The Cobweb Hotel (1936) review: Weirdly creepy and totally worth 8 minutes

If you have eight minutes to spare today and love weird, old-school cartoons, you should absolutely watch The Cobweb Hotel. Bug haters will probably loathe it, but anyone who appreciates hand-drawn animation with a slightly creepy edge is going to have a blast.

It is just a tiny 1936 short from the Fleischer brothers. You know, the legendary guys who did Popeye and Betty Boop.

And speaking of Popeye, you can instantly recognize Jack Mercer's voice here. He plays the main fly husband, and Mae Questel does the wife. They are newlyweds looking for a place to stay on their honeymoon. 🍯

They end up at this creepy hotel in the woods who's owner is a massive, oily-looking spider. He is basically the ultimate sketchy landlord.

The spider is so obviously evil from the very first second he appears on screen. He sings this creepy little song to lure them in. "Come into my parlor," and all that jazz.

Honestly, the flies are kind of idiots for falling for it. There are literally skeleton bones of other bugs lying around the lobby! 💀

But the animation is where the real magic is. Everything bounces. Even the walls and the furniture seem to have a heartbeat. It has that classic, rubbery 1930s style that modern CGI just can not copy.

I love how the spider uses his webs like telephone wires. It is a really clever little detail that made me smile.

It is way shorter than sitting through a long feature like The Cuckoos, but it packs way more bizarre energy into its short runtime. It kind of reminded me of those old comedy shorts like Baby Talks, where the logic of the world is just slightly off from the very start.

The climax gets surprisingly intense. All the trapped flies break loose and start a mini war against their captor.

They use fountain pens like weapons and ink bottles as cannons. It gets pretty chaotic. The spider gets absolutely wrecked in the end, which is very satisfying.

One weird thing I noticed is how the spider's face changes. Sometimes he looks like a classic cartoon villain, and other times he just looks like a sad, lumpy old man. Its a bit inconsistent, but that is part of the charm of hand-drawn stuff from this era.

Anyway, it is on YouTube. Go watch it if you want some quick, spooky nostalgia. 🕷️