Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Short Synopsis
Late at night, Bimbo tries to steal a chicken. After several attempts he grabs a hand, which belongs to a policeman. He tries to stroll away innocently, followed by the chicken and by the policeman. The chicken and her chicks escape, and Bimbo hides in a graveyard. It is haunted. Ghosts, skeletons, talking tombstones and living objects of every shape rise up around him and list his sins in song: the chickens he used to steal, the dice he used to shoot, the girls he used to chase. Bimbo begs for mercy and promises he has reformed; nobody listens. The spirits chase him through a nightmarish landscape and into a barn, where they gather and sing about his fate, and at the end a giant skull swallows him whole.
Why It Matters
- It is one of the strangest and darkest cartoons of the period. The monsters change shape from one moment to the next, and the graveyard sequence, set to a gospel-style chorus, plays like a fever dream. Nothing in it is softened for children, and the ending, where the hero is simply devoured, is genuinely unsettling.
- The film is a key example of the Fleischers' early surreal style, and its graveyard-revival structure set the template for later Fleischer musical nightmares such as Minnie the Moocher (1932) and Snow-White (1933).
Notes and Trivia
- The title song is based on "Sing, You Sinners" (1930) by W. Franke Harling and Sam Coslow.
- Much of the staff had never animated before; the studio had to replace animators who had quit. Shamus Culhane recalled in his memoirs animating a crude Jewish caricature in the film, which modern viewers will find offensive.
- Motion Picture News reviewed it in October 1930 as "worth a watch".
- See also: Dizzy Dishes (1930), Bimbo's Initiation (1931).