Flying Jalopy

Director: Dick Lundy
Release Date: March 12, 1943
Stars: Donald Duck
Rating: ★★★½
Review:

Donald Duck is looking for a plane at ‘Ben Buzzard’s (crashed) used planes’.

Ben Buzzard sells a ramshackle plane to Donald and makes him signing a swindling contract in which an insurance company will pay the swindler $10,000,- in case of an accident. The buzzard then tries to make Donald crash.

Unfortunately, the comedy doesn’t quite work. First, because it’s hard to believe that the anthropomorphized buzzard can fly on his own, while the equally anthropomorphized Donald cannot. Second, Ben Buzzard’s attacks become more open and open, but at no point it’s made clear whether Donald realizes why he’s being attacked.

‘Flying Jalopy ‘was the last cartoon Dick Lundy directed at Disney. In October 1943 he left Disney to become an animator and director at Walter Lantz, where he directed several Woody Woodpecker shorts, including ‘Wet Blanket Policy‘, which uses the same idea, but with way better results, resulting in a far more hilarious cartoon. It even uses the same buzzard character, but Lantz’s Buzz Buzzard would become way more famous than Ben Buzzard ever was.

Watch ‘Flying Jalopy’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is Donald Duck cartoon No. 40
To the previous Donald Duck cartoon: Donald’s Tire Trouble
To the next Donald Duck cartoon: Fall out – Fall in