One of the first things that I noticed about "Have You Got Any Castles?" was the racist portrayals of certain characters (Fu Manchu, Uncle Tom's Cabin). Other than that, it was a pretty neat entry in the "books come alive" genre. A previous reviewer noted that most of the books portrayed in this cartoon are books that had recently been turned into movies when the cartoon came out, and the characters in the books resemble the actors from their respective movies (Charles Laughton in "Mutiny on the Bounty", Victor McLaglen in "The Informer", etc). It was probably intended to appeal more to the movie-going audience than to bookworms. But of course, isn't it easier just to watch the movie than to read the book? Thinking about this cartoon in its historical context, I can't help but imagine what it would look like nowadays. Many of the novels portrayed would be pretty grim (e.g., anything by Stephen King), and there might be a number of political books, cookbooks, self-help books and foreign language dictionaries. Out of "The Shining", Jack Nicholson would chop a hole in a door and say "Here's Johnny!"; out of the James Bond novels, Sean Connery would bed the world's hottest babes; and then there would be Noam Chomsky's various books about US-foreign policy. Go figure! Anyway, it's a cartoon worth seeing. So is "Book Revue", starring Daffy Duck.
Review of Have You Got Any Castles?
