![]() Her trademark garter is long gone remnants of a past sex life. Stuck in a servile, matronly role, she plays second banana to man’s best friend. The proof of pudding is in shorts like The Foxy Hunter (1937) from Volume One, in which Betty is anything but foxy. ![]() Actually, Betty Boop was spayed and destroyed by the Legion of Decency and by Will Hays. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) Betty (making her first on-screen appearance in 49 years) tells Bob Hoskins that she was ruined by color. The basic rule with Betty Boop is that the shorts are best up through 1934. Indeed, it is the post-Code Betty which is indirectly responsible for the bland fridge magnets and license plates we have been saturated with by companies and persons who have probably never seen Betty in in her original incarnation. Since Republic strove to release a complete collection, this inclusion was necessary, but it’s certainly not Betty at her best. The Definitive Collection conceptually broke the Fleischer shorts into “the Birth of Betty” (she debuted in 1930), “pre-Code,” “Surrealism,” and “Musical Madness.” However, the collection also featured the later, watered down, post-Code Betty, complete with her Promise Keeper-styled housedress and a boyfriend (to keep her monogamously domesticated). ![]() ![]() (Earlier this year, Legend Films released The Uncensored Betty Boop, which is exactly what it says it is: pre-Hays Code Betty, but of fairly low-grade quality). Although Volume 1 is not perfect (more on that later), it is the best Boop collection we have seen since the eight volume Definitive Collection distributed by Republic on VHS in 1996. Betty Boop, The Essential Collections, Vols 1 & 2 (2013) are long overdue. Hands down, the most indispensable DVD/Blu -ray collections released in 2013 are the two volumes of the Fleischer original Betty Boop cartoons from Olive films. ![]()
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