Tomorrow's matinee tonight

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This looks like a job... for Superman!



Kee-reist, Clark---why don't you just announce it to all of Metropolis on the electric radio?

This is the third Superman feature released by Fleischer Studios, and it's some pretty weak sauce compared with most in the series. One thing that's odd is that it's really light on dialog; odd because the Fleischers usually give us a heaping helping of unhinged villains chewing up the scenery with their turgid threats and declamations. Here, after seeing a headline about the "largest single shipment of gold ever attempted" on a flashy, coal-fired streamline deco passenger train (?!), we are on our own for most of the feature. Not that it's very challenging to decode, but these cartoons generally spell things out very explicitly for the juvenile target audience. Why has it become a runaway train, for example, instead of just rolling to a stop or---more plausibly---Lois taking over the controls? She's a skilled pilot, after all, as we learned in episode 1. (She also has no problem handling a Tommy gun here.)

The scenery and action are beautifully rendered, as we would expect from the Fleischers. But the physics are mostly awful, especially where Superman is manhandling the train to keep it off the floor of the gorge. Usually, one of the best things about this series is the way the animators convey a sense of mass and kinetic energy through The Man Of Steel's interaction with objects. So even in this weak episode, they do come through for us in the scenes where Superman struggles to pull the train uphill. The sound effects of the train axles help to sell the illusion.

It's fortunate for this gang of gold rustlers that railroad rights-of-way were so wide and drivable in the early 1940s and were so accessible from any stretch of highway. I love the scene where, although the teargas seems to be getting the best of our hero, one of the bad guys panics and just chucks the whole crate of grenades at once. Something else the kids and I used to laugh at: the scenes where Superman pulls the train toward the camera and gets his crotch all up in the viewer's grille. This is not the only episode in which Fleischer animators used that visual point of reference, either.

One throwaway animation effect that looks quite difficult to have rendered is the guard's shadow moving on the newspaper front page starting at about 1:39. Also, at about 7:55 we get a nice architectural view of the Depression-era "government mint" complex, but I wonder why the monumental inscription on the arch faces the building interior.

Billion Dollar Limited (1942, "Superman" cartoon by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures; Myron Waldman and Frank Endres, animators; Dave Fleischer, director), via YouTube, a work in the public domain embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.