Friday, September 23, 2022

From Comics to Toons: The Brow's bad day (The Dick Tracy Show, 1961)

 You have to feel sorry for Dick Tracy's foe, The Brow. We saw him yesterday on Archie's TV Funnies, where he was treated like the menace he was meant to be. 10 years earlier, he and other villains were treated like saps by UPA for Dick's made-for-TV aides.

This video has three Brow & Oodles shorts, in which the villains bumble their way to jail.

"Lighthouse Creepers": Go Go Gomez (Paul Frees) is up first against Brow & Oodles, and, wellllll.......

"The Vile Inn": Next, it's Joe Jitsu (Benny Rubin) shutting down Brow's operations at a cheap motel.

"Banana Peel Deal": Finally, Hemlock Holmes (Jerry Hausner) goes after another of Brow's smuggling operations.


Rating: C.

2 comments:

Silverstar said...

All potentially offending racial caricatures aside, it's worth mentioning that Dick Tracy's creator, Chester Gould himself, wasn't crazy about this adaptation of his work. He felt it was pandering too hard towards small fries, and he felt his strip was meant to be more edgy and serious.

I don't know how Gould felt about Filmation's take on his work.

hobbyfan said...

I don't know how Gould took the Filmation version, either, but as I wrote the other day, they had a chance to spin Tracy off from Archie's TV Funnies, and they didn't. Which might answer our questions.