Bimbo's Initiation (1931)

That was an excellent one.

best movie i've ever seen.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.Despite the Betty Boop picture on this page, 'Bimbo's Initiation' is not a Betty Boop cartoon, or at least not one where she is a lead. She does feature here, towards the end in a very nice short appearance that shows her trademark charm, sensuality and adorable factor, and also a bravery and care for Bimbo.'Bimbo's Initiation' is, as the cartoon's title indicates, very much a Bimbo cartoon, and Bimbo is on top form where one really cares what happens to him and often feels the same emotions as he.As always, the animation is outstanding (though Betty's different-to-usual character design, like with the ears, is a touch odd), everything is beautifully and meticulously drawn and the whole cartoon is rich in visual detail and imagination. Every bit as good is the music score, which delivers on the energy, lusciousness and infectiousness but also an ominous spookiness and eerie quality that sets the tone of the cartoon brilliantly.The cartoon also is hugely atmospheric and while terrifying to a child (Fleischer rarely got nightmarish, and this is coming from someone who saw the likes of 'The Cobweb Hotel') it's pretty creepy still through adult eyes as it should be. There are some great ideas, very imaginatively drawn and done with great visual creativity and fluid timing.Overall, a great nightmarish cartoon. 9/10 Bethany Cox

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 very weird cartoon with Bimbo the dog who enters a house where he is asked by strange creatures if he "wanna be a member, wanna be a member?" His answer is no and every time he answers that again the house pulls some tricks on him. Near the end there is a short appearance of Betty Boop (with the voice of Mae Questel), only she has dog ears here.This cartoon is very weird and surreal in some ways. The house has some great surprises, all very well animated. It looks very original. The music fits the action perfectly and the appearance of Betty Boop, with the strange ears, is a nice one and it helps this cartoon with a nice ending. Recommended.

Bimbo's Initiation (1931): An early Max Fleischer cartoon starring the studio's pre-Betty Boop star, Bimbo. A strange, cocky, decidedly urban character, Bimbo went through many character designs and voices during his early films. By this film the little dog had settled into the design he would keep until he was eclipsed by Betty Boop's popularity in the mid-thirties . Like many of the Fleischer's Depression era cartoons, "Bimbo's Initiation" is filled with desperate characters dealing with an unstable, even hostile universe. After being swallowed by a manhole and locked in by a demonic Mickey Mouse (evil Mickey Mouses were rampant in the early Fleischer cartoons) Bimbo finds himself in a dungeon inhabited by a psuedo-Masonic group with chamberpots on their heads who chant,"Wanna be a member, Wanna be a member?" When Bimbo refuses, he is thrown into a labyrinth filled with surrealistic tortures while the Lodge brothers continue to chant, "Wanna be a member...?" Does Bimbo relent? Watch the cartoon and find out! No spoilers here!