Terror on the Midway (1942)

Director:

Dave Fleischer

Writers:

Jerry Siegel (comic strip) and
Joe Shuster (comic strip) ...

Release Date:

30 August 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Short

Plot:

When the circus' animals escape and threaten disaster, Superman must taken action.

Plot Keywords:

Circus | Superman | Gorilla | Superhero | Peril

Cast

Joan Alexander	...	Lois Lane (voice) (uncredited)
Bud Collyer	...	Clark Kent / Superman (voice) (uncredited)
Jack Mercer	...	Sideshow barker (voice) (uncredited)
Julian Noa	...	Narrator (voice) (uncredited)

Runtime:

8 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | USA:Approved (PCA #3273)

Company:

Famous Studios

Quotes:

[first lines]
Voices: Up in the sky, look! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!
Narrator: Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to soar higher than any plane, this amazing stranger from the planet Krypton, The Man of Steel: Superman! Possessing remarkable physical strength, Superman fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice, disguised as a mild-mannered newspaper reporter, Clark Kent.
[note that the opening narration in some prints is slightly different]

Movie Connections:

Follows The Bulleteers (1942)

Soundtrack:

Marche Militaire No 1 in D

Absolute favorite of a very good series.

The band strikes up a march as playful kids wave pennants, Lois smiles and shifts her gaze lazily; clowns caper, elephants dance. It's a high moment of oblivion, humanity with its guard down. --The sort of scene Hitchcock laid out with such care, so that the mayhem, when it strikes suddenly, is fully felt.

Outside, a tiny monkey playing with a bright metal ring starts at a shadow. Jumping away, he doesn't release the ring in time; this pulls the cord that it's attached to, which springs open the latch on a circus wagon. Brief transition, and we hear a low growl at the entrance of the main tent, over the music and sounds of the crowd. We track reactions in montage as every person freezes in place. Then, only after we have been allowed take in the ripeness of the delicious moment of growing terror, are we shown what has paralyzed everyone.

The few minutes of this cartoon work exactly like prime early Hitchcock. It builds deliberately, lovingly toward a pivotal/revelatory brilliant set piece that is still exciting.

Before every large budget film tried to encompass the destruction of planet earth and the end of space time within its plot thread, choice nuggets of time-- like the one in this simple little cartoon-- were what cinema was all about. You'd wait for a moment. The moment built slowly and deliberately. Everything wasn't yielded at once. The experience was cumulative, not all sensory avalanche from first shot to last. Ultimately, the overdone-gasm sort of film doesn't last. It is seen through; the novelty, which is all it has, exhausts itself after a few viewings. Claptrap-- even well-mounted, noisy, big, breathless claptrap-- is still only that.

I see this great short as a wonderfully fresh, storyboard-like look at how feature films used to be put together. For that reason, I give it ten stars.