For most of my life, I have believed that the TV show "Speed Racer" must have been the the shoddiest cartoon animation I had ever seen. When it was aired on venerable independent Channel 18 in Milwaukee in the mid-to-late '60s, I was only around kindergarten age but even then thought it was so awful that I refused to watch it. (Catchy theme song, though.) But now I believe I have found a cartoon produced and animated by THE LAZIEST PEOPLE EVER: "The Adventures of Paddy The Pelican," dating from 1954 and based on characters from a Chicago WENR-TV puppet show. No one is quite sure if they were ever televised, or were shoved in a shame closet for 50 years. Only six episodes were made, and only two seem to have survived, both of which I shall bring you here today.
Where do I begin? A Super-8 film of someone paging through a kids' flip book of a dolphin jumping though a hoop would look like classic Walt Disney compared to this. Absolutely everything is wrong about it. The drawings are crude and repetitive, drawn by an artist who is possibly blind or asleep. The voiceovers sound like a couple of office dudes on a bender. The horrible laughing theme music with creep organ will give you nightmares FOR LIFE (sorry). It is stunningly bad, which of course, makes it wonderful to watch. Please to enjoy!
"Two Wet Bears" gives its ursine characters offensive "Amos & Andy" stereotyped black accents (one of them is even named Amos), and cannot be bothered to match the mouth movements with the sound AT ALL.
The Adventures of Paddy The Pelican: Two Wet Bears (1954)
I think people might question their own sanity watching this, or simply assume they have been drugged. I can't even follow the extremely-tenuous storyline, because I'm just so flabbergasted by the overwhelming crappiness of the overall effort. Wow!
The Adventures of Paddy The Pelican: Piggy Bank Robbery (1954)
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman