You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Walter Lantz films’ category.
Director: Dick Lundy
Release Date: June 16, 1947
Stars: Wally Walrus
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Overture to William Tell’ was the second of three Musical Miniatures, a short-lived series similar to ‘Swing Symphonies’, but based on classical music instead of jazz.
In this one Wally Walrus stars in his very own cartoon as a conductor conducting an extraordinarily sleepy orchestra in a concert hall. The main gag involves a horsefly, which looks like a miniature horse with wings.
‘Overture to William Tell’ is better than the erratic ‘Musical Moments from Chopin‘, the first of the Musical Miniatures. But still it’s only moderately inspired, and pales when compared to that other concert cartoon using the same music by Gioachino Rossini, ‘The Band Concert‘ (1935).
Watch ‘Overture to William Tell’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Dick Lundy
Release Date: June 9, 1947
Stars: Woody Woodpecker
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
Woody wants to get up early, at 5:00 Am, but he’s kept awake all night, especially by an annoying cuckoo clock.
‘Coo-Coo Bird’ is the second and the better of two Woody Woodpecker cartoons from 1947 about sleeplessness, the other one being ‘Smoked Hams’. In his struggle with inanimate things, Woody resembles Donald Duck a lot in this cartoon, not too surprising as Donald Duck was well-known to director Dick Lundy, who co-created that character. Thus, ‘Coo-Coo Bird’ is very reminiscent of the Donald Duck short ‘Early to Bed‘ (1941), and itself anticipates the Donald Duck cartoon ‘Drip Dippy Donald’ (1948) in which Donald is kept awake by a dripping tap.
Watch ‘Coo-Coo Bird’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Woody Woodpecker cartoon No. 22
To the previous Woody Woodpecker cartoon: Smoked Hams
To the next Woody Woodpecker cartoon: Well Oiled
‘Wet Blanket Policy’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’
Director: Dick Lundy
Release Date: February 24, 1947
Stars: Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker
Rating: ★
Review:
When James Culhane left Walter Lantz, Dick Lundy remained Lantz’s sole director, until he left too at the end of the decade.
Being a more gentle director than Culhane, Lundy conceived a short-lived series of Musical Moments, in which classical music was the driving force. ‘Musical Moments from Chopin’ is the first of three, in which Woody Woodpecker joins Andy Panda in a piano recital of Frédéric Chopin tunes at a barnyard concert.
Unfortunately, the result is a very uneven cartoon: there’s practically no conflict between Woody and Andy, the driving force of such wonderful piano concert cartoons like ‘Rhapsody Rabbit‘ (1946) and ‘The Cat Concerto‘ (1947). Even worse, Lundy wastes a lot of time on gags involving the audience. In the end it’s a drunken horse who ends the concert by starting a fire.
Both the animals in the audience and the anthropomorphic flames have an old-fashioned 1930s-look. The complete cartoon is remarkably slow and unfunny, and pales when compared to its contemporary concert cartoons.
Watch ‘Musical Moments from Chopin’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Musical Moments from Chopin’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’
Director: Paul J. Smith
Release Date: October 22, 1956
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
In this cartoon Woody Woodpecker wants to ride the Niagara falls in a barrel.
However, there’s a park ranger who tries to stop him, and it’s this ranger who repeatedly ends in a barrel on the falls.
It’s amazing to discover a gem like this between the badly designed, badly animated and badly timed Walter Lantz shorts of the late 1950s. Although this cartoon, too, features ugly animation, the story and the gags (penned by Disney-veterans Dick Kinney and Milt Schaffer) are very good. The result is by all means one of the best Woody Woodpeckers of the fifties.
Watch ‘Niagara Fools’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Woody Woodpecker cartoon No. 71
To the previous Woody Woodpecker cartoon: Calling All Cuckoos
To the next Woody Woodpecker cartoon: Arts and Flowers
‘Niagara Fools’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection Volume 2’
Director: Shamus Culhane
Release Date: October 4, 1944
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
Woody Woodpecker enters a barbershop to get a ‘victory’ haircut.
When the barber appears to be gone away, Woody himself steps in, maltreating a large chief and giving an Italian construction worker ‘the works’, singing the complete aria ‘Largo el factotum’ from Gioachino Rossini’s opera ‘The Barber of Seville’.
‘Barber of Seville’ is probably inspired by the barber scene from Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ (1940), which is set to a Hungarian dance by Brahms. The cartoon in its turn probably inspired Chuck Jones, who would use the opera’s overture in ‘Rabbit of Seville‘ (1950), with even better results.
‘Barber of Seville’ was the first Woody Woodpecker directed by Shamus Culhane. Culhane was an animation veteran, who had worked at Max Fleischer, Ub Iwerks, Van Beuren, Walt Disney and Warner Bros. Culhane obviously understood the character better than his predecessor Alex Lovy did: the gags in ‘Barber of Seville’ are faster and funnier, and the story is more consistent than in most of the earlier Woody Woodpecker cartoons.
Moreover, Woody Woodpecker looks better than ever before. Layout man and color stylist Art Heinemann redesigned the character to make him less grotesque, and more appealing. Unfortunately, Culhane would direct only ten Woody Woodpecker shorts, before he left the studio to set up one of his own to make animation films for television.
Watch ‘Barber of Seville’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Woody Woodpecker cartoon No. 10
To the previous Woody Woodpecker cartoon: Ration Bored
To the next Woody Woodpecker cartoon: The Beach Nut
‘Barber of Seville’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’
Director: Walter Lantz or Bill Nolan
Release Date: May 27, 1935
Stars: Oswald
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Springtime Serenade’ features Oswald and his unnamed girlfriend among some cute furry animals.
They all believe spring has come, even though the old groundhog warns them for six more weeks of cold weather. After some joyous spring cleaning (what the &$#?!!), the groundhog turns out to be right after all.
This Cartune Classic is as cloying as it is unfunny. Tex Avery, who was an animator at Lantz’s at the time, would deal with cute furry animals such as these ten years later in ‘The Screwy Truant’ (1945).
Watch ‘Springtime Serenade’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Walter Lantz or Bill Nolan
Release Date: October 1, 1934
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Jolly Little Elves’ is the first of six Cartune Classics, Walter Lantz’s answer to Disney’s Silly Symphonies. These six cartoons were made in two color technicolor, using red and blue, and all are possible even more cloying than contemporary Silly Symphonies themselves.
‘Jolly Little Elves’, for example, is a practically humorless fairy-tale in song about a poor shoemaker and his wife who help a little elf and get all their shoes repaired by hundreds of elves in return.
The cartoon is corny, overlong and features an irritating song about dunking donuts in coffee. Also featured are two severely caricatured Jewish elves. It’s a wonder that was one of the three Academy Award nominations for 1934. Luckily it lost to Disney’s by all means superior cartoon ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’.
Sixteen years later, Tex Avery, who was an animator at Lantz at the time, would remake and make fun of ‘Jolly Little Elves’ in ‘The Peachy Cobbler’ (1950).
Watch ‘Jolly Little Elves’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 