We recently discovered a few arachnid visitors in our bedroom, so I thought I’d track down a spider-centric cartoon for today. Happily one of the first ones I found was a Fleischer Brothers production.

This has got to be one of the most horrific animated shorts I have ever seen. The spider itself has a wonderfully creepy design complemented by the Fleischers usual jazzy animation, but what really turns Cobweb Hotel into nightmare fuel are its victims, a collection of flies all squealing for help as they struggle uselessly against their prisons. Makes me wish that the Fleischers had matched the longetivity of Disney. Animation would have been a much darker place if they had persevered.