Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
A bullet-shaped rocket car smashes through the police headquarters and destroys it. The gang who drive it, named the Bulleteers by the newspapers, demand the whole city treasury or they will destroy another building each night; the mayor refuses and the power plant goes next, with police bullets bouncing off the car's hull. Lois Lane drives to the scene, leaving Clark Kent behind; he ducks into a phone booth and comes out as Superman. As the Bulleteers aim at the treasury, Superman knocks the car off course, is thrown off as it climbs, and chases it through the city; Lois, who has sneaked into the car, is taken hostage. Superman catches the rocket in flight, tears it open, and pulls the gang and Lois out as it crashes, delivering the Bulleteers to the police in what is left of their machine.
Why It Matters
- The rocket car is one of the great designs of the series, a streamlined bullet with a nose that detaches as a flying missile, and the night-time destruction of the police station and the power plant, lit by explosions, shows how far the Fleischers took the superhero cartoon toward the look of a live-action thriller. Superman catching a speeding bullet car in mid-air is the image the series is remembered for.
- The Bulleteers is the fifth of the seventeen Superman cartoons and the one most often excerpted, partly because, like the rest, it has been in the public domain for decades and is freely available. The series ended in 1943 when Paramount took over the Fleischer studio, but its influence runs through Batman: The Animated Series, whose makers cited it directly.
Notes and Trivia
- Julian Noa plays Perry White; Jackson Beck, the narrator, later voiced Bluto.
- The "Look! Up in the sky!" opening, with the speeding bullet and the locomotive, became the template for the radio and television shows' openings.
- See also: Billion Dollar Limited (1942), Superman: The Mad Scientist (1941), On Leather Wings (1992).
