The Final Episode #57: Dennis the Menace (1986 - 1988)

 

Another new day has brightened our souls and refreshed our hearts and you know what that means - It means I talk about another thing that you have forgotten about, yet is still somewhere stuck in a crevice within your brain. Yes, today we talk about another totally picked out at random television show. It's not really at random. It's the first thing my brain thinks of when I wake up. When my brain finally started working after getting up I first thought of this, the Dennis the Menace cartoon from our good old friends at DiC animation. This is the era of DiC animation that I affectionally refer too as "Inspector Heathcliff" which is from 1983 to about 1988 before Andy Heyward started making the cheapest cartoons he could. I don't care what you say but those 5 years produced some great animation and I will die on this hill. Yes, I will die on the hill for the Dennis the Menace cartoon no one remembers. The best thing I can say in my defense is that it's clearly not the worst thing to die on a hill for. Where the hell did the term "Die on a hill" even come from?

Anyway, I hope I don't really need to go in fully about DiC animation this time. They created Inspector Gadget. If were born between 1977 and 1990 you saw enough of their cartoons to choke a cow. I love DiC Animation. Yeah not everything they made was good, but man I had great memories of a lot of their series. I will now completely and randomly jump to talking about the creation of Dennis the Menace because I never listened in school because I didn't want to be there. They tried to figure out every reason why I wasn't doing well except just asking me  and I would have said I DONT WANNA BE AT THIS CRAP HOLE. Jesus man. Maybe ask the damn child before you go to the specialists. Uh... let's just begin a new paragraph and pretend this one didn't exist. Sound good? Sounds good to me too.

Dennis the Menace was created all the way back in 1951 by a man named Hank Ketchem. I should also mention because we are going to talk about those rascals in GREAT BRITAIN today for a bit that on the EXACT same day someone working at the Beano created THEIR Dennis the Menace. That Dennis the Menace would probably shiv you. This one is just a bit hyper. Britain is a weird place. It was a pretty popular comic strip as in 1959 they created a TV show that apparently appeared as reruns on YTV. I was literally amazed by that. I watched that after school break because it had Batman and Power Rangers and I would have sworn to Jesus that I had never seen a second of that series. I'm just wondering If I did or not. Yes, Only I could have an existential crisis over the 1959 - 1963 Dennis the Menace television series. In 1985 DiC hit gold with another animated series based on a comic strip Heathcliff so I guess they decided why not let's do Dennis.

I must say that when I was a kid I loved Dennis the Menace. I watched this cartoon. I liked the movie. I apparently watched the 1960s series (is it fair to really call a series that starts in 59 a 50s series? Do you call it both? This is a question that comes up in my brain quite frequently because my brain is strange and makes no sense.). I bought tons upon tons of the comic strip in little cheap books that I'm amazed survived for 30 years before I got my hands on them and ruined them. I read that shit like their was no tomorrow. I would go to Dairy Queen as much as possible because uh I liked the ice cream treats they had there but they also had Dennis the Menace on them and I would feel remiss if I did not mention that fact.

The Final Episode of this show was hog wild. I forgot the insane adventures that Dennis the Menace had. The only problem I had with this episode was the fact that I watched it from a staticky weird noised video file that was probably taken from a decades old VHS tape. If you don't know what a VHS tape is this blog is not for you and please go away. There are three episodes and they are all a whole hell of a lot of fun and this version of Dennis gets himself into so much insane shit. In the first story called "The Wright Stuff" Dennis is doing an experiment about flying involving the Smart Kid Who's Name I Was Too Lazy To Look Up and BAM! a fucking out of nowhere lightning shit happens and Dennis is sent back in time. If you know a single thing about history you know where he goes too. Dennis meets Orville (what a nerd name lol) and Wilbur Wright. The guys who flew the first airplane. They get Dennis to look after the airplane from people who want to steal it. The Wrongo Brothers (yes a joke you'd only find in a 1980s cartoon. I love it) and it ends up with DENNIS being the first person to fly a plane correctly except no one sees him. The Wright Brothers still get the credit and Dennis talks to his friends about his weird ass experience. 

The second segment called "Hassle in the Castle" involves Dennis and his dad Henry (yes Hank Ketchem named the dad character after himself and his son was also named Dennis! wild!) going to a business trip in JOLLY OLD LONDON ENGLAND. The business trip gets cancelled so they go on a tour of a castle that has the Crown Jewels in it. I'm pretty sure every cartoon series or hell any series that went to England HAD to mention the Crown Jewels or the Queen would judo chop them in the face. She's a tough old broad. Uh... anyway they meet a kid named Nigel and also there's a big deal made about a frog in the first few minutes that Dennis brought with him and you'd expect him to do something at the end but the writers at DiC Animation told Chekov's Gun to go fuck itself. It doesn't rule what they want!

Anyway they are met by the ghost of a lady called Annie Bonley or something. This isn't a history lesson on wither or not this person existed. This is a history lesson on the Final Episode of Dennis the Menace's cartoon series from the 1980s. A much more important and serious thing that should be discussed. She's got her head in her hands and I'm pretty sure if a cartoon did this today she'd have it on her body. Cartoons today are made for wimps and bums. She shows them to some police officers or as they call them in JOLLY OLD LONDON ENGLAND, Bobbies. England is a weird place. Anyway they have been tied up and have their clothes stolen and its up the Dennis the Menace to stop the theives. Which he does. There's a bunch of scenes in this segement that were clearly put in to make it longer than needed to me and I just jumped to the end. The Police Bobbies see the ghost and freak out but Dennis' dad is dead inside so he does not care about seeing a ghost. 

Sadly the last segment is still fun but it's clearly not HOG WILD like the first two. It's just Dennis bothering the shit out of a poor old man. It's funny as hell though. It's just your usual Dennis the Menace stuff. They all end up sleeping in a tent in the backyard because of Dennis being a hooligan. I'm pretty sure Mr Wilson never wants his wife to go away again.

FINAL VERDICT: I had a great time rewatching this episode and highly recommend it to others. I need to do more DiC shows. DiC is the best!