Lobster Role
Billy Bletcher — of THE LOST CITY ill-fame — has an oneiric kerfuffle with a giant lobster in this inexplicable 1928 short.
The diminutive thesp succumbs to a midnight feast of lobster and pickle, leading inevitably to an animated dream sequence in which the warring comestibles raise not-so-merry hell in a drawing of his stomach. From here the dream becomes at least partially live action, with the nightshirted performer chased hectically through a glaringly bright suburban sprawl by a full-sized man in a lobster costume, looking like a creature from a 50s scifi flick or a 60s kaiju movie.
The fact that the lobster pursuer, Bletcher’s bed, Bletcher’s trousers, and sometimes Bletcher himself, are sometimes replaced by cel-animated doppelgangers adds to the sense of unheimlich manoeuvres here. This merging of live action and cartoons reminds me of Lugosi’s bat transformations in ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, which always seemed legit cool to me, or the flying effects in the 1948 movie serial SUPERMAN, which are interesting but seem also like a bit of a cop-out. You’ll believe some drawings of a man can fly! Whereas Lugosi’s transmogrifications look forward to the art of the morph.
THE FRESH LOBSTER is made more intriguing by the fact that it’s (a) a silent film with no intertitles at all, one fewer than THE LAST LAUGH, and (b) it has a music and effects track but is wordless — the screams make this almost as unnerving on the ears as THE LOST CITY — and (c) it’s unsigned. I presume the producers, the excitingly named Max Alexander and Harvey Pergament, also directed it, but take no credit.
Max Alexander was a Laemmle nephew and a prolific producer — turns out he was married to Shirley Ulmer, before she ran off with Edgar Ulmer. Pergament was very much not prolific, so I sort of suspect him of being the creative genius here, since there aren’t any more fish like this in the sea.
So the film is a mystery — it’s about nothing, from nowhere, by nobody.
shadowplay
April 11, 2026 at 9:09 pm
I always assumed it was the effect artist’s resume piece, akin to a young actor’s 8×10 showing him in several speculative makeups (always including a grotesque old man).
Billy moved from silents to talkies, and then to primarily a voice actor for cartoons and radio. To wit:
April 11, 2026 at 10:17 pm
Seems crazy to make it as a resume piece and leave your name off it!
Bletcher may have been cast just to make the lobster costume look bigger.
April 11, 2026 at 10:46 pm
Or Mr. Alexander made it as proof of concept for a series or shorts or even a feature. Fleischer had pioneered many of the tricks already, followed by Disney and Lantz, so perhaps Alexander’s purpose was to prove it could be done on a given schedule / budget.