The Alice Comedies were a series of short cartoon/live action hybrids, directed by Walt Disney in the mid to late 1920s. A total of 57 shorts were made between 1923 and 1927, and these three were the 2nd, 3rd and 4th releases in the series, all coming out in the first few months of 1924.
As in Alice’s Wonderland (see here), Alice repeatedly falls into a dream and has interactive animated adventures on a theme – she goes to the seaside in Alice’s Day At Sea and dreams of the living under the sea, gets trapped in a haunted house in Alice’s Spooky Adventure and dreams of ghosts, and then dresses up as a sheriff and murders some Indians in Alice’s Wild West Show. I assume that was the style at the time.
The only real change to the format in any of these is that a bunch of fairly stereotypical silent movie kids/street urchins/etc turn up in the real life segments of Alice’s Spooky Adventure and Alice’s Wild West Show, although luckily they don’t intrude on the dream sequences, as they’re all pretty tedious and superfluous, and much, much worse than any of the animals Alice is friends with.
Of these three films, Alice’s Spooky Adventure is by far the best (she even gets engaged to a cat), Alice’s Day At Sea is also pretty good (she gets driven around by a dog – see above – and also there’s an amazing octopus in it – see below) and Alice’s Wild West Show is by far the worst (it takes a whole 6 minutes to even get to any of the animated action, and then it’s mostly rubbish anyway).
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Notes
1. I watched these on youtube. There’s various different versions on there, all of varying quality, but these were the best ones I found: Alice’s Day At Sea; Alice’s Spooky Adventure; Alice’s Wild West Show.
2. There’s another 9 or so of these from 1924, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to think of anything much more to say about them even if I do get around to watching them all.
3. Unless the cat turns up again
4. What an excellent cat to get engaged to
5. Also in Alice’s Day At Sea this guy pesters the dog awake
6. And I’m pretty sure he’s the clock from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared‘s dad.
7. Man, clocks are terrifying, aren’t they?
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Film Information
Title: Alice’s Day At Sea
Director: Walt Disney
Year: 1924
Duration: 10 minutes
Watch: youtube
Title: Alice’s Spooky Adventure
Director: Walt Disney
Year: 1924
Duration: 9 minutes
Watch: youtube
Title: Alice’s Wild West Show
Director: Walt Disney
Year: 1924
Duration: 13 minutes
Watch: youtube