The Tantalizing Fly (1919) User Reviews

So tantalising.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 8/10 · 17 April 2015]

Despite being a fan of the feature film work that his son Richard did,I have somehow never seen a Max Fleischer cartoon.Taking a look at posts on IMDbs Classic Film board,I was delighted to spot that someone had posted a link to an early Max Fleischer title,which led to me getting ready to try and catch the fly.

The plot:

Drawing a cartoon featuring a clown,a fly suddenly lands on the paper.Seeing Max Fleischer fail to kill the fly,the carton clown comes to life,and tries to swat the fly out of his movie.

View on the film:

Crossing live action with animation,writer/director/actor Max Fleischer shows an extraordinary skill in cross both mediums seamlessly,thanks to Fleischer matching the lively,impressively crisp,fluid animation with excellent lashings of live action slap- stick Comedy,as Fleischer & the clown, (an early version of Koko the Clown,who was based on his performing clown brother Dave!)find the idea of killing the fly to become very tantalising.

Since time immemorial people have wondered why flies were invented . . .

[cricket30 · 6/10 · 18 August 2019]

. . . lamely floating such reasons as "They are necessary to feed the bats" (but who really needs bats, anyway?). THE TANTALIZING FLY is a title that holds out the promise on shedding some light around this age-old conundrum. However, this animated short more or less wastes four minutes of its viewers' time, not actually providing any useful answers as to why flies exist. Some people claim that flies are necessary to digest all the rotting corpses of horses, cows, and people when they croak at inconvenient distances from slaughterhouses and funeral parlors. However, TANTALIZING FLIES are few and far between above the Arctic Circle. Nothing ever rots there. (I once saw researchers pry open a seaman's casket up in the Far North on TV, and he was as fresh as the day he croaked 200 years earlier!) Furthermore, flies are not around to desecrate the thousands of mountain climbers who've died above the snow line during the March of Time. Trekkers often find fully intact Stone Age stiffs high up on the Alps--totally uncorrupted by flies--and the Nepalese allow hundreds of dead people to lounge on the slopes of Mount Everest, safe in the knowledge that this is a TANTALIZING FLY-free Zone.

Almost 90 Years Later, It's Still Very Clever

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 22 September 2007]

This was a very interesting mix of live-action and animation, showing animator and writer Max Fleischer drawing a cartoon of a clown. The problem is a real-life fly is on the paper Max is using and the fly is a pest to both Max and the clown, both of whom try to get the insect. This is pretty clever material, especially when you consider this silent cartoon is almost 90 years old.

This is a tough cartoon to watch because you want to swat the fly yourself as the bug is in the clown's eyes, mouth, nose, etc. It also gives you the creeps watching this. (The clown isn't happy, either!)

This really gets clever when Max tries to swat the fly, knocks the animated clown temporarily out and then the clown asks for Max's pen with an idea how HE can get eliminate the fly. He winds up squirting his "creator" in the face with ink, and other gags ensue.

All of this - and there are several more "bits" with the clown and the artist - are a credit to the ingenuity of Fleischer. You have to see this cartoon to believe it. It was part of the Popeye The Sailor 1933-1938 DVD Package

Watch The Tantalizing Fly for one of the earliest appearances of Koko the Clown

[tavm · 10/10 · 2 September 2006]

The Tantalizing Fly is one of the earliest appearances of Koko the Clown in Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series. In this one, a fly is bothering Max at the drawing board and Koko on it. In fact, Koko follows the fly as the clown twists and turns every which way on his body! The fly also goes around his face, and near his nose bothering Koko so much that he gets an ink spray that also sprays Max's face! Max eventually gets a fly swatter that ends knocking Koko out after which Koko draws a man in a chair, hits him on head when fly goes near it, chair man gets mad, Koko uses pen to siphon man back and Max then takes sheet Koko is drawn on to siphon the clown back in inkwell. When fly also enters inkwell, Max covers it with hand. The end. Very amusing early entry in Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series. Seek this one out if you're a die-hard animation buff.

Almost 100 years later, it's still very clever!

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 20 August 2018]

The above summary is because ccthemovieman-1 used the same summary--except he used 90 instead of 100 because his review came out in 2007.

Once again, we see in the Fleischer Brothers Koko cartoons a wonderful mix of live action and cartoon...something used very well in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" many decades later. Using their Rotoscope invention, Max was able to trace his brother, Dave, as he danced about and portrayed Koko...a process which made their cartoons much more fluid than their competitors and even today you have to be impressed with their work.

In "The Tantalizing Fly", a fly annoys Max as he's drawing Koko...and the fly begins to annoy Koko as well. It's all extremely funny...one of the best Koko films I've seen. However, sadly, it's also incredibly short...and is less than 4 minutes long.

Tantalising indeed

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 15 February 2018]

Max Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.

He may not be at his very best here, but 'The Tantalising Fly' lives up to its name and is among his better very early efforts. Love the character of the clown (an early version of one of the studio's better early recurring characters Ko-Ko), as well as the amusing fly and clever use of Max. The interaction between the clown and Max is a delight and very imaginative and clever.

Sure, there is not much special or anything much for that matter to the story, which is generally best to be forgotten.

Everything else though is done so brilliantly that any issues had with the story don't stay for long.

One expects the animation to be primitive and very low quality. While Fleischer became more refined and inventive later certainly, the animation is surprisingly pretty good with some nice visual wackiness and wit.

'The Tantalising Fly' is lively in pace and the bizarre and wild nature of the humour is done very imaginatively and never less than fun to watch.

Summing up, tantalising indeed. 9/10 Bethany Cox