Terror on the Midway has some mediocre animation, some bad animation, and some excellent design and direction. It’s also got a gratuitous Superman butt shot, which angles to show his curves in the red tights. It’s a weird shot. Especially since it keeps angling.
The cartoon starts with Clark (Bud Collyer) mocking Lois (Joan Alexander) for being stuck covering the circus. He then ditches her to go back to the paper, which isn’t revealed for a while because Midway’s busy with this adorable circus monkey releasing Gigantic the Gorilla, who causes the resulting Terror.
Now, there are circus attendants who try to tame the gorilla; they fail. They also all look exactly the same, basically like Clark without his glasses. When the cops show up, they too look exactly the same. As the circus attendants. The only variety in the character design is in these three little kids who are in danger. Lois saves one of them, which sets the gorilla on her trail.
After the gorilla has wrecked enough havoc to cause all the circus-goers to flee and loose some of the animals. And maybe kill three of the elephants. Midway could care less about animal cruelty. Some of the later sequences kind of revel in it.
Clark comes back to the circus right after he gets to the paper and somehow hears all the people running away. He still takes a cab because he’s not too worried. When he gets there, he tries to help an attendant hold down a loose elephant but can’t. Because, apparently, he doesn’t have any super-strength when he’s in his civvies.
Eventually he changes into the long-johns, beats up some terrified animals, and saves Lois. It takes him a while to save Lois, however, because he can’t quite best the gorilla. The gorilla’s apparently more powerful than two locomotives.
The animation gets shoddier as the cartoon goes on–though still with some great direction–with a particularly unsatisfactory finale. For a while it seems like the inventiveness (Lois the hero) and the design (the circus is visually stunning) might carry Midway, but no.
Not Recommended
CREDITS
Directed by Dave Fleischer; screenplay by Jay Morton and Dan Gordon, based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster; animated by Orestes Calpini and James Davis; music by Winston Sharples and Sammy Timberg; produced by Max Fleischer; released by Paramount Pictures.
Starring Bud Collyer (Clark Kent/Superman), Joan Alexander (Lois Lane), and Jack Mercer (Barker); narrated by Jackson Beck.
