Rating: 4/7

Tashlin's background as a live-action director shows in the extra-inventive staging and choreographing, and some of the gags like the crazy plane chase with a bunch of buzzards doing a huddle in mid-air and playing keep away with a helpless baby chick redeem the fact that this is set on a farm. Some mundane gags like Porky's plane getting a new propeller work just by coming out of left-field. It's touching when he looks at the posters of his beloved chickens who were nabbed by the buzzard. The early farm-scenes are choreographed well but are upstaged with the coming of the buzzard, who sends the chickens into a frenzy and gets the cartoon speeding up (though they didn't take the opportunity for any visual gags).

It could be my imagination, but that large chicken coop the rooster emerges out of looks John McGrewish.

Rating: 4/7

Porky's in the foreign legion, stationed in Egypt or perhaps Arabia, and he has to scrub camels while his buddies go out and fight Ali Mode. Except Ali Mode comes over and Porky has to hold off his men all by himself. The battle is upbeat with Ali's men firing themselves silly and getting knocked from turrets. Ali himself enters with a close-up of his sausage-nose, oval eyes, and dung-eating grin and goes over to Porky's door to mimic his knocking and sing a little tune.

The earlier scenes have Porky's pot-bellied dog-faced commander (who walks with different arm and leg cycles in unison while flabbing his belly) disciplining him for leaning against his comrades.

Rating: 5/7

Porky's in charge of a frosted over forest where the rules say, "No shooting, trapping, fishing, or fires", each of them broken by a shadowy figure who laughs contemptously at every sign. One whiney beaver gets trapped and sends his brother to the rescue, who runs across hills and ponds unbelivably fast then runs back just for an apple (See? If you repeat the same running sequence backwards, it's gotta have a payoff) and dizzily runs around a tree incredibly fast (Trust me, when you see it, the speed will look impressive). Eventually Porky has to rescue a bunch of animals and fight it out with the bully, who ends up sort of defeating himself. The beavers sound hilariously whiney.

Rating: 4/7

The best gags are at the beginning: Laurel and Hardy inflating their tires with a seesaw, Chaplain wrenching W.C. Fields, W.C. Fields pouring liquor down Mae Oliver's engine, Porky hammering away at his own dinky engine, and some guy doing a mad scientist bit with his car. The race is an excuse to show a bunch of gags involving gueststar celebrities, some of which just focus the camera on their eccentric engine design for 30 seconds and pan outward to show the celebrity, but the actual race is a blur for me. I get a slight chuckle when one of them uses a magnet to pick up all the thumbtacks, mainly because of the "woooo". Annnnnd...yeah.

Rating: 5/7

Tashlin creates Petunia Pig, but not the black-haired cross-dressing Dorky you find in coloring books. This one is skinny, her cheeks are rosey, and she speaks with a New-Yaark accent. Before the title she does a tongue-in-cheek introduction where she nervously stutters her opening lines (It would have been funny if they were written down that way!). standing on a glut of Leon Schlesinger wallpaper.

The cartoon proper has no visual gags or outrageous animation aside from the reactions of Porky, Petunia, and her dog. In other words it's an all-plot cartoon. Petunia and her snotty dog's reactions to Porky are occasionally funny, as is the fantasy where she grows fatter and fatter. The baby Porkys just take the cake.

Already Tashlin is making every segment work towards the plot and using asymmetrical angles and close-ups, like Porky viewed from behind Petunia's peep-hole, and doesn't waste any time hung up on an idea like the Harman/Ising cartoons. Even though it's not always laugh-out-loud funny it's very entertaining.

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Rating: 4/7

Tashlin kinda blew it here. I don't see anything here only he could have done, except maybe a few interesting camera angles. Porky's life as a conductor of a really crummy engine is on display for awhile before he's laid off and challenged to a race by his replacement, who's piloting a fish-shaped high-tech hunk of junk (wow, try saying that three times fast). I get a chuckle out of seeing Porky's train fold and squish and it's fairly amusing when it splits into a dozen cars at an overhead perspective going off on different forks in the track. And the onscreen marquee at the beginning is a hoot ("It's a crack engine - Everything is cracked, including the driver").

The scenes with the cow and bull are too slow, though I do remember Porky's scramble to get back in the train to leave me with a rush, and the race at least has some visual momentum, not to mention being more enjoyable than Porky's Road Race, but it's hardly Tortoise Wins by a Hare. Except the female fish oogling the Silver Fish engine did amuse me a bit.

Rating: 5/7

This is probably my favorite "books come to life" picture until Book Revue. Some of the material in Book Revue is forshadowed here, actually - a criminal pops out of one of the books, gets captured, and is sentenced to jail in a "Life" magazine. The gag is funny here as well, but Clampett certainly did it better (nothing can beat that abrupt shot of the wolf tearing open the "Life" cover, while here the Crook sneaks away in a more boring manner).

I'm not a big lover of these "Icons come to life" things since they tend to sacrifice plot in favor of endless satire, but this one is better than most. For one thing, the narration makes sense, with various scenes and shots of book cover celebrities moving the musical number along or participating in a gag and later showing up again to play a role in capturing the criminal. It also begins with intricate animation of some guy playing a flute which falls to pieces as his breathing breaks down (and then he turns to the audience and admits he's not very good in a nicely done bit of humility). Another entertaining scene that stands out is the conductor initiating William Tell's "The Storm" where he alternates conducting with pulling on his hair like a frustrated scientist and abruptly starts singing "Speaking of the Weather" in a dopey voice.

The sequence where the entire cast chases after the burglar is also pretty funny, mainly due to the over-the-top nature of the new cover stars joining the cast (at one point a bunch of Indians ride towards the viewer in a close-up shot and fire arrows from off-frame at the burglar, and another scene has a navy ship firing canonballs at him from its respective cover). The only downside to this film is that it has no point and it's superfluous next to Book Revue, but it does have some intristic value of its own.

Rating: 6/7

This is easily the funniest b&w Porky cartoon by Tashlin. Who else did such a shot looking up at a forboding gate blocking the way to a twisted uphill ramp leading to a haunted mansion while 'The Storm' plays in the background? The pan through the room showing Porky's brothers scared out of their wits only heightens the anticipation of what they're waiting for. Through circumstances I shall not reveal (but trust me, they're really funny) Porky's brothers are kidnapped by a Mr. Hyde type creature and he goes looking for them. In the meantime the creature is keeping them in the basement and threatening to kill them.

The actual confrontation between the two fulfills the promise of the lenghty set-up as a clueless Porky feels around 'Mr. Hyde' thinking he's Petunia (they swap places so fast it's a riot) and runs frantically up a redundant set of stairs, cementing the fright scene with another confrontation where Porky goes from being unaware 'Mr. Hyde' is right by him to, well, aware again. These sequences feel squeezed in after taking so long to develop the plot, but they bring things to a head effectively.

The creature's introduction, his two-faced nature, and his animation as he speaks to the audience all steal the show. There are so many contrasts in his complexion, posture, eyebrows, and sneering that the in-betweeners' toes must have been on fire (My favorite moment is when he deeply furrows his brow while cackling, "You wouldn't think..."). I'd have liked to see him exploited more in place of the long set-up, but this is one of the most innovative WB cartoons and one of its biggest forgotten gems.

Rating: 5/7

Tashlin is still using Porky to push the short format into the realm of satirical mini-movie. A Porky-look-a-like named Killer escapes from jail and tries to take his job at a bank. The cinematography is excellent but the scenes are meant for following the plot even more so than Stuttering Pig which means nothing really goads me into watching it over and over even if I do respect the craft.

All the gags are unexpected twists so I won't give them away. When a gag does come up it's meant for character development (like to emphasize the cunning or temper of Killer) rather than slapstick. As for cinematography though there're lots of eye candy including the overhead shot of Killer's gang and the tradeoff shots of Porky/Killer at the counter and Petunia in the office.

The characters' roundness looks convincingly 3-dimensional for a black and white cartoon and their bulbishness is emphasized with some impressively angled close-ups.

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Rating: 4/7

Next to Speaking of the Weather, this is pretty pathetic. It begins with an absolutely brilliant gag, with Fu Manchu, the Grim Reaper, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein appearing on screen to growl at you like King Kong - then they start doing a fruity tap-dance routine. You can shut it off after that, because it is nothing more than a collection of incredibly lame book cover puns. The scenes don't go anywhere, don't lead to anything, and pretty much every gag stands alone without any build or pay-off.

I can't even remember how most of the cartoon goes, since it rambles on so much. One of my favorite gags is the guy walking toward the camera and then revealing his skininess by turning left (he's probably a caricature of somebody, but I don't know who). There's also a few good scenes where Rip Van Winkle cuts off Uncle Tom's beard to stuff in his ears for earplugs (and later Uncle Tom cuts off Rip's beard for revenge) and one where a scientist gets converted to an angel on the same book cover, but these gags are more tolerable than funny.

The ending gag is very weak (Rip starts a hurricane which wipes out all the people annoying him and "Gone with the Wind" lands in the last shot), and since the cartoon ends so abruptly, I can't believe the guys who did this took it very seriously. But due to the brilliant opener, it's not a total loss.

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Rating: 5/7

Hey, the opening shot of this reminds me of that Disney Christmas special. Remember that really scary part where Scrooge is dangling right over Hell and Pete is laughing at him? I may review that someday. For now, you're treated to footage of skaters* doing funny things like the Russian dance and jumping over barrels that appear to scroll from the back of the frame to the front.

The real plot is a pig W.C. Fields trying to get some liquor from the rescue dog. It's a slow cartoon, and the best gags turn out to be the little barrel around the dog's neck, his sarcastic way of helping the pig, whose phoney drowning scene is also a hoot, and what the pig does with his trophy.

The part where the drunk fish navigates the pig in ice-skates with a magnet always loses me, but the repetitive blur animations going back and forth are hypnotic. The round, bulbish character designs ala early Jones are also worth a look.

*On this site, words in the English language are spelled the proper way. I ain't ****ing Avril!!!

Rating: 7 (10)

Forget all those times I used the word "bulby". These character designs are the bulbiest, with massive round proportions, blaring cute eyes, and cheeks sticking out like mounds of dirt, all smooth and shiny. The little Mexican guy is cocky and clumsy but still determined to get a bullfight, and he mimicks several taunts that are thrown back at him. As for supporting characters his mom smother's him with a delicately constructed phrase spoken in a sweetly Mexican accent and three incognito girls pester him with "nyah nyah nyah" which is a total scream.

As a visual experiment there are a couple of intriguing sight gags like the momma's redundant washer and Poncho looking between his legs at the bull. As a bullfighting cartoon it's rather dull, since they do little more than run away, fly in the air, and land on the bull, and the "injury-sustaining-gags" do little more than stuff him in the straw hat, but the incidental gags make it a lot of fun.

At least he wins a new washer for his momma. Awww.

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