Sorry, this movie sucks

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

When I watch David Lynch movies, I sometimes think he is showing us his nightmares. I often feel that the Betty Boop canon may be David Fleischer's nightmares. In this one, Bimbo, her little dog is the star. He is walking down the street when he fall in a manhole. He finds himself in some weird meeting of some kind of clan. They keep asking him if he wants to join (they are holding boards with nails in them and other weapons). He says no and this leads to one horrible situation after another where he must try to survive. It's a terrifying world but that is the Fleischer way of doing things. There is also a kind of vibration, a kind of rhythmic dance that goes on in these cartoons. I am enjoying these cartoons, fifty years after I saw them as a kid.

Bimbo's Initiation (1931) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Marginally entertaining short has Bimbo falling down a manhole where he ends up in a strange playhouse where some masked people keep asking him if he wants to be a member of their group. Each time he says no they put him through some form of abuse but soon Betty Boop shows up and asks him the same question. In terms of imagination this short has quite a bit of that but in terms of laughs there are very few. I think the film works best as some eye candy because the house is a pretty interesting one and at least keeps the movie going at a good speed. I thought all the tricks were rather clever and this includes the rolling floor and the sequence where Bimbo has to open one door after another. I think the highlight is without question the cameo by Boop and there's no doubt that this short was made before the Hayes Code. The level of pre-code sexuality is quite high as it's obvious Boop is having quite the effect on poor Bimbo who can't control himself. The scenes with Boop shaking her butt and slapping it are hard to forget and easy to see what's going on.

Because of the way the Betty Boop cartoons were shown on television in the early 1960s, certain cartoons were not pushed too much. Those that showed her as she was originally drawn, with "dog" ears", and which hinted at more raw sex than the occasional lapses of later "domesticated" Betty Boop cartoons with her inventor "Gramps" and with her cute dog "Pudgy" were never shown. This, unfortunately, reduced the chances of seeing some of the early Boop supporting cast - Koko the Clown ("Out of the Inkwell") and the male dog Bimbo. Bimbo was Betty's boyfriend in some of the early cartoons - like this one.Here we see Bimbo strolling along, minding his own business, when he falls down a manhole - and immediately the manhole is shut with a heavy lock applied to it. Bimbo finds himself in an underground structure surrounded by about ten masked men who are the members of a society and offer him a chance to join. But he sees they have paddles, and he refuses. And then the surreal world of the Fleischer studio takes over: Bimbo is pushed from one room of the underground structure to another - and in each he is confronted by torture devices that are aiming to kill him. He is also confronted by corn ball jokes (he opens a door and sees a skeleton on a pay phone, telling his girlfriend, "I have a bone to pick with you!"). Every now and then he meets with the spokesman of the society, repeating the offer ("Do you want to be a member? Want to be a member?" And each time Bimbo refuses, and the process of torture begins again.Then Betty pops up to briefly rescue him. At the tail end of the cartoon Betty is there and goes into a dance, and she makes the offer - and now Bimbo accepts it. Then all the members remove their clothes, and they are revealed to be Betty Boop clones.As I said earlier there was more raw sex in these cartoons than in the later ones. Betty, to keep Bimbo's total fascination with her from flagging, whacks herself on the behind while dancing. At the tail end of the cartoon (no pun intended) as she and new member Bimbo are jointly dancing they both "playfully" whack each other's behind a bit. Done tastefully...of course! It was a more open era before the Hays Office Code and the Breen Office really got underway in Hollywood three years after this cartoon was made.

This is a BImbo cartoon and quite an odd one it is too. Betty Boop makes a relatively brief appearance towards the latter half of the short and at the end and her look is slighly different in this early short. Exceedingly strange things happen throughout to say the least! Great fun but definitely an acquired taste. In print and available. Well worth watching. Recommended.