User Reviews

Max draws a bunch of numeral thirteens, which gradually coalesce into Koko; a haunted house is drawn. Koko sends Fitz in to look for his hat, but the sounds of fighting draw in Koko, who discovers lots of spooks within.

One of the pleasures of the Fleischers' Koko cartoons was the manner in which a setting might be drawn, only for it to have dimensionality. Here, a setting appears, the haunted house's exterior, yet it has a cartoon reality beyond Fleischer's illustration. It lends a surrealistic solidity to the cartoon universe that is spooky in itself, and well suited to this Halloween cartoon.

When you watch "Koko Sees Spooks", you need to appreciate the context for the cartoon and compare it to its competition. For the most part, the Koko cartoons of the era were simply the best made cartoons you can find. Disney didn't begin making great films until a few years later, Looney Tunes wasn't to start until 1930 and many of the competitors either weren't very good (such as the Van Buren Studios) or were good but not animated nearly as well (Felix the Cat). Here, with Koko, the Fleischer Brothers had it all...excellent animation, excellent stories and, most importantly, fun!

"Koko Sees Spooks" begins as usual...with Max Fleischer drawing Koko. But there are two things different this time. First, you don't see any more of Max (usually Koko and Max interacted a lot in their cartoons) and Koko is drawn up of many number 13s. And, apparently, this causes the story to be very spooky....filled with ghosts, skeletons and the like. Later, Koko even makes an invisible army of Kokos! It's all very surreal and cute...and the animation is excellent, even for a Koko film. The only drawback is the story itself, which is amusing but also not especially deep. Still, even if it's not among the best, it's still charming all these years later.