Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, this amazing stranger from the Planet Krypton, the Man of Steel, Superman.

I was in sort of a 1940’s cartoon mood this morning, so I give you Superman & the Mechanical Monsters.  The short film was released back on November 28th of 1941, but it looks similar to animation from my childhood.  The Mechanical Monsters was the very first story that featured Clark Kent using a telephone booth to discard his street clothes and change into Superman.  Apparently, this cartoon also influenced scenes from Castle in the Sky (great film!) and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

And while searching around the internet, I stumbled across this Techno music video made by Nick Benidt from footage of the cartoon:

The song here is ‘Nizhny Tagil’, produced by Marek Tejchik from the Berlin-based minimal techno label, FRUCHT.  It has a lot of vintage sounding robot sounds, so I see why Nick chose The Mechanical Monsters for the video.

Here’s Nick’s excerpt:

“The song reminded me of robots, buttons, technological gizmos, etc…so I started thinking about footage I had seen or downloaded over the years. I remembered a special film I’d been saving for the right inspiration. It was a Superman cartoon made in 1941 called ‘The Mechanical Monsters’ In those days TV wasn’t around yet, so people would have seen this 10 minute cartoon before the main attraction in the cinema.”

Alright folks, now go dress up as a robot and scare some people.

Happy Halloween!

-RSB