Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: September 20, 1940
Stars: Popeye
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
Without any explanation Popeye walks through a medieval setting, where he meets William Tell.
When William Tell refuses to bow for the governor, Popeye volunteers to act as his son, so he can shoot an apple from his head. But Tell misses, and Popeye collapses. But when Tell is about to be beheaded, Popeye comes to the rescue, with help of spinach.
The story of ‘Popeye Meets William Tell’ is not really remarkable, but the cartoon is full of silly gags and anachronisms. None of it makes sense, and there’s a sense of anarchy present reminiscent of the Marx Brothers films.
The cartoon is a rather oddball entry within the Popeye series, with the designs of the other characters being more reminiscent of the inhabitants of Lilliput of ‘Gulliver’s Travels‘ (1939) than of the other characters in the Popeye universe. The short is definitely worth a watch, as it displays the large amount of creativity the Fleischer studio put into this series.
Watch ‘Popeye Meets William Tell’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This Popeye film No. 87
To the previous Popeye film: Puttin on the Act
To the next Popeye film: My Pop, My Pop
‘Popeye Meets William Tell’ is available on the DVD set ‘Popeye the Sailor Volume Two’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 
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September 6, 2018 at 06:39
DawnSeeker / DawnHoof
Fantastic!!! My Dad was in Fox Orchestra from the late 40s through when he died in 1970, saxophone and clarinet. (Also Bandleader at Disneyland) He always said the cartoons were the most difficult music to play! Dawn
Read about Dad and hear his music in this post: https://journalofdawn.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/you-can-do-anything/
September 6, 2018 at 05:54
wotppaper@aol.com
Shamus Culhane went into detail in his autobiography on the making of this cartoon, which he ended up calling an unsuccessful experiment in trying to do a little different humor and personality animation than normal in the Popeye series (he also said the extra work put into the cartoon pushed it so far behind schedule his crew had to work through the studio’s Christmas Party in order to make deadline, which shows how long some of the shorts took to go from animation to release).