41. You're Too Careless With Your Kisses (1932)

Warner cartoon no. 40.
Release date: September 10, 1932.
Series: Merrie Melodies.
Directed by: Rudolf Ising.
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger (no Harman or Ising credited on iMDB).
Cast unknown.
Animation: Rollin Hamilton and Larry Martin.
Musical Score: Frank Marsales.

The short starts off with a bumble that lives in the grassy area, the bee is drunk and walks very wearily down the path. He ends up swinging onto flowers and also sliding onto the stems of the flowers. The bee enters the house very quietly, as he doesn't want to wake up his wife upstairs or even know that he is drunk. As the bee takes off his shoes, he sneakily tiptoes his way to the stairs, as the shoes walk itself. He hushes the shoes, as he is about to walk up the stairs. As the bee walks up the stairs rather wasted, he loses his balance as he's at the very top, and since there is no banister to support it, he ends up falling down on the couch with a cushion that springs him on top of the staircase.

The bee enters his bedroom as his wife is fast asleep, but unfortunate timing happens as he trips: the blinds open and the alarm clock rings. The wife wakes up immediately, and accuses his bee (named Wilbur) for out drinking "spiked honey" again. The wife starts sobbing as Wilbur tries to explain by saying "but honey", but the wife starts nagging him "Don't you honey me...". Oh, I get the joke "honey" as in bumble-bees, and "honey" referring to names to call wives or girlfriends - is that meant to be the joke?

The wife accuses him by saying the lyrics to the title song, is this meant to be a musical or something? She states that he's "too careless with his kisses" as he pucks her on the cheek whilst dancing. The wife undresses her nighties into her regular clothes and concludes that "she'll have to do the work for him", with the husband bee laughing. Okay, this sequence is quite odd to me - they sing the title song while having an argument. Okay, so Rudolf Ising had to add a song into it because back in the WB animation studio, the staff were forced to.

As the wife storms out of the house, she flies out to pick some honey out of flowers by using her abdomen to scoop up the honey on the flower and sticking it back onto her bottom. The title song You're Too Careless With your Kisses is being sung in the background anonymously. I have to say, since when did Harman-Ising have various singers singing the song during a sing when there was no character singing it, I don't think this was used before.

As the bee was collecting honey (which was supposed to be the husband's job), there is suddenly a storm and rain falls down the sky immediately. The bee runs into a nearby house (not the house where she and her husband reside), but a house with a broken window. The door is locked, and she begs to let somebody in. There is a huge spider that resides in the house that looks at the bee in a rather peckish way. The door opens, in which the bee enters for some luxury. The spider looks at her, about to eat the bee; as soon as she looks at the spider he closes the door, locks the door and swallows the key.

Looks like this is another type of story where a villain tries to steal the girlfriend in which the man has to save the say in order to have his girl back. Not only will those stories still be going in those Harman-Ising cartoons, but it pretty much continues on in Buddy cartoons.

The girl bee hides inside the closet behindthe  a bottle of poison, the spider closes the door in which causes a blackout with the spider putting on a radio voice. Boy, Harman-Ising sure loved using blackout scenes to make their pictures entertaining. The girl bee cries out the window for help (as we can now see the quality of the picture), a hand grabs the bee away. The husband (Wilbur) hears the sounds of his wife being captured. Once again, it's the bee's duty to save his girlfriend.

The husband jumps out the window, and slides down a stem. He grabs out a flower as a trumpet to spread the message that his wife has been captured, and to order a group of bees to support his attack on the spider. A whole town of bees charge at the spider; who looks out his house to see what is going on. The drunk bee grabs out a thorn and pulls it on the spider's crotch, which indeed looks painful - but one of those reused gags. The wife bee orders a group to go after the spider.

The spider runs away from the group of bees, and jumps onto a bucket lying in the river. The spider grabs out a shotgun to try and shoot the  bees away. But a whole battleship of bees flying to the spider like an aircraft doesn't give the spider any luck. The husband and wife bees use champaigne bottles to soak the spider with a accordion to shoot the champagne out. There are peas that use weapons like peas in a pod and they use peas like bullets. The spider uses other weapons to dodge the bullets and there is a shoe-shaped submarine.

Meanwhile, a group of bees fly up in the air holding a dynamite which drops on the spider, with the bucket exploding. The spider lands on a trap with the bucket pieces trapping him with his hands and head caught, he is caught prisoner. All the bees cheer, especially the husband and wife bee - and that's all folks.

This cartoon was actually not bad to watch at all. The gags weren't reused too much, and neither were the gags reused badly at all. There were some interesting gags used for weapons that the bees use. It's kind of hard to describe how good or bad this cartoon even was. It certainly wasn't bad, in my taste, but it certainly wasn't great. It was a stronger cartoon than the other Ising Merrie Melodies cartoons that have been made.