Spook No Evil

'Spook No Evil' is an example of a decent, sweet cartoon, but falls short of being exceptional. It starts off interestingly different (how many other Casper cartoons start with ghosts sentencing one of their own for mutiny) and then quickly becomes standard Casper territory.

Famous Studios' cartoons are not for all tastes, but my opinion is that their early stuff and some of the early 50s output are good. While they were very formulaic they were always well animated and voiced with some funny parts, some poignancy and decent characters and their regular composer Winston Sharples could always be relied on to write a great and often outstanding score.

Admittedly though, by the mid-50s through to the late-60s Famous Studios' cartoons did get repetitive. While Sharples' music still shone and the voice actors did their best the animation suffered due to lower budgets and tighter deadlines, the humour became more tired and slow in timing than sharp and funny, the stories became increasingly predictable and rehashed and some characters started losing their initial spark, this is particularly true of most of the later Herman and Katnip cartoons.

This does look like a copying and pasting of some of my previous reviews for the Casper the Friendly cartoons, but this is largely due to that they mostly have the same strengths and the same faults. There is not much spooky or evil about 'Spook No Evil', in fact it's cute and sweet.

Story-wise, while very sweet and touching often, it is repetitive and very more of the same (the ghosts going off to scare while Casper finds a friend, people or animals being afraid and running away from him, making a friend and then saving them from a life or death situation), if you have seen any Casper cartoon it won't take long seeing more that you're watching basically the same story or structure but with variations. The dialogue also falls on the wrong side of twee and out of all the things when thinking about 'Spook No Evil' it is the dialogue here that is the least memorable.

Animation has also been better, not awful certainly but it's not as audacious or as lively as before. Some of the colours are nice, the varied reactions to Casper are imaginatively done (especially for the sardines) and the backgrounds are meticulous in detail, but some of it is flat and once Casper arrives on the island some of the drawing is also a bit rough.

Winston Sharples' music score here is typically merry and whimsical, it's beautifully orchestrated, energetic, has much nuanced pathos and adds so much to the mood. His music has always been one of the best assets of the Famous Studios cartoons and it's not an exception here. In fact, the way it's orchestrated and fits with the action so well it is what makes 'Spook No Evil'.

The friendship between Casper and Jocko is adorable and touching, and the climax has the right amount of intensity and urgency.

Overall, cute but unexceptional and while pleasant we've just seen it too much before and it was starting to get tired by this point. 6/10 Bethany Cox