This is "Bug Vaudeville", an 11.5-minute movie and part of the "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend" series by American animation film pioneer Winsor McCay. It is from 1921, so has its 95th anniversary this year and not too long anymore until the century is full. In my opinion, it was an okay watch. Of course, you should not see it from the perspective of today's animation, but you need to keep in mind that this is from almost a century ago and it paved the way for many successful animators and inspired them to take a job in the profession and come up with quality films during the Golde Age of Animation. Admittedly, also in terms of the story, this film here is not the most creative achievement. A guy falls asleep and dreams that he is watching a stage on which all kinds of bugs perform, dance and sing and show boxing fights even. this is what vaudeville is. But it is all very absurd in this little movie. I just cannot recommend the watch to anybody other than film historians.

Bug Vaudeville is just that: a series of insects performing various acts (boxing, dancing, acrobats, etc.) while a man watches. Give Mr. Winsor McCay credit for detail in the insect drawings and, unlike his mosquito short, there's nothing frightening here. Well, except maybe near the end when a spider appears and seems to tear the man apart before our eyes but then he wakes up...Pretty fascinating of a bit more conventional for a McCay animation. Loved some of the humorous touches like the potato bugs "boxing" or the somersaults of a couple of other insects. Anyone who has major interest in all animation history especially that of McCay's should check this rare short film at least once.

Winsor McCay's 1921 cartoon 'Bug Vaudeville' has almost precisely the same plot and premise as Karel Capek's stage satire 'The Insect Play', which was first produced in Czechoslovakia in 1922. I wonder if Capek saw McCay's cartoon.We have here a series of variety turns by various species of insects and arachnids. In several cases, McCay amusingly matches a particular vaudeville act to an appropriate species: a daddy-long-legs does an eccentric dance, while two tumble-bugs perform as acrobats. Some of the other pairings of species and performance seem more arbitrary: the potato bugs stage a boxing match, while a cockroach is a bicyclist.McCay uses a framing device to include 'Bug Vaudeville' in his sporadic series of 'Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend' cartoons: a tramp has cadged some cheese from a housewife, and the bugs' antics are apparently his cheese-induced nightmare. In Capek's play, the tramp's slumber is induced by alcohol, and the antics of the various insects are parodic reflections of various forms of human behaviour.'Bug Vaudeville' is amusing, and skilfully animated, but insects just don't seem to work well as cartoon characters, unless most of their distinctive appearance (and behaviour) is removed. The Fleischer Studio's 'Mr Bug Goes to Town' was a flop, even when re-released with a non-insect title, and Walt Disney famously had almost every insect trait shorn from Jiminy Cricket until the character was essentially a miniature human.McCay, a major newspaper cartoonist in his day, made very few animations because his toons were so labour-intensive: McCay executed all the drawings himself, without the use of 'in-betweeners'. In his early toons, he drew on paper rather than acetate cels, forcing McCay to re-draw background art even when the background didn't change.Sadly, almost none of McCay's original artwork survives. In 1982, I interviewed American comic-book artist Leonard B Cole, who worked alongside artist Robert McCay (Winsor's son) in the 1940s. Cole told me that McCay once brought a large quantity of his father's artwork to the studio where they worked, and offered to give it away to any artist who would take it. There were no takers, so McCay simply threw out the lot! (Cole spent a long time regretting his decision to decline the offer.) Today, those illustration boards would be priceless. I'll rate 'Bug Vaudeville' 8 out of 10. It's not very funny, but it's impressively made.

So, for those who haven't seen it, let me tell you about "BugVaudeville." It is framed as a dream. This indigent character goesto sleep under a tree and dreams a series of vaudeville actsplayed by bugs -- roaches, a daddy long-legs, butterflies, andothers. During these acts we see the head and shoulders of thedreamer at the bottom of the screen, rather small, so you don'tnotice them much. The last act is presented as involving a spiderand a fly. The scene is lush vegetation. A spider drops down fromthe top and hangs from a single thread of silk. The spider doesvarious things and goes on and on until you begin to wonder:Where's the fly? And then the spider reaches down to the bottomof the screen and grabs the small black silhouette, pulls it up -- itis not a fly, of course, it's a man, struggling against the spider -- and quickly devours it.End of dream.