User Reviews

While it was an inconsistent series, the Kartunes series from Famous Studios was still worth watching, even if for most of the cartoons it was one time watch level rather than repeat viewings. Some of the cartoons were not great, with the first half generally being better than the second in most of them. But the weakest ones still managed to not be misfires (unlike the better known Screen Song cartoons), more watchable but uneven, and the best surprisingly very good, like for example the first 'Vegetable Vaudeville'.

'Hysterical History' is one of the more average, lesser Kartunes cartoons. It's not a bad cartoon, don't consider any of them inherently bad, and has some very strong things. It also sadly fails in some rather crucial components. It could have done with a lot more imagination, the pacing problems are more obvious here than in something like 'Vegetable Vaudeville' or 'Forest Fantasy' and veers on being a little too cute, but the animation and music in particular are enough to make 'Hysterical History' worth a one off look.

Am going to start with the good. It is beautifully animated. The colours are vibrant and there is meticulous attention to detail in the backgrounds. If there was one aspect that was consistently good in Famous Studios' 1940s and 1950s output, it was the music scoring. And it is outstanding here. The orchestration has a lot of energy and there are some truly luscious sounds throughout.

There are some amusing gags in the first half, corny but amusing. The characters are lively and have personality.

Having said all of that, 'Hysterical History' is still not great. The second half is not as good as the first, it's made up of the singalong and while the song itself is a lot of fun the singalong material wise felt too cutesy and was in serious need of variety.

It is also in this half where there are some serious pacing issues as a result, with the pace being quite tedious. Actually did find the pace on the dull side throughout, but the singalong was where it was at its most obvious. As to be expected, the plot is non existent and a series of gags of the blackout kind and it is generally very predictable.

Concluding, rather average. 5/10.

Famous Studios (also known as Harvey) made a lot of relatively low- budgeted cartoons in the 1050s and 60s. There's no way you'd mistake them for Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons and their biggest claim to fame was Casper the Friendly Ghost. They had a few other repeating characters as well as some films like "Hysterical History"--stand- alone cartoons without these familiar characters. Well, I hadn't seen any of these cartoons since I was a kid and decided to try one...and I picked this one simply because it was free to download from archive.org.

The cartoon is a silly history of the United States. It repeats many of the familiar historical myths (such as Pocahontas saving John Smith and Columbus supposedly proving the world was round) and this didn't bother me too much because this certainly was NOT meant as a real history lesson. The jokes were all very corny but pretty much what you'd expect from that era. My quibble came late in the film...and this is why I gave it a 3. It ended with one of those god-awful sing-a-longs--the sort that Fleischer Studios loved in the 30s (and Famous Studio was descended from the Fleischers--when Paramount fired them and started making cartoons without them). Not a particularly brilliant or enjoyable cartoon overall---mostly because of that awful singing!!