Very energetic and funny. Mutt and Jeff cartoons are pretty much overlooked by animation historians, but at least this one is as well made as the more acclaimed series from Disney, Fleischer, and Pat Sullivan (Felix the Cat). Mutt and Jeff enter the Soviet Union celebrating they have no income tax or prohibition. But they are quickly attacked by a bomb throwing golfer, then by wolves. Like most silent cartoons it is pretty much just a succession of gags, but they come fast and are often surreal. Silent cartoons shorts can be on the pokey side. Not here. Too bad no credits are listed.. it would be interesting to know if the main animators involved went on to do sound cartoons.
Reviews
4 Reviews
The Man Who Thought Life
(1969)
Masterpiece?
17 May 2022
Warning: Spoilers
That is what the other reviews are calling it. While will done, it is the old doppleganger taking over theme and except for the added angle of a man who can temporarily create life, it hits the same beats. One year after this movie was released there was The Man Who Haunted Himself starring Roger Moore. Is this one better? Yes, but not leap years. The whole angle of the duplicate operating on the man doesn't make sense. The man has to concentrate on creating a life because it isn't permanent. If he is under sedation for the operation, how can he keep the doctor from disappearing during the operation?
Good but old mystery plot
21 April 2022
The mystery in this one is as old as dirt. It goes further back than the Erroll Flynn movie, Footsteps in the Fog. It shows up also in Madame Sara, a story first published in 1902. The author of the teleplay for this, Steve Boccho, could have read it as it was published in the popular anthology, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, in 1971. A British one season TV series followed, but I can't recall if this particular story appeared in it.
Filipp Traum
(1990 TV Movie)
Was it all a dream or did I see it?
28 June 2021
This movie was on YouTube and another Russian site a few weeks ago, but like the pivotal character in the unfinished Mark Twain character it is based on, mysteriously disappeared. It had good English subtitles. It was a TV movie in two parts. After a sluggish start, this becomes a very moving adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Young Satan, which was published posthumously as The Mysterious Stranger.
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