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Director: Tex Avery
Release Date: December 7, 1940
Stars: Willoughby
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Of Fox and Hounds’ introduces Willoughby, that dumb dog that was the first of many cartoon parodies on Lon Chaney jr.’s portrayal of Lennie Small in the movie ‘Of Mice and Men’ (1939).
In this cartoon he’s a rather fat hunting dog too dumb to recognize a fox when he sees one. Worse, the fox makes him fall for the same gag twice, in an extraordinarily long gag, which Avery plays out full. The fox is a clear variation on the wise guy type Avery introduced with Bugs Bunny in ‘A Wild Hare‘ four months earlier, without adding anything new, and he was never seen again. Willoughby, on the other hand, would encounter the hare himself in his next cartoon, ‘The Heckling Hare’, and another variation on this character type in ‘The Crackpot Quail’ (both 1941). In all, he would star in seven cartoons, the last one being Friz Freleng’s ‘Hare Force’ (1944).
In his next cartoon Willoughby would become less fat, but not smarter. Luckily not, for his all too late insights, which he shares with the audience, absolutely form the character’s main attraction. At MGM Avery would more or less return to the character in ‘Lonesome Lenny’ (1946). Willoughby’s “Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?” would become a catch phrase, and was also used by Lenny in that latter cartoon.
‘Of Fox and Hounds’ features high production values. It opens with a very realistic image of a hunter, followed by a beautiful shot of horses and hounds silhouetted against the morning sun. The cartoon also features remarkable oil paintings that provide great realistic backgrounds in the best academic tradition, which make all the nonsense staged in front of it more believable.
Unfortunately, the cartoon is a little too slow to be an all time winner. Avery clearly was still experimenting with timing, and in this cartoon in particular he juxtaposes slow scenes to lightning fast action, especially in the parts featuring the bear. ‘Of Fox and Hounds’ may be no classic, it’s an important entry in the evolution of Tex Avery’s films, the Warner Bros. style, and the chase cartoon in general.
Watch ‘Of Fox and Hounds’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Of Fox and Hounds’ is available on the French DVD set ‘Tex Avery’
Director: Ben Sharpsteen
Release Date: July 29, 1938
Stars: Donald Duck, Goofy, cameos by Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘The Fox Hunt’ is the second entry in the Donald & Goofy mini-series. In fact, Mickey, Minnie, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabella Cluck are also present, but only shortly, and first only as shadows.
Donald gets most of the screen time, devoted to his antics with five unruly bloodhounds and a sly fox. Goofy gets only one scene, in which his horse refuses to jump. This part shows a novelty: when we watch Goofy and his horse being under water, we’re watching a new technique involving distortion glasses to make the water more convincing. This technique would become very important in the elaborate ocean scenes in Disney’s second feature film ‘Pinocchio‘ (1940), for which these few seconds are only the try-out.
‘The Fox Hunt’ clearly borrows from the early Silly Symhony of the same name. The Donald and Goofy version copies the shot with the hunters being shadows in the distance, and the end gag with the skunk. The Donald and Goofy cartoons were not among Disney’s best, and ‘The Fox Hunt’, too, is only average.
‘The Fox Hunt’ was the last short directed by Ben Sharpsteen, and like Jack King, he favors an all too relaxed timing in this short, hampering the comedy. Sharpsteen had already been a sequence director for ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ (1937), and for ‘Pinocchio’ he was promoted to supervising director. From now on he would work on feature films, solely, until the early 1950s, when he moved on to True-Life adventures.
Carl Barks, who was a story man at the time this short was made, revisited the fox hunting theme in his 1948 comic ‘Foxy Relations’, which is much funnier than this film.
Watch ‘The Fox Hunt’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Fox Hunt’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Chronological Donald Volume 1’
Director: Wilfred Jackson
Release Date: November 10, 1931
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘The Fox Hunt’ is the most atypical Silly Symphony of the black and white era. It’s not devoted to music at all, and it features human characters.
These human hunters ride rather cartoony horses, and much of the fun comes from the silly ways the hunters ride their horses. One even rides a cow, a pig, a porcupine and a log with four dogs in it. The cartoon opens most spectacularly, with the morning sun’s beaming rays lighting a few forest scenes. A little later there’s a beautiful scene of the hunters and their horses casting long shadows on a hill. A scene like this looks all the way forward to the Ave Maria sequence of ‘Fantasia’ (1940).
The human figures are a bit of a mixed bag, but generally more convincing than those in ‘Mother Goose Melodies‘ or ‘The China Plate‘ from earlier that year. Thus, ‘The Fox Hunt’ is one of those films showcasing Disney’s ambition, even though it’s by no means a classic.
The fox hunt theme was revisited nine years later in the Donald Duck & Goofy short of the same title (1938), which uses the same skunk end gag, which itself was copied from the Oswald cartoon ‘The Fox Chase‘ (1928).
Watch ‘The Fox Hunt’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Silly Symphony No. 24
To the previous Silly Symphony: The Spider and the Fly
To the next Silly Symphony: The Ugly Duckling
‘The Fox Hunt’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies’
Director: Unknown
Release Date: June 25, 1928
Stars: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
Oswald has a relatively small part in this cartoon, with many gags going to the fox outwitting the dogs.
This Oswald cartoon is noteworthy for a trio of original sight gags: in the first Oswald winds his elongated legs back into shape, in the second the fox pulls a pond to another place, and in the third Oswald’s squeezes a log like a tube of toothpaste.
‘The Fox Chase’ is the first of three cartoons in which Disney explores the humor of fox hunting, the other two, both titled ‘The Fox Hunt’ are a Silly Symphony from 1931 and a cartoon starring Donald Duck and Goofy from 1938. Curiously, all share the end gag involving a skunk.
Watch ‘The Fox Chase’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon No. 22
To the previous Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon: Sky Scrappers
To the next Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon: Tall Timber
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 