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Rating: 4/7
This was the first cartoon Avery did for MGM, but chronologically it was released after Blitz Wolf and before Dumb Hounded, and placed as such on the Compleat boxset. Not a very bright move, since this looks like a total regression from the advancement he made on the “last” cartoon. (As an aside, I’d actually prefer to review cartoons in the order they were produced, but I have no way of knowing that for every one, so I’m stuck with chronological release dates. Except this one, I can’t stand the thought of listing it between Blitz Wolf and Dumb Hounded, so it goes first.)
Early Bird is something I can hardly stand watching. The Avery cartoons at Warner Bros., no matter how well they came off, had a sense of adventure to keep me interested even when that gags were lacking. This outing seems to be Avery on autopilot, but there’s nothing adventurous in here. It’s just leftover WB material without the experimental edge. More often than not the gags will try to be outlandish, but without solid build-up they capture my apathy.
There’s no single highlight anywhere. Even the best gags aren’t developed to their full potential. The worm picks up the water like a blanket and sees the bird underneath it, the worm and bird run into an advertisement for the very cartoon they’re in, the cat finds a sign at the bottom of the lake after falling off a cliff…these gags are just OKAY. They just happen and go on their merry way. When someone gets hit with a mallet, they just fall down. You know an Avery cartoon doesn’t have much going for it when someone gets hit and just…falls down. I could mention some more gags and how they’re just unjustified swipes from other cartoons or prototypes for even better stuff to come, but I think I made my point.
The story just isn’t Rich Hogan’s best. He’s always loved doing cartoons about chasing animals in the forest (as evidenced by Crackpot Quail, Of Fox and Hounds, and later cartoons he did for Avery), but he was able to come up with decent story points that followed themselves up. Here everything is on auto-pilot. Most of the scenes could be switched around and no one would notice. The ending is decent, but that’s it.
The one redeeming factor is the animation. The new crew is able to make the footage come to life even if that footage isn’t very rousing. Besides that, there’s no way I can give this a higher score. It’s tolerable, but after eight viewings it’s still forgettable.
Rating: 5/7
With the exception of three cartoons I don't enjoy and possibly three more cartoons that are just sorta, "ehhhh", there's not a single cartoon Tex Avery made at MGM that doesn't move me to ecstacy in some way. So basically these ratings are all meaningless and thrown out intuitively (More so than other directors).
Blitz Wolf is a mock battle between the three little pigs and Avery's wolf cast as Adolf Hitler. It relies more on exaggeration rather than the ridiculous physical twists of a Ventriloquist Cat or Bad Luck Blackie, such as the Wolf grabbing his tank like a skirt and daintily tip-toeing over the mud looking cautiously down, only to grit his teeth as he sets down and revs up. For a lot of flashy gun battles it's medium-paced and seems to be structured more like a spot-gag set than the throw-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink mentality of his cartoons from a few years later. The gun battles drag on a bit, but the gags leading up to them are much funnier.
Definately not an anti-war cartoon, it was made more for sweet release of seeing three cartoon pigs whip out the heavy artillery (so heavy in fact they take a long amount of time to show you how big like it was David Lynch) and blow Hitler all to hell. The wolf isn't a convincing caricature of Hitler like his human counterparts in WB cartoons so much as he is some schmuck who decided it would be funny to dress up like Hiter and play general. For some bizarre reason he brings in a fleet of tanks, with a few incidental gags like goofy signs sticking out of the tank entrance, and proceeds to do all the fighting himself, though not before daring the audience to heckle him with a sign of his own.
Two of the pigs are contrasted against their hard-working brother as appeasers, dramatizing the events that led to WWII better than Ducktators (It's so funny when one of them goes, "But Adolf, you're a good guy! Why, you hate war! You wouldn't go back on your word!"). It's over-the-top how they have new and bigger guns and planes with every scene. Some of their shells don't actually blow up but instead scream and light the wolf's shoe on fire. The wolf's own shells just oogle a magazine the pig holds up.
There's one scene outta left-field where the pigs bomb a miniture version of Tokyo - I think that's a harmless gag in as much as gags making fun of Japanese can be harmless. Plus I like the sun falling as its radiating beams fold up like paper.
Rating: 7/7
Droopy is one of those cartoon characters whose image and popularity has overshadowed what actually makes his cartoons great. If we go by these half-baked ‘tributes’ to Avery’s style (I’m speaking of that thing with Droopy working in a café that occasionally airs on Cartoon Network, and don’t get me started on the Tom and Jerry Kids Show), it must be Droopy’s ability to a) show up wherever the Wolf runs to no matter what and b) score with the redhead - A classic comedy routine that only Avery could have invented and perfected. So don’t anyone else try it, you’re bound to come up with something flaccid.
Droopy's debut doesn't put the characters through any mutilation - They don't shatter into a dozen pieces or smile from some place off their body, and the inanimate objects stay relatively consistent in shape and form, which could be why it doesn't receive as much attention as later Droopy's. Nevertheless, I consider this the announcement that MGM Tex Avery has arrived. Blitz Wolf was just a battle with some 'living' inanimate objects, but this is the first full glimpse of his new vision of the wolf, er, world we live in. Nowhere before have you seen a character fall from a sky-scraper overlooking a map of the East Coast of the United States, or, well, the crazily sped-up movements I'm about to describe below where someone can move all over the Earth and back like it was a piss break.
It doesn't push the envelope in twisted visuals as far as characters and objects, but Dumb Hounded has some radically new ideas in moving the characters through the scenery. The wolf's inital attempt to escape from Droopy, if it isn't the funniest moment in animation history, is definately the biggest adrenaline rush. When he zig-zags down the fire escape into a close-up of the city block as it funnels into a narrow street his cab hugs as it skids over the side of the road, heck, the side of the buildings, I literally feel my head spin. His first and lengthiest attempt to get away from Droopy results in a shotgun payoff for such an elaborately built-up gag, but the build-up is the real centerpiece, running all over the planet in every method of transporation at screeching speed. The return trip runs the footage and fiddle backwards so it sounds really screechy and dissonant. All this ensures the highest rating even if it's not the funniest cartoon I've ever seen.
Even though the coordination of the Wolf's escape attempts are the main draw, the 'normal' scenes still have lots of funny character animation, especially the Wolf's arms and upper body swapping the focus as he promises to stay in his room, and his turn to the audience to say, "Sucker", is one fine transition from profile to front. I even appreciate the 'dog talk' and 'fire hydrant' gags that introduce Droopy as well as his walking away from the trash can in self-defeat, making it all the more startling when his ever-lingering presence begins taunting the wolf, and the cluster of dogs flooding out of the gate that was used in Of Fox and Hounds looks even funnier here due to a more lower-view angle and a more absurd amount of dogs pouring out.
These little 'fills' in between escape gags may not turn your head on their own, but they do their job of psyching you up for when the wolf runs from Droopy, and they're funny enough in between the high-speed parts. These sharp transitions between the calm and hyper moments make you forget how repetitive the gag ideas are, and don't forget the wolf's varying reactions. His wild takes aren't as outrageous as in Northwest Hounded Police but the animation sure is.
Droopy also looks unlike his other cartoons. He's bulby with extraneous movement in his flappy cheeks instead of the streamlined droopy that always diddles along in highly concentrated walk cycles. Instead of dinky xylophones along with his tip-toeing, he trots on all fours to some lethargic violin.
Rating: 7/7
As if Avery needed to annhilate his old fairy-tale knockoffs in one fell swoop, in comes animation's tallest monument to sexual arousal, plus its biggest parody of Hollywood nitelife. Starting with an ordinary adaption of Little Red Riding Hood narrated in a prissy, insincere voice, Red, the Wolf, and Grandma get fed up with their current roles and shout at the narrator until he sets the story somewhere else. Particularly good is when the wolf mocks the narrator, though if you haven't figured it out already I'm a sucker for mimicking.
I've decided at this point that it's not the best 'Red' cartoon - Shooting of Dan McGoo has nearly every great part from here and about every type of gag imaginable, and Little Rural RH has more and better interaction, but what is here is absolutely stunning. The wolf stretching his leg, aroooooo-ing at Red is the herald of a new archtype in cartoons, an unashamed horndog anxious for sweet, sweet meat (cue Kowalski or Judas Priest) and not afraid to show it. This isn't the wholesome boy-and-girl-do-yardwork stuff of Mickey and Minnie, this is friggin' evil. The wolf is good natured enough so that you hope he gets the babe, even though he doesn't deserve her, but it's totally satisfying when she knocks him on his ass (Speaking of which, was anyone else peeved that the guy in 'Some Like it Hot' got Marilyn Monroe at the end? This is supposed to be a comedy, dammit! I want my protagonists MISErAbLe at the end! They gave a movie with crossdressing a crowd-pleasing "Happy Ending"! *pfffft*).
Red herself is animated by Preston Blair (according to Avery in that Joe Adamson book) each time in every cartoon, and she moves convincingly like a human, all without rotoscope. The wolf's expression of horniness isn't just limited to stiffening and howling, he also throws an incredibly complicated contraption on the table which whistles and claps for him, like Bug's mindblowing train robbery in Buckaroo Bugs, only not as funny, but close. When they actually meet, Wolfie's pick lines, one done in this really sinister voice and another sounding like a gameshow host, provide a little distraction between the outrageous howling animation and the sudden dash to chase down Red on her way to Grandma's (Who by the way is really hilarious in her first scene as her high-falootin' self).
The time the wolf spends in Grandma's penthouse apartment isn't the most compelling footage in a Tex Avery toon (and not because of lower sexual content), but it's a claustraphobic cut-to-each-room chase with the Wolf running into walls and the air, and Grandma's torpedo kissing is grotesque enough to justify this part. I could write more, but really, you'll be watching it for the night club scenery. For a consistent beat-audience-over-head with nonstop hilarity film, you'll have to see the later stuff. I have to say, at least, that they did an impressive job of conveying the intimidation of the city nightlife in Hollywood with just a few outside shots; the wolf's first appearence in his convertible and his speeding up to Grandma's floor are among the best layout jobs here.
Rating: 6/7
The rating here is totally meaningless (In as much as ratings are meaningful) because my enjoyment of Who Killed Who hiccups from time to time. Being one of my first MGM Tex Avery cartoons, the "WOW" factor was certainly there, but sometimes it just flies past me, mainly due to the detachment from the characters, who are more like bugs in a jar. The cop's role is to show the gags to the audience as much as interact with them, often giving the screen to a bunch of bodies falling out of the closet (This one with increasing speed and a quick interruption from one of the corpses) or a ghost who jumps on the stool and screams at the sight of a mouse. I still laugh hard at several moments each time I watch it.
It helps that the set-up, a parody of horror movies or radio programs or something like that, is established with these creepy, soft organ whispers (And I really love the low notes at the beginning, as well as the draddling "weeeeeh-eeh-eeh-eehs" in the middle) over some guy laughing an evil laugh and some woman screaming, and the effect is downright cheesy, especially when the picture frame that reads, "Spooky, isn't it?" makes an appearence.
The murder that sets the whole thing off is done with a hapless victim who learns of his own grim fate in a really unorthodox fashion, gets his request for a delay answered by the powers that be in the form of a note flying from out of nowhere, and finally dies amid several cuts between the gun and the clock, the moment of death coming after several rings of a bell. I haven't even mentioned how ridiculous the gun looks or how it didn't even look like it hit him, but even as a corpse he's still able to pose for the autopsy photo and demand his privacy under the blanket.
The bulldog detective, who is miraculously on the scene immediately after the murder (and with nice flourishes in his cheek flaps, too), assembles a line-up of suspects in a gag that would be used in a 'Garfield' comic strip, but since it's disrespectful to bring up Garfield in a Tex Avery review, the butler, maid, and chauffer look downright loopy holding their arms across their chest, sticking their fingers out, and paranoiacally leering back and forth before they stretch over to taunt the cop, swinging their bodies around like taffy before returning to position, which is even funnier than the actual payoff, also worthwhile due to the cop extending his leg to the door in a very crisp three-dimensional angle.
The cop pulls off a few great moments by shrinking in fear at the ghost and still counting to ten, literally reaching for the ceiling by sticking his arms up for a "wooooooooooooo" sound effect, and reacting in bewilderment to Santa Claus behind the closet door, the grafitti behind the picture, and falling through the floor and down the stairs. As an Avery filmography pointed out, the gags are the main character here, and someone is definately shaking that jar.
Rating: 6/7
Avery's sequencing and timing develops further, and though it starts out as another Three Little Pigs takeoff, it's really an excuse to have Junior wreak sweet havoc on the wolf while his parents are asleep. The technical features of the set-up are really something, with the narrator reading onscreen prose that scrolls down to ridiculous speeds until the narrator is sputtering, "...andhuffedandpuffedandhuffedandpuffedandhuffedandpuffed", like a broken muffler, only to lead to a seasonal change in the setting that instantly makes good on the wolf's impossible threat, "I'll get in if it takes me now 'till Christmas!".
Junior Pig reveals his devilish facade after his parents tuck him in, tip-toe a few paces and zip into bed, hyperventaliatingly snoring against a speedy orchestra playing 'Rock-A-Bye Baby'. He works hard at being likable despite his destructiveness, stopping the action for a self-deprecating joke ("I sure is a mean one, ain't I folks") in his thick, squeaky voice. Fortunately he spends most of the time making mayhem and otherwise doing fun activities like sliding down the banister into an expensive-looking vase and skidding to a halt right when his back arches against it, as well as pulling a chalkboard out and screeching with the chalk.
The wolf's entrance into the picture packs a ton of clever Avery-isms like dressing in a Santa suit behind a thin tree, and his observation of Junior from the window where he opens his mouth wide and unfurls his tongue to reveal a welcome mat puts his noggin at such a large proportion with dark, realistic, globby inking and detailed animation it shows how much it pays to have ex-Disney animators working with Avery. And the action between the two is so ripe with variations and flourishes it's practically a pinata of animated goodness.
Blitz Wolf was practically a spotgag cartoon with non-spotgag storyline and Early Worm hiccuped and spread its worthwhileness thin, but One Ham throws a gag in your face, turns you around, and throws another gag in your face. The timing and variations in all these walk cycles really works for their respective gags, the payoffs often lead to the wolf winding up and dashing in a fury for the next gag (When he finds the sucker, he flips around and charges like a skinny rhino), and Junior continually inflicts one grievous insult after another on the wolf, throwing freshly made pies in his face and stripping him of his fur. In a way this is where Tex of MGM really begins, aggresively running into one gag after another.
Rating: 5/7
Better than I thought at first, since the funny stuff is really funny. All of the gags at the beginning have my eyes nailed to the screen, with one buzzard's stomach desperately calling for a hamburger and the other imitating a condemned building with his mouth, and their arguing over the rabbit, moving their extended necks back and forth as they call, "I saw it no he's mine etc", in which the rabbit jumps in and starts arguing over himself, getting kicked out of the scene, hopping away and holding a "SUCKERS!" sign. The set-up is totally clinched with the Buzzards deciding to eat other, where they part company and dash back to the middle of the screen, literally clanging their gaping beaks against each other, walk off again, then rush back on brandishing knives, the funniest gag here.
However, the gags just come in a random order now, and though Avery is using the technique of setting up the next gag with the payoff of the last one more liberally, seeing these two try to eat each other nonstop gets a little repetitive (I gotta admit, at least the sheer senselessness of it all makes it funnier). There's still plenty of fun to be had with the Jimmy Durante-esque buzzard flipping through several different positions and expressions of fear, one of which makes close eye contact with his friend, in the stew pot, and the snake gag mainly because of its personality shift. In fact many of the double takes are funnier than the violence.
I'll always enjoy watching the best parts in here, but some of the scenes are a little forced, like the buzzard's way of luring the other one out of the cabin and the reprise of the rabbit gag at the end.
Rating: 5/7 Yep, for all three of 'em.
The time has come to do something I should have done a long time ago - Group a few near-identical cartoons together and review 'em in a single write up. I hope this doesn't come as an affront to the invaluable talents who worked on these things (This is how my David Feiss page is going to look, by the way: Rows upon rows of ratings, until finally a paragraph or two expressing my thoughts on Cow and Chicken. 'Kay, g'night, see ya.), but there's no reason for me to write about Happy Go-Nutty and Screwball Squirrel when I can't even keep their titles straight and literally can't remember which gags go with which plot. And I give Chuck Jones a hard time for recycling himself? (Although at least Avery never followed Duck Amuck with Rabbit Rampage - Yeeesh, it's like a rebirth...in slime).
So anyway, Screwy Squirrel was probably another attempt at creating a Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck type mascot, except going by the amount of scenes he hogs, they must have thought he would actually go somewhere. Nah, for Tex Avery, these are weak films. I mean, there are some hilarious moments sprinkled in, and that's what really counts at the end of the day, but he's done so many cartoons that make me laugh and offer so much more, I really don't relish the idea of seeing these over and over. As a personality, Screwy offers a low, creaky, relaxed voice to offset his non-stop antics, and he's self-aware enough to provide one commentary after another on his own actions. Had the people who made 'Animaniacs' been alive back then (Assuming natural selection doesn't kill them at puberty), they would have come up with Screwy. He gives me daymares of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot bouncing around, getting "in your face" with the dialogue, etc.
The first one begins with Screwy walking a cutesy chipmunk behind the tree, as he name drops all his cutesy forest animal friends, and assaulting him, which kinda makes me wonder if Tex is trying to tell us something about Bambi. He then phones over his arch foe, Meathead, ensuing an endless romp through the forest full of assaults, escapes, fakeouts, stairs in the hollow tree stump, chases interrupted by a skipping soundtrack, Screwy making himself seasick, and other gags Avery must have been getting out of his system so they wouldn't interfere with a better cartoon. I like the follow-up better, even though I gave it the same rating, because it has 'Moron Manor' and the Napoleaon-complex, plus the outrageous way of waking Meathead and the newspaper headline of him falling for Screwy's gag. But geez, they sure do have drawn out endings.
Screwy Truant has some uproariously funny moments mixed with relatively dull ones (that is, by Tex Avery standards), but the truant officer's manner of sneaking past the trees, Screwy's party favor concealing a mallet, and the phoney squirrel tail are among my favorite Tex gags. The Red Riding Hood crossover screams, "We had nothing better to do", but you can still look at Screwy shrinking, at least. They ramble, but they're funny, so I can watch 'em, only I don't get psyched.
Rating: 4/7
I feel I should find this funny, and heck, it does have some really funny gags, like the iron ball that makes the batter shake, the vibration traveling along the ground and into the pitcher. And it was a clever idea to skip the title at the very beginning and have someone ask where the Lion roar and credits are in mid-slide (hell, in mid-air). And "W.C. Field" is a decent sign gag (I wish he'd cut down the self-deprecating humor, though. False modesty is so annoying.).
So why do I think this is worse than Screwball Football, which would be about the only thing he did at Warner Bros. actively better than MGM? Screwball Football actually had comic actions having little to do with sports woven into the sport-y gags. The ballad dancing, the cheerleader screaming his head off, the fading player, the ridiculous, over-the-top animation. Every gag here is practically sports-centric, and it only concentrates on one gag per scene. I don't see a reason to watch this again and again when I only laugh at a few things, but it's definately worth watching until you appreciate the good stuff.
Liiike the spitball that actually spits and fastball, which leads the batter to miss three balls in a row. The loudmouth heckling the umpire and alternately getting him killed, the billboard losing its teeth, and such. Doing laundry lists is a good indication that I should stop writing now, so have a nice day.
Rating: 5/7
Lots of gags crammed in. It basically goes scene-gag-scene-gag-scene-gag and it doesn't grab me by the throat like Ventriloquist Cat. A Droopy-esque Indian enters by raising his tent and though he's made out to be a loser, what with the pot belly and limpid nose (that he has to move out of the way just to say something), he's lucid enough that Screwy has to out-manouver him rather than out-smart him.
The Indian chief sluggishly strolls out of the wigwam to 'Singing in the Rain', the big group of Indians do the wolf call (and mimick the chief's horrified leap from his ugly daughter all smooshed together), and a bunch of them are shown wearing colorful tunics (One of them welds at Lockheed - Now who would've imagined that?). The starring, hapless Indian goes from one gag to the next like a laundry list, so it's pretty much up in the air what I'll laugh at today and what I'll laugh at next time. The Bambi animals escaping his sight, him getting smashed into small Indians by the Squirrel, and the tip-toeing where his toes actually wiggle along the ground are personal highlights.
Rating: 7/7
Now this is the cat's meow. Everything I love about a 40's Avery MGM cartoon is in here. The crazy animations are brief, sharp, and twisted, packing as much visual flare into as few seconds as possible, such as the wolf's torso spin that is more face slapping than the scene's payoff, jettisoning his eyeballs across the room, and the opening scenes bring home the sadistic nature of the old west with a down-turning population counter and two gallows billed as a 'Double Header' attraction.
Waiting in the saloon is a panorama of a bar brawl/shootout so detailed it rivals the pan through Wackyland - Literally dozens of thugs are fighting it out as the camera scrolls past a view of two massive stories. Everytime I look at this I pick up some new guys running around. A few hang from the chandileer while shooting, some run all over and others confine themselves to repetitive, rhythmic motions, together they're like looking high up at a rippling ocean. I really don't know how in the hell this scene was conceived, but it always blows my mind.
The grave-toned narrator further brings home the decadence of this setting as he tours around showing things like the piano player grabbing beer and smokes from behind the piano and throwing out glasses and butts like he's at an assembly line, the bartender blocking the view of a nude painting (Don't get excited, he doesn't move allllll through the picture. Yeah, sure.), and Droopy - or Dan McGoo - working the slot machine that gives him three suckers.
What gets me most of all is how organized and worked-out the sequencing appears, though going by what Avery said about his work habits it obviously came together fast. The incidental gags, bigdeal visual gags, character reactions, and narration all trade spaces, each one letting the others go at the right time. The themes of sexuality, violence, and drinking escalate with every gag, that last one especially with a wild ride for a beer glass, skidding around a curb on the bar counter and stopping at an intersection for two other beers to cross the street...er, this might make more sense when you watch it, but that counter turning into a road out of nowhere is really something.
At some point the old wolf shows up (Though considering the barflies turn into wolves when they're first introduced to the Red Head early on one might say he was there the whole time) and though I hate to repeat somebody else's insight, Joe Adamson nailed the 'one foot in grave' and 'drinks on the house' sequence - These are illustrated so literally and suddenly that it's easy to accept their occurance, especially with the added addition of the guys "on the house" guzzling their al-kee-hol.
Then comes Red on stage just when the wolf is about to slice Droopy with a huge swiss Army knife, and he dashes for the table to make a RHRH-type display, and besides the stiffening that they just had to do again, all the wild takes are brand new, and these have the added benefit of interacting with Droopy, who rolls the Wolf's tongue back in his mouth for him and holds a piece of paper so Wolfie's eyes can burn holes in them with laser beams. Last time Red called out to the Wolf in the middle of the song, this time she literally flirts with him through the lyrics, though she obviously hates his guts.
Even before his shootout with Droopy the Wolf gets in a few more scenes senselessly blasting away, prompting an expansion on the end gag from RHRH where a row of hapless drunks get back up again to continue lushing. It's funny enough the way Droopy shows up in the most unexpected place to confront him, but the size of Droopy's gun is just one more subtle exaggeration to make an already funny gag even funnier (Oh yes, anyone who points out that this is a phallic joke dies) and the end has Droopy repeating some of the Wolf's 'disgraceful' displays, rocketing around the ceiling beam and mimicking his "aroooooing" in that meek Droopy fashion.
Full of one gratuitous gag after another Dan McGoo hits the building with the force of seven Avery cartoons, plus one. All you need of his reality-warping imagery, western-satirizing, and XXX humor are right here.
Rating: 5/7
Good, he ditched the squirrel. The Droopy-like Indian, now a pilgrim, from Watha is now pitted against a Durante Turkey and the gags keep rolling like an index. Unlike the last cartoon I actually follow this thing and enjoy it from start to finish. Not only is the set-up 10x more absurd, with aircraft carriers escorting the Mayflower, Pilgrims in line for cigarettes, a trailer park for Pilgrim rednecks, and a fence dividing Republican and Democrat towns (Little did they know that in this day and age our two-party system would really be one party in a clever disguise) they end the incidental gags and get to the meat of the story fast.
The timing is so fast most gags fly by before you're finished looking at the last one. Case in point is when the pilgrim paints a path on a brickwall and the Turkey runs through. Most cartoons take care to give you a painting lesson but here the Pilgrim just smears his brush across and gets a picture. The Turkey's showing up after running into the distance to taunt the Pilgrim is only the icing on this gag.
The chase is full of quick actions like the machine gun bullets firing out of the Pilgrim's old shotgun and the both of them marching to Yankee-Doodle-Dandee after the Turkey ignites some gunpowder. The funniest gag is when the Pilgrim yanks an Indian from out of nowhere, stammering in fright, and leaving his dentures behind to stammer more. The running-gag bear strolling randomly out of nowhere proves their undoing.
Rating: 6/7
The self-recycling is getting on my nerves a little, but Tex saves it with some incredible gags. No Bob Clampett cartoon I’ve seen has blatantly recycled any one premise, and John K. also keeps self-recycling to a minimum. But Tex, diverse though he is, reused his ideas a lot more (But the wolf and the redhead were big crowd-pleasers, so it must have been an easy formula for pumping out instant classics). Not that I’m really complaining, I just expect a lot from those I hold in high regard. At least Tex never pulled a Robert McKimson. But anyway…
Remember the Cinderella Meets Fella he did at that crusty old WB studio? We’ve got Cinderella and an alcoholic Fairy god-mother (this concept rules), but instead of Cindy falling for Egghead, she goes to a castle/nightclub to sing and escape from the wolf chasing after her. And the Fairy god-mother falls for the wolf.
I could also mention that this somewhat rips-off RHRH (I know we dropped the subject already but I meant to put it in and instead went off on another tact). The wolf chases LRRH until they both realize Cinderella’s name is in the title of the picture. How novel is that? Frankly the set-up doesn’t have the comedic value it did the first time around (updating the fairy-tale is a simple, effective concept, being in the wrong fairy-tale reeks of trying too hard to be clever).
But the gags are all new once again – well mostly. There are bits that are recycled (like the wolf’s seal noises and self-destructive fits of arousal), but then we have the wolf running through the house and right back in. Love the inside-the-house view when Cinderella slams the door on him. I also like how she’s such a tease – she smiles at him and even feels him over while singing to him, yet she obviously hates his guts. Was Avery trying to tell us something?
You basically know the cartoon if you’ve seen RHRH…the wolf keeps trying to get the red head while avoiding the god-mother. I’m not too keen on describing all the gags, because it’s all in the spirit of that pioneering classic, but the sequence where the wolf first meets Cinderella is perfectly executed, from her teasing smile to the wolf’s articulation break-down to his jump in the air (giving Cindy time to plan her funny reaction). I also like some of the stiff movements interacting against the background (Cinderella and the wolf bopping each other on the head for example).
This is all good stuff, but it doesn’t preserve the freshness of Avery’s classic set-up like Little Rural Riding Hood does. Now that one feels like two classic Avery cartoons crammed into one. I don’t see why the wolf was so repulsed by the fairy god-mother, though. For an old lady, I thought she was kind of attractive.