After a painstaking four-year process of restoration, Puppetoon.net is preparing to offer fans The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3, a Limited Edition Blu-ray collection of 28 of Oscar-winning filmmaker George Pal’s (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds) stop-motion and cel-animated shorts, totaling five hours of content. Each cartoon has been restored from its original Technicolor negatives.
Producer-director Arnold Leibovit first reintroduced cinephiles to Pal’s early works with The Puppetoon Movie in 1987, hosted by stop-motion icons Gumby and Pokey. The feature-length collection featured Puppetoons created in the 1930s and 1940s, many of which had not been seen in years. This first volume was restored in high-def for Blu-ray in 2014, followed by a second in 2020. Now, in Volume 3, fans can enjoy the return of Punchy & Judy, Jim Dandy, Rusty, Dr. Seuss, Jan and Janette, Mr. Strauss, Jasper and the Screwball Army — plus the first Puppetoon key anima0on work from legendary animator Ray Harryhausen.
Included are six restored Successive Exposure Negative (SEN) Puppetoons: Western Daze (1940, the first for Paramount Pictures), Bravo Mr. Strauss (1943, where The Screwball Army returns), The Truck That Flew (1943, introducing the memorable melody “Moonlight Holiday”), Together in the Weather (1946, stars Punchy & Judy, who were designed by Walt Disney animator Fred Moore), Hotlip Jasper (1945, featuring trumpet virtuoso Raphael Mendez) and Jasper’s Derby (1946, scored to the classic “Gypsy Airs”).
Seven Paramount SEN preservation prints from Volume 1 are also included, this time in even higher resolution with vastly improved restorations. Included are four of the seven Academy Award- nominated Puppetoons: Dr. Seuss’s The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1943), Dr. Seuss’s And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1944), Rhythm in the Ranks (1941) and Jasper and the Beanstalk (1945); plus Date with Duke (1947, Duke Ellington), Rhapsody in Wood (1947, Woody Herman) and The Sky Princess (1941).
Also included in Volume 3 are cel animated discoveries from Europe: The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe (1940), The Queen Was in the Parlour (1939), The Good Bear and the Bad Bear (1940) and A Fairy Tale about a Melancholic King (1934).
The Limited Edition Blu-ray includes a 20-panel color booklet as well as on-disc bonus features including Sweet Pacific (1947), a previously unreleased 1970 interview with Pal, The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (1985) and expanded interviews with Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, Gene Roddenberry, Roy E. Disney, Joe Dante, Russ Tamblyn, Wah Chang, Duke Goldstone and Bob Baker.
The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 was produced with the cooperation of Paramount Pictures, The Library of Congress, The British Film Institute, UCLA Film & Television Archive, The Eye Filmmuseum, The Philips Company, GlaxoSmithKline, J Walter Thompson, ASIFA-Hollywood, The National Film Archive Czech Republic, Bio Vakantieoord and others.
The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 is coming to puppetoon.net September 1. Pre-orders are now open.
