Green Darmok's Mostly Animation Blog

In  Cellbound  (MGM, 1955), directors Tex Avery and Michael Lah, and writer/story artist Heck Allen, created a great comic setpiece. An escaped prisoner (that bulldog with the pseudo-Irish accent from a lot of Tex Avery's cartoons) has hidden inside a hollowed-out TV, only to find that it has just been purchased by the prison warden who had been guarding his cell for the past several years.   In order to avoid being caught, he has to act out various TV shows convincingly enough that the warden will believe he's watching the real TV shows and won't get suspicious. The comedy comes from his desperation at this challenging task.  If he could just do like so many cartoon characters do and produce props and backdrops by reaching off-screen, behind his back or into a pocket that they couldn't possibly fit in... then his task would be easier, and less entertaining for us. Avery and co. make it clear in advance what limited resources the bulldog has.  As he escapes...

Nobody did manic energy like Bob Clampett, especially in his last few years at Warner Bros.  And no cartoon did manic panic like Bob Clampett's  Draftee Daffy  (1945). The story is a variation on the "escaped criminal" plot previously used by Tex Avery in Dumb-Hounded (1943) and later in Northwest Hounded Police  (1946) - updated to be more World War 2-relevant (and probably more relatable to most of the contemporary audience).  Daffy's gung-ho patriotic fervour turns to panic when he learns he's been called up by "the Little Man from the Draft Board." While Avery's escaped jail-wolf travelled all over the world in his attempt to escape the Long (and calmly stoic) Arm of the Law, Daffy spends most of the cartoon just trying to escape his house.  But any restrictions in the setting are made up for by Daffy's performance - that is, the combined performance of voice actor Mel Blanc and the animators. I posted before  about how fascinated I was by th...

Last week  I posted a couple of "Tom and Jerry oddities", where directors Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera used perspective trickery to make an object fit into a space that was too small for it, and changed Tom's front paws from feet to hands between scenes, and had trouble determining how many digits he should have. Maybe they should just have done like Bob Clampett did in Porky's Tire Trouble (Warner Bros., 1939), and made gags out of both oddities. Porky's large and ungainly hound, Flat Foot Flookey, is introduced emerging from a comically small dog-house, with long shoes on each of his four feet.  Within a single shot, one of his front feet turns into a hand - and his shoe into a glove! - so he can pluck a flea from his hide.  With his task completed, it becomes a foot wearing a shoe again as he proudly displays the flea to the audience. And, just as proudly, Clampett displays the impossible actions of the characters to the audience, making them sources of deliberat...