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Director: Walter Lantz or Bill Nolan
Release Date: September 4, 1933
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘King Klunk’ is a surprisingly faithful, if silly retelling of the 1933 hit movie ‘King Kong‘.
The short stars Pooch the Pup as a film maker, who enters the jungle to film the monster King Klunk, accompanied by his girlfriend. In the jungle they soon meet a savage tribe offering a young girl to King Klunk. Of course, the giant ape takes much more interest in Pooch’s girlfriend, and abducts her instead.
Imitating Tarzan (made famous by Johnny Weissmuller in ‘Tarzan the Ape Man’ from 1932), Pooch rescues his girlfriend and together they floor the giant ape with a giant rotten egg. Like in the live action film, the duo takes the monster home to New York to display. And in the final scene, King Klunk, too, falls from the skyscraper, but in the cartoon he immediately catches fire and burns to a skeleton…
It’s weird to watch such a tight parody of a movie as this one, and the cartoon’s close satire is without precedent. However, this also means that the film is lower on gags than it could be, and Pooch the Pup is as bland as ever, never becoming near star potential. In the opening scene we hear him whistling ‘Kingdome Coming’, familiar to many as the wolf’s whistling tune in Tex Avery’s ‘The Three Little Pups‘ (1953). Tex Avery worked at Lantz during the production of ‘King Klunk’, so it may very well be he remembered the tune from this cartoon when he used it twenty years later. In any case, ‘King Klunk’ features a dinosaur having a double-take that is surprisingly Tex Averyan. This is probably the first classic double-take to enter the animated scene.
Watch ‘King Klunk’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘King Klunk’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’.
Directors: Tex Avery
Release Date: August 3, 1946
Stars: Droopy, The Wolf
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
In ‘Northwest Hounded Police’ Avery revisited the material of ‘Dumb-Hounded‘ (1943) to make a film that is faster, more concise, more extreme, more paranoid and funnier than the original.
The idea of Droopy being everywhere is quickly established, while the focus lies on the wolf’s double takes, which get more and more extreme during the film, including the famous jaw drop. The cool part is that Droopy (or ‘Sergeant McPoodle’ as he’s called here) only has to be there to scare the wits out of the wolf. He doesn’t do anything but being there.
In the wolf’s double takes Tex Avery explores the limits of cartoon exaggeration. These extreme takes make ‘Northwest Hounded Police the epitome of animated cartoon paranoia, displaying a world of fear that has not been seen on the animated screen since the Fleischer cartoon ‘Bimbo’s Initiation‘ (1931). If there should be only one classic Tex Avery cartoon, this must be it.
Watch ‘Northwest Hounded Police’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v202943sX3q26aT?h1=Northwest+Hounded+Police+-+Droopy
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Release Date: December 11, 1948
Stars: Tom & Jerry, Mammy Two-Shoes
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
By chasing Jerry into the house, Tom dirts the kitchen floor, which just has been painstakingly cleaned by Mammy.
She leaves shortly after, but not before warning him that if she’ll see one speck of dirt when she returns, she will throw him out. Jerry of course uses this threat to his advantage.
The plot of ‘Mouse Cleaning’ is very similar to that of ‘Puss Gets the Boot‘ (1940), Tom and Jerry’s very first cartoon, but the execution is much faster and funnier. Tom & Jerry had come a long way since, as is shown by a particularly Tex Averyan doubletake, in which Tom produces multiple eyes and a drops his jaw unto the floor in surprise.
Watch ‘Mouse Cleaning’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 38
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Professor Tom
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: Polka Dot Puss
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 