The Cobweb Hotel: A quick look at one of the creepiest cartoons ever made
It’s such a myth that the early days of cinema were mild, tame and restrained. Certainly the advent of the dreaded Production Code bullied feature films into restraint, but even then, filmmakers had to be creative when dealing with unsavory or explicit and suggestive subject matter, a fact that very often made the movies ever dirtier.
But cartoons of the 1920s to late 1930s weren’t as slave to censorship and as such can often be relied upon to be quite bizarre and boundary-pushing. And in the case of 1936’s The Cobweb Hotel, the subject matter is deeply disturbing and astoundingly macabre. The short is the product of sibling animation trailblazers Max, Lou and Dave Fleischer (Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman), with Dave directing, Max producing and Lou involved in the music supervision and man, is it weird and cool…
The ‘toon tells the tale of the titular haunt, a multi-room hotel situated on what appears to be one of the Fleischer’s desks and run by a toothy, drooling and skeezy-voiced spider (vocal work by Jack Mercer). The malevolent arachnid warbles the title tune “Spend the Night at the Cobweb Hotel,” which morbidly invites patrons to check in and then never, ever check out again. As we see, the evil spider (who is, of course only acting on his nature) traps traveling flies and bugs in his lair with the promise of escape and hospitality and then ensnares the poor, screaming little creatures in his webs, saving them to be devoured by his drooling maw later. But when a newly-wed fly couple come to seal their deal, the spider may just have met his match…
This wonderfully-animated short can be, in some ways, seen as a pre-cursor to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. That’s not a stretch. It’s possible Hitch and screenwriter Joseph Stefano (and maybe Robert Bloch) had seen the cartoon in their travels. There’s even a line in Psycho referencing that old adage about parlors and spiders and flies and that line is present here as well. Maybe a dash of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in here too and Tobe Hooper’s follow-up, Eaten Alive. Maybe not, but it’s fun to consider this…
Either way, it’s odd how many people don’t speak of this creepy cartoon more often when discussing the Fleischers’ work (though it did appear briefly in the 1988 film Night of the Demons) and so, on this dark Saturday night, we’re pleased as punch to point a spotlight on it for you.
Settle in and get ready to be cheerfully creeped out!
