Superman: Showdown
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The short starts off as a figure dressed as Superman breaks into a bank and later a diamond deposit to steal money and gems. He then reports back and delivers his findings to his boss, a mafia don. Every paper in the city runs the story that Superman has gone bad, but Lois Lane does not believe it to be true. As she and Clark Kent read the story at the Daily Planet, an office boy informs them that the editor, Perry White, wants them to cover the opera and gives them two tickets.
Showdown (1942) is the eleventh of seventeen animated Technicolor short films based upon the DC Comics character Superman.Produced by Famous Studios, the plot focuses on a criminal who impersonates Superman to commit crimes for a gangster. The short was released to theaters by Paramount Pictures on October 16, 1942.
February 27th, 2005 at 2:54 am
not a good superman
May 26th, 2006 at 2:38 am
It’s FOOOOOORMALLLL
June 11th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Was that kid at the start meant to be Jimmy Olsen, or the MAD Magazine guy?
Anyway, not a bad Superman flick, next to some of the others I’ve seen.
January 11th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Ok, it’s kind of corny, and not quite the Superman we’ve come to know and love, but still it is kind of cute.
I found it hard to believe that Superman could be held down by a desk on top of a trap door and Jimmy Olsen’s voice sounded like Buggs Bunny, but it’s a fun little ol’ time flick.
March 27th, 2007 at 7:09 am
It’s definitely a departure from the Super-science or war-time versions. A skinny crook is doubling Superman and stealing things, so Superman gets the blame for the robberies. His boss is a very Edward G. Robinson looking character who receives all of the items he steals.
When Superman is going after the pseudo-Superman up on a rooftop, the way he moves reminds me of the giant robots from the movie “Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow” (a really wonderful film worth seeing). If you take a look at the Superman cartoon “Mechanical Monsters” available on this website, you’ll notice those same robots in it along with a somewhat similar story. I wonder if “Mechanical Monsters” was the inspiration for “Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow”?
Personally, I think the copyboy is the little brother of the pseudo-Superman character. Their voices were very similar. Also I don’t think the copyboy is Jimmy Olsen. He’s too young and the ubiquitous camera wasn’t present.