Saturday

a rare metal eating bird intermission

an interesting little piece created by Charley Bowers in 1930...
' Charley goes on a quest for a rare metal-eating bird. He meets with a Professor Ditterhoffer of the Natural History Museum who illustrates his points with a series of cartoon-y illustrations (undoubtedly drawn by Bowers himself) which bear a striking resemblance to the later work of Dr. Seuss. And then Charley is off to the Belgian Congo, accompanied by a German Oompah band, where he locates the goofy-looking bird and then manages to capture him with the help of a worm who inexplicably talks like a Brooklyn thug. The bird and the worm are impressively animated puppets: in the mid- to late 1920s Bowers starred in a series of films in which the puppet animation sequences were usually the highlights. The puppet scenes in IT'S A BIRD are weird and delightful, and feature a number of off-the-wall Bowers motifs from the earlier series, such as animals eating metal and then hatching machines from their eggs. '

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