TheLittleSongbird Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.Despite the Betty Boop picture on this page, 'Bimbo's Initiation' is not a Betty Boop cartoon, or at least not one where she is a lead. She does feature here, towards the end in a very nice short appearance that shows her trademark charm, sensuality and adorable factor, and also a bravery and care for Bimbo.'Bimbo's Initiation' is, as the cartoon's title indicates, very much a Bimbo cartoon, and Bimbo is on top form where one really cares what happens to him and often feels the same emotions as he.As always, the animation is outstanding (though Betty's different-to-usual character design, like with the ears, is a touch odd), everything is beautifully and meticulously drawn and the whole cartoon is rich in visual detail and imagination. Every bit as good is the music score, which delivers on the energy, lusciousness and infectiousness but also an ominous spookiness and eerie quality that sets the tone of the cartoon brilliantly.The cartoon also is hugely atmospheric and while terrifying to a child (Fleischer rarely got nightmarish, and this is coming from someone who saw the likes of 'The Cobweb Hotel') it's pretty creepy still through adult eyes as it should be. There are some great ideas, very imaginatively drawn and done with great visual creativity and fluid timing.Overall, a great nightmarish cartoon. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Foreverisacastironmess Well, for starters it gets points for originality, that's for damn sure! It certainly seems there was once a time when cartoons were made for adults too. I love the way the jolly old-timey opening suggests a short that's going to be all rosy and sweetness-no way, Jose! This is one of those special and awesome Betty Boop shows that gives strong credence to the notion that all animators of the 1930s were on substances of a, oh shall we say, questionable nature! Like the best kinds of old toons it is dark, even spooky. And it's got that vital 'lil dash of the macabre-perhaps more than just a little this time! Everything is alive and 'kickin, and the sinister sight gags soon abound with swiftness. Mere moments in we get creepy morlock clans, scary anthropomorphic pointy things,(one just somehow knows it's a bad thing when the knife licks its own blade!) startlingly twisted and warped perceptions, inescapable rooms and a dog-eared slutty woman. Apparently at one point they were considering Betty being some kind of poodle-like creature. Must not have panned out. It's almost as if most of the gags were done by the animators just to show that they could. There's all the wonderfully random nightmarish nonsense that I do so love! ::: Horror show frat: see the brutal recruitment methods of the good 'ol days! When Bimbo says he doesn't wanna be a member, they make his life a living hell-literally! "Wanna be a member, wanna be a member!!?" I love that, it's so absurd and surreal. I mean, a member of what exactly? This is crazy cooky 1930s Fleischer cartoon land-who the hell cares! Anything can happen there...WHY NOT?! I love the cool revolving room with the many doors of mystery where every room has some gimmicky trap. And now behind door number one... And the show really takes off beautifully when it gets to Bimbo's final run through the tunnel of doom. It's like a ghost train. And I would like to point out that the brilliant door-within-a-door-within-a-door scene is the part of the cartoon that can be briefly glimpsed on a TV screen in Twilight Zone: The Movie! ::: Very well worth seeing for any fan of vintage animation or just for anyone who likes a little dark wanton with their toons.

Salazar "Bimbo's Initiation" is a hilariously surreal cartoon about Betty Boop's boyfriend, Bimbo the Dog. While the cartoon may not be suitable for children (but then again Betty Boop was- and still is- an adult cartoon, really), "Bimbo's Initiation" is one of those old crazy cartoons you just gotta watch.OK, the synopsis for "Bimbo's Initiation": The cartoon opens with Bimbo walking down the street, harmlessly enough walking over a series of manholes, when an evil Micky Mouse traps him in an open sewer! Bimbo slides down a tunnel and lands in front of a secret society of candle-headed weirdos. The leader asks Bimbo "Wanna be a member? Wanna be a member?". Bimbo of course replies "No!". The secret society weirdos then send Bimbo on his way (or so he thinks), but he really ends up in a sadistic fun house, with the secret society popping up every now and then asking Bimbo "Wanna be a member? Wanna be a member?" What I find as one of the strangest things about "Bimbo's Initiation" is Betty Boops design. In this cartoon she has floppy dog ears, but is still human (apparently Betty Boop was originally meant to be a sexy anthro dog. Anyway, the surrealness of "Bimbo's Initiation" is very well done, combining comedy with some scary elements, ultimately creating a beautiful nightmare very well worth watching.In short, watch "Bimbo's Initiation".

theowinthrop Because of the way the Betty Boop cartoons were shown on television in the early 1960s, certain cartoons were not pushed too much. Those that showed her as she was originally drawn, with "dog" ears", and which hinted at more raw sex than the occasional lapses of later "domesticated" Betty Boop cartoons with her inventor "Gramps" and with her cute dog "Pudgy" were never shown. This, unfortunately, reduced the chances of seeing some of the early Boop supporting cast - Koko the Clown ("Out of the Inkwell") and the male dog Bimbo. Bimbo was Betty's boyfriend in some of the early cartoons - like this one.Here we see Bimbo strolling along, minding his own business, when he falls down a manhole - and immediately the manhole is shut with a heavy lock applied to it. Bimbo finds himself in an underground structure surrounded by about ten masked men who are the members of a society and offer him a chance to join. But he sees they have paddles, and he refuses. And then the surreal world of the Fleischer studio takes over: Bimbo is pushed from one room of the underground structure to another - and in each he is confronted by torture devices that are aiming to kill him. He is also confronted by corn ball jokes (he opens a door and sees a skeleton on a pay phone, telling his girlfriend, "I have a bone to pick with you!"). Every now and then he meets with the spokesman of the society, repeating the offer ("Do you want to be a member? Want to be a member?" And each time Bimbo refuses, and the process of torture begins again.Then Betty pops up to briefly rescue him. At the tail end of the cartoon Betty is there and goes into a dance, and she makes the offer - and now Bimbo accepts it. Then all the members remove their clothes, and they are revealed to be Betty Boop clones.As I said earlier there was more raw sex in these cartoons than in the later ones. Betty, to keep Bimbo's total fascination with her from flagging, whacks herself on the behind while dancing. At the tail end of the cartoon (no pun intended) as she and new member Bimbo are jointly dancing they both "playfully" whack each other's behind a bit. Done tastefully...of course! It was a more open era before the Hays Office Code and the Breen Office really got underway in Hollywood three years after this cartoon was made.