursor to Felix — you totally HAVE to see this. It is taking all my strength not to give away the ending of this old cartoon. My goodness. It will surely make your eyes pop out of your skull! I cannot imagine what went through the writer’s head, other than how utterly miserable their own life must have been, perhaps? You decide.
On top of faithfully reproduced episodes and the classic old footage is some of the old commercials for Felix the Cat and an interview with John Canemaker. Canemaker is a celebrated animator and animation historian who, among other things, explains how Felix nearly beat some other black and white animated creature to complete world domination. According to him, if it wasn’t for the fact that Pat Sullivan (of the Pat Sullivan Studio who created Felix) was convinced that sound in films was a bad idea, it may have been a cat and not a mouse ruling the cartoon world!
The 2-disc DVD is smoothly packaged and the cartoons themselves will take you right back to where you were when you first heard that “Righteo” catch phrase, Felix’s endearing and often manic laugh, and that magic bag of tricks. I got a real kick out of it.
