Good Scream Fun (1958) Online

As said in most of my reviews for the Casper cartoons, the late-40s to the early/mid-50s Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons had a higher budget and overall the overall quality was much better. Onwards, the quality did diminish quite significantly though the overall cartoons varied, some decent, many mediocre.

Famous Studios' cartoons are not for all tastes, but my opinion is that their early stuff and some of the early 50s output are good. While they were very formulaic they were always well animated and voiced with some funny parts, some poignancy and decent characters and their regular composer Winston Sharples could always be relied on to write a great and often outstanding score.

By the mid-50s through to the late-60s Famous Studios' cartoons did admittedly get repetitive. While Sharples' music still shone and the voice actors did their best the animation suffered due to lower budgets and tighter deadlines, the humour became more tired and slow in timing than sharp and funny, the stories became increasingly predictable and rehashed and some characters started losing their initial spark, this is particularly true of most of the later Herman and Katnip cartoons.

There are far better Casper The Friendly Ghost cartoons out there than 'Good Scream Fun', especially the cartoons from 'There's Good Boos Tonight', 'Once Upon a Rhyme' and 'Boo To You Too' (the cartoons from this to 'Boo Moon' varied but mostly decent), the very unique (and the most original Casper cartoon) 'Boo Moon' is also up there. It does have its good things (more so than most of the later Casper cartoons), but Famous Studios had declined by this point and the difference in quality from the very early Casper cartoons is staggering.

The best thing about 'Good Scream Fun' is the music score. Winston Sharples' music score here is typically merry and whimsical, it's beautifully orchestrated, energetic and adds so much to the mood, his music has always been one of the best assets of the Famous Studios cartoons and it's not an exception here. In fact how it's composed and how it meshes so well with everything going on in the animation, story and action contributes to it being the best thing about the cartoon.

While he is a character that won't click with everybody, Casper does win me over with his friendly nature and kindness. Ozzie is quite the adorable ostrich as well. The voice acting is good, Cecil Roy avoids being too cloying and Jack Mercer excels in multiple roles.

However, 'Good Scream Fun', as is true for most later Casper cartoons, is very repetitive, tired and dull plot-wise, very samey structurally and the dialogue once again falls on the wrong side of twee and is forgettable. Funny moments are reduced to one or two that are mildly amusing at best, even the reactions to Casper are not as imaginative, and it just felt too much of seeing a similar Casper story so many times before to properly emotionally invest. Again the relationship between Casper and the ostrich is sweet enough but also a bit too cutesy and saccharine. The climax doesn't really have the urgency and threat of earlier Casper cartoons, due to it being so predictable.

Not much better to say about the animation quality either. Much of it lacks vibrancy, the backgrounds have lost their meticulousness and the characters look hastily drawn and the overall drawing scrappy, as a result of lower budgets and tighter deadlines.

In conclusion, should have been more fun than it turned out to be, which was a very standard and pretty average Casper cartoon. 5/10 Bethany Cox