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5/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Ye Olde Songs remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you got five minutes and a soft spot for creepy, bouncy black-and-white animals, Ye Olde Songs is a neat little trip. It is definitely not for everyone, and most modern viewers will probably find the repetitive loop animations annoying as hell.
But if you like early animation history, this Paul Terry short is like finding a weird old toy in your grandpa's attic. 🐭
The whole thing is basically just a glorified sing-along. There is no real plot, just a bunch of farm animals getting way too excited about folk songs.
Frank Moser and Terry basically just drew characters bouncing up and down to create a rhythm. Sometimes, the movement is so lazy it is actually funny. I swear the same three frames of a dog nodding its head are used about fifty times.
There is this one moment where a cat starts playing its own tail like a violin. It is supposed to be cute, but it just looks painful and weirdly surreal. 🎻
It has that same cranked-out, frantic energy you find in other early silent oddities like Boo! or even Streak of Yellow. They did not have time to make it perfect, they just needed to get it in theaters.
The backgrounds are almost totally empty. It is just a white void where physics do not exist and dogs can stand on two legs forever.
You can tell they were trying to figure out how to make music visual before sound cartoons really took off. It does not always work, but the effort is kind of charming.
My favorite part is a weirdly aggressive frog who just stares at the screen. He does not even dance, he just... vibing in a very threatening way.
Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not. But it is a cool, dusty little relic that shows how we got to modern cartoons. If you have a few minutes to waste, give it a look.