Uploaded February 2017 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
I well remember being scared out of my mind as a kid when that singing ghost appeared. He moved like something out of a nightmare: this is because his movements were rotoscoped, i.e. "traced", which is the animation equivalent of the uncanny valley. It's a highlight however, and the theatrical short rightly is a classic.
From Wikipedia: Snow-White, also known as Betty Boop in Snow-White, is a film in the Betty Boop series from Max Fleischer's Fleischer Studios directed in 1933. Dave Fleischer was credited as director, although virtually all the animation was done by Roland Crandall. Crandall received the opportunity to make Snow-White on his own as a reward for his several years of devotion to the Fleischer studio, and the resulting film is considered both his masterwork and an important milestone of The Golden Age of American animation. Snow-White took Crandall six months to complete.
Plot: A magic mirror, with a face resembling Cab Calloway, proclaims Betty Boop to be "the fairest in the land", much to the anger of the Queen (who resembles Olive Oyl). The Queen orders her guards Bimbo and Koko to behead Betty. With tears in their eyes, they take Betty into the forest and prepare to execute her. Betty escapes into a frozen river, which encloses her in a coffin of ice. This block slips downhill to the home of the seven dwarfs, who carry the frozen Betty into an enchanted cave. Meanwhile, Koko and Bimbo fall down a hole and arrives at the same cave (with the Queen (who turned hersself into a Witch) , where the evil Queen turns him into a grotesque creature as he sings the St. James Infirmary Blues. With her rivals disposed of, the Queen again asks the magic mirror who the fairest in the land is, but the mirror explodes in a puff of magic smoke that returns Betty and Koko to their normal states and changes the Queen into a hideous monster. The queen monster chases the protagonists until Bimbo grabs its tongue and, with one mighty yank turns it inside out and leaving the skeleton monster to flee away. Betty, Koko, and Bimbo dance around in a circle of victory as the film ends.
I well remember being scared out of my mind as a kid when that singing ghost appeared. He moved like something out of a nightmare: this is because his movements were rotoscoped, i.e. "traced", which is the animation equivalent of the uncanny valley. It's a highlight however, and the theatrical short rightly is a classic.
From Wikipedia: Snow-White, also known as Betty Boop in Snow-White, is a film in the Betty Boop series from Max Fleischer's Fleischer Studios directed in 1933. Dave Fleischer was credited as director, although virtually all the animation was done by Roland Crandall. Crandall received the opportunity to make Snow-White on his own as a reward for his several years of devotion to the Fleischer studio, and the resulting film is considered both his masterwork and an important milestone of The Golden Age of American animation. Snow-White took Crandall six months to complete.
Plot: A magic mirror, with a face resembling Cab Calloway, proclaims Betty Boop to be "the fairest in the land", much to the anger of the Queen (who resembles Olive Oyl). The Queen orders her guards Bimbo and Koko to behead Betty. With tears in their eyes, they take Betty into the forest and prepare to execute her. Betty escapes into a frozen river, which encloses her in a coffin of ice. This block slips downhill to the home of the seven dwarfs, who carry the frozen Betty into an enchanted cave. Meanwhile, Koko and Bimbo fall down a hole and arrives at the same cave (with the Queen (who turned hersself into a Witch) , where the evil Queen turns him into a grotesque creature as he sings the St. James Infirmary Blues. With her rivals disposed of, the Queen again asks the magic mirror who the fairest in the land is, but the mirror explodes in a puff of magic smoke that returns Betty and Koko to their normal states and changes the Queen into a hideous monster. The queen monster chases the protagonists until Bimbo grabs its tongue and, with one mighty yank turns it inside out and leaving the skeleton monster to flee away. Betty, Koko, and Bimbo dance around in a circle of victory as the film ends.
