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“Moving” Pictures (Part 1)
No, this is not a comprehensive history of images in motion on the animated screen. It instead is a look at the subject of animated characters uprooted from their surroundings, and facing the dilemma of relocation by choice or under adverse circumstances. Many a character avoided these consequences by having some hero burst in in the nick of time, to foil a traditional moustached fiend’s vile efforts to foreclose the mortgage. We’ll disregard these, and concentrate on the not-so-lucky, faced with packing up the content of the old homestead and having them carted away. Also, we’ll share focus with the other regular participants in such transient events – the “professional” moving man, who, at least in cartoons, is often responsible for more damage than if the property owners hadn’t bothered to invest in protective packaging for their heirlooms at all. I will not necessarily look at every instance where a character has taken on a new life in a new town or home, but concentrate primarily on the ones where the process of moving itself shares a primary role in the story development. Also, I’ll save a few sidelights for instances where it is not the characters themselves taking the trip, but some massive object newly acquired or among their belongings getting the ride – such as the proverbial favorite, piano moving.
Emile Cohl
Instantly, without the order or check even traveling to the company head office, a moving van is dispatched – with no driver. The gates of the company lot open to allow the van’s departure, also without human aid. In delightful stop motion, the van arrives at the address of the abode, its rear doors unlatch, and dollies, packing baskets, and large items of furniture begin to unload themselves in a magical parade of household items and bric-a-brac. Into the house, up the stairs, and into the respective master bedroom, parlor, and kitchen skitter the makings of a home, moving into position to find their appropriate spots to make the home appear comfortable and cozy. The labor involved in smoothly transitioning all these objects simultaneously into appropriate positions, including heavy china cabinet, stove, bedstead, etc., must have been a task which would have driven any Bekins man crazy. It is evident that portions of the footage were filmed backwards, making it easier for the final room to assume proper orientation by merely moving out objects from a finished room piece by piece. Yet, the effect is still wonderful and eye-catching. What’s more, the director(s) find the time to make the exercise more than merely mechanical, injecting into the proceedings a few moments of clever humor from the inanimate cast. A small end table which enters the bedroom can’t seem to find its appropriate spot within the room’s layout, and moves around as if in search of something. It attempts to exit the room, but gets briefly hung up when it mistakes the door of a wardrobe closet for the room’s doorway. Finally finding its way out, the end table encounters the furnishings setting themselves up in the parlor. It circles a central table, on which sits a small tiffany lamp. The lamp notices its old friend, and shimmies over to the edge of the table, intercepting the end table on the next go-round. It moves onto the surface of the end table, and the end table now moves as if satisfied, realizing “That’s what I was looking for.” It proceeds back to the bedroom, and finally takes its proper place against the wall near the head of the bed.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, dishes are unpacking themselves one by one from one of the moving baskets, sliding across the kitchen table to stack up into one neat pile. When the contents are emptied, the moving baskets begin to file out of the room – all but one mischievous small basket, which hides under a table. A larger basket, apparently in charge of operations, slides back into the room and pokes around, seeking the missing receptacle. It reacts in pantomime as if it has spotted the playful prankster, and loosens from its middle a strand of rope threaded through loops in the basket side for fastening it shut. Throwing the loose end of the rope like a lasso, the big basket loops the rope through a similar wicker loop in the front of the smaller basket, the rope twisting to knot fast around the wicker. Then, the bigger basket gives a tug, dragging the playful small one out of the room. All the baskets from the various rooms similarly loop rope ends together to form a single-file chain, much like a column of tethered mountain-climbers, and head for the stairs to make their exit from the house. But before reaching the bottom of the stars, they quickly shift into reverse, to allow a last forgotten item of furnishing to make its hefty entrance up the stairs – an upright piano. Then, all the baskets file out of the house, clamber into the back of the van, the van doors close, and everyone goes on their merry way to the next job, for a sudden finish to the film. All this in a mere 3 minutes and 47 seconds (though, in all likelihood, projection speed is wrong for the silent days, and the original running time was more like five minutes). Wonderous!
Max Fleischer presents the only other silent tale of moving I’ve so far found – and it’s a gem chock full of creative sight gags – Ko Ko Packs Up (Out of the Inkwell, 10/17/25). Max has decided to move the cartoon studio to a new undesignated location, and the live moving men are backing up their van to the front door. Ko Ko, peering out from under the stopper of his inkwell, sees Max wrapping up in paper bundles various art supplies from his desk, and tossing them into large packing barrels. He hollers for Max, apparently calling for him to complete drawing him, as he is only a head and shoulders as presently inside the bottle. But Max is too busy to oblige him, and (in missing intertitles) seems to merely inform him that they are in the process of moving. A cuckoo bird (animated, but in a real clock), emerges on the hour, but does not utter the traditional “cuckoo”, instead stating in words that appear on the screen, “Good-bye, Ko Ko.” This makes Ko Ko sad and sentimental, and he begins crying bitterly. His tears emerge from his eyes as ink, and the droplets begin to pile up in big and little stacks. The large stack transforms into the shape of Ko Ko’s lower torso and clown suit, allowing the upper half of Ko Ko in the bottle to jump on top and complete his form, while the smaller tear stack transforms into the outlines of Fitz. And so, our cast is assembled.
Seeing the moving men busy lifting the heavy loaded barrels one by one onto the truck, Ko Ko suggests to Fitz that maybe they’d better get busy and pack up their belongings too. So, they move into their world of cartoon drawing boards, and begin to ready for moving everything in sight. Ko Ko begins by detaching a pot-bellied stove from the wall, and wrapping it up in paper. (Uncertain if the stove is in operation, as the gag is missed of having the paper wrapping burn up from the stove’s heat.) Fitz heads straight to the ice box, and stashes in a packing box his private collection of meat bones therefrom. Ko Ko advances to a wall with four window panes, and removes the whole window frameworks from the wall as if they were merely the flat drawings on paper which they are, leaving the wall with no window holes when he is through. Max himself gets into the comedy act in his real-life world, plucking two live goldfish from the water of their bowl, and wrapping each up in paper in the manner of a fish monger – then also wrapping in its own paper the entire bowl, still full of water, and tossing the bundle into a barrel without signs of a visible leak. Back on the drawing pad, Fitz spots a small staircase leading to an exterior doorway. Ignoring any structural integrity the steps should have, Firs rolls up the stairs platform by platform into a rectangular block, wraps and tosses the block into a barrel. In another room, Ko Ko eyes a parakeet in a cage. He first pulls out the bird’s perch from under his feet, leaving him standing on nothing while Ko Ko wraps it. Then the squawking bird gets the paper-wrap treatment. Finally, before wrapping the cage, Ko Ko guzzles down for his own enjoyment the bird’s two receptacles of drinking water. Fitz finds a loaded bookshelf, and piles four shelves of books from it into a towering column. Then, he picks up the whole column and balances it on his shoulder as if the books were glued together, carrying it to a spot beside an empty barrel. The books become unglued as suddenly as they were previously magnetized, and Fitz merely climbs atop the topmost book, kicking with his feet to separately kick each book one-by-one into the barrel. Ko Ko spots the kitchen sink, and yanks it from the wall to wrap. The act releases a torrent of water from two busted pipes behind the fixture, and a stream of water upon the floor. Koko scratches his head to figure what to do, then again plays upon the flatness of objects in a cartoon, merely reaching to the edge of the frame, and rolling up the outlines of the water stream and gushing pipes into a scroll of flat paper, and tossing the scroll into a barrel.
Fitz now begins posting signs to advise the utility companies of the firm’s relocation. The first reads: “Notice to Gas Co. We’ve moved away. Please shut off the bills and send us the meters.” Another states: “Electric Co. Please shut off current. The service is shocking.” And one to the Telephone Co. states, “For out new address, please call ‘Information’.” Ko Ko continues wrapping up whole rooms in the wall-to-wall carpet as a humongous bundle, while Fitz sets upon the arduous task of individually wrapping each lump of coal in the furnace coal bin. Fitz ventures next to an outside background, where he uproots a water well to deposit in a barrel, then lifts the hole left in the ground from the paper as a precursor of Robert McKimson’s portable holes and tosses it in too. He then yanks down the sun from the sky, and scrolls up all remaining outlines from the background into another scroll of paper, leaving the scenics entirely empty save for the barrel. Ko Ko has meanwhile ventured outside his paper dimension, and in a nice combination of live action and animation, is seen completing the wrapping of a live meowing cat in packing paper. Fitz makes sure he’ll have something to eat, by coaxing a cartoon mouse out of a mousehole, then wrapping him up too. Finally, Ko Ko runs to a real-life vacuum cleaner in a corner, grabbing up the hose and carrying it to Max’s desk. He cuts a hole in the middle of Max’s drawing table, threads the vacuum hose through the hole, then installs his own inkwell as a vacuum nozzle on the hose’s end. He turns on the power. All the remaining contents on the desk, as well as the furniture in the studio, begin to spiral in the suction of air, and disappear into the inkwell nozzle. The pull is so strong, the two moving men, laden with more heavy barrels, are sucked backwards into the room, and miraculously compress to be sucked down the vacuum hose also. Then, of course, Max himself receives the same treatment. Finally, none are left but Ko Ko, who is also pulled off his feet, whirled around in the air several times, and disappears down the inkwell, with the inkwell stopper being last to be sucked into place, sealing off the adventure.
It is possible that Oswald Rabbit was the first cartoon animal to attempt to move a piano – though few living people can verify this, due to the extreme rarity of the short, Nutty Notes (Lantz/Universal, 12/9/29). Tommy Stathes seems to be the only one who has turned up a print, but has only publicly exhibited it in a one-time theatrical setting on the East Coast to my knowledge, letting only a little over a minute of the film become available online as a sample clip. The poster art and a few brief shots suggest Oswald’s task of delivering a piano from a music store, though little is known as to how he does it. If Tommy is reading, perhaps he might be kind enough to provide some form of plot synopsis with a few clues as to the precise moving gags – or maybe any avid fan who might have sat in on his special screening.
Here’s a clip from the film:
Mickey Mouse seems to be next in accepting the task of piano moving, though in fact he is delivering an entire shipment of various musical instruments by horse (or possibly mule) and buggy, in The Delivery Boy (Disney/Columbia, 6/6/31 – Burt Gillett, dir.). The film perhaps qualifies only for an honorable mention, as the actual moving task has practically nothing to do with the meager plot. Mickey just happens by, riding through the countryside with his load, when he spots Minnie washing out her laundry with an old-fashioned washboard and pail. Mickey hides out in a pair of bloomers on her clothesline to get close to her. Minnie, upon discovering him, pulls a stitch on the bloomers, dumping Mickey into the washtub. They’re still playful friends, however, and break into an extended song and dance rendition of “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree”. Mickey carelessly pretends a beehive hanging from a tree is a punching bag, giving the hive several rhythmic jabs and a final knockout punch, sending it flying – right onto the rear end of the hitched mule. The mule kicks and bucks, scattering the load of musical instruments all over the farmyard. Mickey and Minnie duet on the piano, while other animals of the farm take up the other instruments, to perform another extended instrumental arrangement of John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”. Pluto, who was an additional passenger of the wagon, meanwhile wanders into a construction site adjoining the farm, playfully fetching a lit stick of dynamite tossed by foreman Pete at a blasting site. Pete and a fellow worker refuse to accept from Pluto the retrieved “stick”, instead jumping for safety into a barrel of tar. Pluto thus brings the stick to Mickey and Minnie, who are too busy with the music to notice what the stick is. Pluto begins chewing on the stick like a bone while the fuse burns shorter and shorter. Pluto becomes distracted when his fleas, who have more intelligence than he does, recognize the danger and leap off their host’s back, abandoning the proverbial sinking ship. Pluto curiously follows the fleas out of frame, and out of danger. But the stick is still within immediate proximity of Mickey, Minnie, the piano, and the mule. BLAM!! Mickey and the piano stool land back o the ground relatively unscathed, but the mule has lost his hair, and stands behind the remains of the piano (now reduced to the keyboard and hammers but no strings) with his bony ribs visible as protrusions from his bare skin. Mickey merely lines up the piano hammers with the mule’s ribs, and finishes playing the finale of the march thereon, while Minnie comes down with a tambourine stuck upon her rear end, and smacks it rhythmically to beat out march time to close the number.
Bimbo’s Express (Fleischer/Paramount, Talkartoon (Betty Boop), 8/22/31 – Dave Fleischer, dir., no animator credits on surviving TV prints), is fairly weak as Betty’s cartoons go on gag material, and has no particular plot except for engaging the characters in moving Betty’s furniture. Bimbo runs the express company, with a horse-drawn van and two partners including a heavy hippopotamus and a scrawny alley cat. Bimbo makes a unique personal approach to Betty’s front door, somehow extending his legs and jacking up his own torso about five steps in height to match the height of the door, then scaling the steps leading to the door, retracting the length of his legs for each step so that his head remains at the same height throughout the climb. Betty is busy with some personal grooming, sitting in her nightgown in an easy chair with legs raised, trying to cut her toenails with a scissor. Bimbo knocks, announcing it’s the movers. She states she can’t come to the door right now because she’s in her nightie, and Bimbo replies, “All right, I’ll wait ‘till you take it off.” (Any wonder why the censors would later target this series?) When Bimbo enters (though Betty by now is wearing her full dress and garter), love is in his eyes, and each eyeball tracks an image of Betty in its reflection – slowly from head to toe. We’re over halfway through the cartoon, and not a single piece of furniture has yet been touched. The moving process for the most part lacks in the inventiveness of prop gags present in the previous Ko Ko epic. Bimbo carries a tall Grecian-style sculpture of a shapely woman toward the exit door, paying no attention to the dimension of his carried article and instead making more flirtations with Betty, so that the statue has to duck to avoid having its head snapped off in the doorway. The cat gets hung up on twice-repeating a slide down the staircase banister while carrying a canary cage – the second slide requested by the caged bird, who shouts “More! More!” The horse moves Betty’s stove into the van while still lit, frying an egg in a pan atop it as he goes. A briefly running gag has Bimbo dropping items out a window after yelling “Okay” to the hippo below. Each time, a crash is heard before the hippo responds that he’s got it, making one wonder about the unseen condition of the furniture. Bimbo carries away a bathtub, with an unknown dog bather still in it. A staircase is wrenched out of the wall and carried away by one of the movers (a gag later remembered at Terrytoons, to be seen again in a later chapter of this series). Everything is packed into or on top of the van, and the rig moves off, with the hippo sleeping up top in Betty’s bed, and the cat rocking in a rocking chair. Bimbo asks Betty where they’re going to, and Betty responds “Around the corner” – making the whole proceedings moot, as she could have walked her items to their destination! It is also revealed in song in the final shot that Betty only moved to dodge her rent.
Krazy Kat next accomplishes what Oswald Rabbt might have done in his film, taking moving to new heights in Piano Mover (Charles Mintz/Columbia, 1/4/32 – Ben Harrison/Manny Gould, dir.). Krazy and a small dog assistant (who rides inside the piano) transport an upright model to the site of a mile-tall apartment building by horse-drawn wagon. Krazy’s wagon includes an interesting tail-gate, which folds down to form the shape of steps, allowing the piano itself to come to life and descend the few steps to the ground in an effeminate walk. The dog is small, but removes his shirt to expose bulging muscles to accomplish the task. He threads one end of a rope into a knot around the piano, then forms the rope’s other end into a coil, upon which he jumps as if the rope coil were made of spring metal. Upon jumping off the rope, the compressed coil springs up into the air, traveling twenty stories up, and makes a precise loop to thread itself through a pulley attached to the roof, its end falling back down to the ground. The dog sets himself to pull the rope, while Krazy hops atop the piano to ride it to the top. Unfortunately, as the dog pulls, a sidewalk elevator panel descends below his feet, causing Krazy to be hauled into the air more rapidly than he expected. The fast-rising piano begins to shift its weight in the rope loop, and Krazy desperately struggles to maintain his footing as the piano tips first one way, then another. Several spectacular shots appear throughout the film from overhead view looking down upon Krazy and the suspended piano, with vehicular traffic proceeding through the busy intersections many stories below. Krazy loses his footing, grabbing onto the end key of the piano keyboard with his hands. The keyboard as a unit is yanked nearly off its wooden mounting, then wondrously retracts as if held on by springs, pulling Krazy back up to its level.
Krazy spies a window ledge, seemingly within reach. He cautiously steps across the piano top, planting one foot on the ledge. Suddenly, the piano and rope slide away from him at an angle, causing his legs to engage in an impossible split between piano and ledge. His outmost leg extends halfway across the street, and a playful anthropomorphic tower clock on a building across the way uses its clock hands to grab the piano, and pull it still further away from the apartment building, extending Krazy’s legs to the limit. When the clock can’t quite bring the piano over to his side of the street, it lets go, causing the piano to swing back, and smash Krazy like a pancake against the wall of the apartment building. Krazy recovers, now finding himself hanging by his hands from the window ledge. The window is closed above him, and he desperately knocks on the window glass, hoping someone will let him inside. In one of the film’s best gags (definitely pre-code), a feminine hand opens the window partially, reaching outside to offer Krazy her apartment key! Krazy shakes his head in bewilderment, but nevertheless makes a lunge to grasp the extended arm – and misses. He tumbles down several stories, before spotting two straps hanging out a window from under a pulled windowshade. He grabs for the straps and hangs on tight. They elastically stretch, then retract to draw Krazy up to the new windowsill, as the shade goes up to reveal a female pig, wearing a corset to which the straps are attached. The embarrassed pig smacks Krazy in the jaw, launching him skyward again, then tries to pull down the windowshade, but only adds to her embarrassment by yanking the shade off its mounting entirely.
Krazy finally finds himself in a position of temporary safety, landing in a belly-flop atop a window-washer’s scaffold, on the same floor level as where the suspended piano still hangs. Out of a window immediately above pops Kitty, who remarks, “Ooh, my piano!”, and steps out on the scaffolding, taking a position at its edge to begin playing the instrument while it remains still hanging from the rope and pulley. As it seemed most every studio’s major characters had to do at one point or another in their 1930’s films, Kitty breaks into an extended musical number, of “That’s My Weakness Now”, eventually drawing Krazy into her moment of musical madness, for a vigorous dancing session upon the building ledge. The mood becomes infectious enough for the two that they pay no attention to where they are going, and dance right off the building at the corner. Kitty manages to grasp upon the edge of the ledge with her hands, while Krazy clings to her lace panties, to Kitty’s displeasure. The dog, who all this time has been holding on to the rope below, finds his massive muscles softening to putty from the strain, and extends his neck all the way to the 20th story to yell “Hey!” to Krazy, reminding him he has a job to do, and that the dog’s strength is giving out. Krazy thus gives a jerk upon his own tail like the string pull of a windowshade, and he and Kitty roll up like a retracting shade into a cylinder, regaining the ledge and rolling across its length, back to the other end where the piano still hangs. Whether by the dog’s pulling or by elastic force when the two cats land atop the piano, the instrument and rope shoot skyward once again. Irrepressible Kitty thinks the ride is all a fun game, and begins rocking the piano between her side and Krazy’s like a see-saw. Another overhead shot adds to the impression of visual vertigo by photographically blurring the perspective background behind the characters and spiraling the drawing, giving an interesting effect. Above them, a small bird sits in a nest upon another ledge corner of the building. Spying the twisting rope moving close to him, he becomes convinced that the strands are a tasty treat, and begins eating them away one-by-one. Krazy and Kitty scream below for him to stop, but their pleas are ignored, as the bird snaps the last strand. Another spiral blur follows the cats and the piano down in their dizzying fall. The piano becomes speared upon the top end of a telephone pole, and its descent rate is slowed somewhat by the impact of breaking off each of the step rungs protruding from the pole on the way down. The piano still maintains enough speed to crash through the pavement into a rectangular hole – but it appears that the hole may have already been the existing panel of another street elevator, because the piano rises back to street level from the hole, with the modification that both the instrument and the two cats now rise and fall in compression and expansion, as if built like the expandable bellows of an accordion, for the iris out.
Annie Moved Away (Lantz/Universal, Oswald Rabbit, 5/28/34 – Bill Nolan, dir.) – This one’s plot definitely centers around the subject of moving – but with not a moving man or truck in sight. Annie travels light, getting everything she needs into a small suitcase. Annie is the sweetheart and fiancé of Oswald, and Oswald believes he has everything planned for the big day. Phoning Annie from a drug store pay phone, Oswald declares he has a shiny new roadster, a honeymoon cottage, and the marriage license all at the ready – all he needs now is her. Annie is plenty eager, and agrees to be ready immediately for Ozzie to pick her up. But true love never runs smooth in a cartoon, and a standard model silk-hatted and moustached villain, cad, and rival has overheard it all from outside the phone booth. He hurries out of the store ahead of Oswald, hopping upon a motor scooter that has a bad case of recurring backfires, spraying soot over anyone in its wake, including Ozzie’s anthropomorphic roadster and a stray dog who likes to chase tires. Turning up at Annie’s residence, the roguish ruffian hastily scribbles down on paper a note, reading “This handsome gentleman will fetch you to me. Oswald.” He presents the note to Annie at her door, and out heroine is taken in by the ruse – and taken away atop the handlebars of the villain’s scooter, traveling bag in hand. The neighbors have all witnessed the hasty departure, which quickly becomes the subject of local gossip, as they know nothing of the villain’s fraudulent note. Oswald finally arrives, and makes inquiries for Annie. Convinced that she has dumped Oswald for a more handsome and wealthier man, all the neighbors break into an extended production number, set to a current pop tune most typically associated with Guy Lombardo, “Annie Doesn’t Live Here Aymore”, but with updated, custom lyrics. Several folks of various ethnic or socio-economic stereotype participate in breaking the bad news to Oswald that Annie has vacated for good, and that he has very little chance of ever finding her again – including a Jewish housewife, a bowery tough guy, an English cockney, a black mother and her three offspring in Southern drawl, and an old crone village gossip.
Meanwhile, miles down the road, Annie sits on a bench beneath a tree alongside the villain, waiting for an Oswald who seems destined never to show up. When she inquires of the villain where Oswald can be, the vile opportunist makes his move. “Aw, forget that mug. Give daddy a kiss…” He grasps Annie up in his clutches, and steals several kisses, as she screams Oswald’s name, hoping for help. Of course, Ozzie and his roadster come sadly trudging down the road in the nick of time. The villain grabs Annie and again hops on his scooter. But who else should turn up further down the road but the dog who was left covered in soot by the villain in the earlier sequences. He turns to the audience, and remarks, “Ah, revenge!” Grabbing up the root of a large tree, he physically drags the entire tree into the middle of the road, causing the villain’s scooter to crash into it. The villain lies prone on his belly in the road, while Annie is thrown from the motorbike, right into the waiting Oswald’s arms. Meanwhile, the damaged bike bounces around in the road, sputtering and backfiring twice as badly as before. The dog sees a chance for further sweet revenge, and pulls upon the belt of the villain’s trousers, opening up the rear end of his pants just wide enough to admit the motor scooter as it bounces from the reverberations of its own backfires. The villain thus finds his pants loaded with more than he can handle, and disappears down the road, being bounced all over the countryside by the belching black smoke emitting from the bike in his trousers.
Oswald produces the marriage license, and, in a reuse of half the finale sequence from Oswald’s earlier cartoon “Five and Dime”, is married at the local church to Annie, and arrives with her at the honeymoon cottage, all without missing a beat of their strutting step. They are greeted at the gate by Doc Stork, who suggests that he can bring “a little gift for you”. Oswald tells him they’re sorry, but the house is only big enough for two. “Well, you should have told me that before”, Doc remarks before leaving – as it turns out, his work has already been done, and Oswald and Annie are greeted by 16 junior bunnies, just inside the cottage door. That’s the end, if ever there was one.
Moving Day (Disney/UA, Mickey Mouse, 6/2/36 – Ben Sharpsteen, dir.) – It’s the first of the month, and the wall calendar in Mickey’s and Donald’s rented home indicates that the rent is six months overdue. Mickey and Donald have worn a circular path into the carpet from pacing the floor and wondering what to do about it. A violent knocking at the door (shaking down all the wall fixtures) heralds the arrival of the Sheriff (Pete), armed with a Notice of Dispossession, authorizing him to sell all of Mickey’s and Donand’s furniture to collect the arrearages. Pete is at his most brutal, socking Mickey in the jaw through the door peephole to gain entry, and also physically abusing Donald, lighting a match by striking its tip against the underside of his bill, then lighting his cigar and tossing the still-burning match down Donald’s throat as if he were an ash tray.
Goofy, in this instance cast as a mere friend of the mouse and duck rather than their roommate, pulls up to the rear of the house to make a delivery of ice with his old stake-bed truck. Pete meanwhile busies himself out front, hammering up signs to advertise the Sheriff’s Sale, driving the nails in the wall with punches from his bare hands. “We gotta move”, Mickey and Donald declare to Goofy, informing him of the Sheriff’s presence. Without a word of question, Goofy pitches in to help the boys in their last ditch effort to avoid the consequences. Mickey is next seen in a brief shot, attempting to pack all of his and Donald’s clothing into an old steamer trunk, but having it pop open from being too overstuffed. As was altogether too common the case in the “trio” shorts of the series, Mickey is from this point on nearly entirely written out of the script, with all action and gags handed over to Goofy and Donald. Goofy engages in an extended epic contest to determine who is the most intelligent – one live Goof, or one inanimate upright piano, which refuses to stay on the truck, and keeps rolling back into the house. Goofy catches on that the instrument only likes to roll home when he isn’t looking, so plays games with it by positioning his hat just at the windowsill to make it appear he is watching the piano’s moves. He can’t resist finally appearing at the doorway while his hat remains at the window, to give the piano a razzberry. The piano retaliates by slamming into him in the doorway, thrusting him into the kitchen and right through the refrigerator door. Unphased, the Goof is found inside the refrigerator, happily eating fresh watermelon.
Donald, meanwhile, faces his own troubles, first with a plumber’s helper stuck to his tail, then switching it for a goldfish bowl, while the plunger becomes stuck to his head. His efforts to free himself climax in tying a rope around the bowl, with the other end of the rope fastened to a doorknob, and running with all his might. The bowl pops off, but Donald’s beak gets stuck in a gas jet, which inflates him like a balloon. He pops out of the gas pipe, jetting around the room in deflation, and knocks over everything Mickey and Goofy are trying to carry out of the house, causing general destruction and chaos. Pete overhears the commotion from outside and barges in again. “Busting up my furniture!” he roars. But Donald displays an unusual streak of cleverness, remembering what Pete did to him before. As if to pacify Pete’s anger, Donald raises his head high, exposing the underside of his beak, in an invitation for Pete to strike a match again. However, the wily duck is well aware that gas is still escaping from the gas jet – so when Pete lights up, “KER-BLAMM!!!!!” The camera’s view is entirely masked in explosions and white smoke, and when our vision clears, Goofy has his ice truck in motion, catching every item of Mickey and Donald’s belongings flying from the wreckage into the bed of the truck, along with Donald and Mickey too. Clever Donald looks back at the house with a grin, to view the whole structure blasted away except for the skeleton of the interior plumbing, with Pete stranded in an upstairs bathtub and the shower water nearly drowning him. Donald laughs uproariously – until the last item of the household belongings lands upon him – the plunger, again stuck to his rear end. Donald whirls around in a fit of temper like a dog chasing its own tail, for the iris out.
NEXT: We’ll keep things moving into the later ‘30’s – I promise!
Garfield Gets a Life (Film Roman, 5/8/91), a half-hour prime-time special, could more appropriately be called “Jon Gets a Life”, dealing with the boredom that is Jon’s existence, and its contagious effect upon Garfield as well. The most exciting thing Jon seems to do is organize his sock drawer – two of them – by size, color, materials, blends, and all neatly tucked-in. When not occupied with socks, Jon counts ceiling tiles while flat on his back – and Garfield takes to doing the same thing, as they compare counts between the ceilings in the bedroom and living room. Garfield (perhaps for lack of anything better to do) tries to break Jon out of his rut, remembering an old copy on Jon’s bookshelf of “How To Make Friends and Fool the Rest”. Jon spots a chapter on getting dates, and attempts to follow it to the letter. Efforts to pick up girls in the park, at the beach, in the laundromat and at the video store fail miserably. Jon almost has accidental luck at a singles club (Club Ticky Tacky), as, while badly reading aloud from his book just for practice the line, “Hey there, would you like to dance with me?”, an equally-bored girl at the bar overhears him, and half-heartedly responds, “Sure, why not?” “YES!!”, shouts Jon, escorting her onto the floor. But Jon quickly loses her, by throwing her into a couple of forceful spins that spiral her right off the dance floor, then breaking into his own solo elaborate disco number (predicting Goofy’s in An Extremely Goofy Movie). Patrons of the club momentarily stare at the display, but, as the number reaches its close, the house lights go up, and Jon stands alone in an empty club, with total silence except for Jon’s last footfalls. Nevertheless, Jon strikes a closing Jon Travolta-style pose, only to hear from the rafters the voice of the D.J, yelling, “Hey, jerk. Disco is DEAD!” “What?? When??”, reacts Jon, and trudges away with Garfield, complaining how you learn a new dance, and 14 years later, they change it. “Go figure” responds Garfield in characteristic underplay.
A television ad by a dweebish-looking guy for his school, Lorenzo’s School For the Personality Impaired, intrigues Garfield and Jon – especially when mentioning such characteristics of the average students he helps as counting ceiling tiles and thinking disco is still in. Jon and Garfield arrive at Lorenzo’s meager institution (a run-down building complete with broken and partially-boarded windows and cracking plaster). They know they’re in the right place when they find every student in attendance looking up to count the ceiling tiles. Lorenzo dispenses rather meaningless advice, such as extend a hand to the one next to you and say, “Hi, my name is so-and-so”. Most of the students quote him verbatim, never including in the sentence their own name. Another suggestion is to make people believe you can speak a foreign language, by only sounding like you do. He thus utters French-sounding gibberish meaning nothing, then teaches Canadian by merely adding the syllable, “eh?” every few sentences. 
Jon’s handshake extension during the class causes him to make the acquaintance of a moderately pretty girl, who is as unsure of herself as Jon is, and certain that she is blowing making a good first impression. Jon and the girl find themselves equally matched in awkwardness and shyness, and begin to open up to each other about it, being themselves – and really hit things off. Garfield is both amazed and puzzled that this is possible, having never thought Jon to have the potential for striking up any serious relationship. The two decide they’ve had enough education for one day, and step out for a bite to eat, then spend the entire evening on Jon’s porch, getting to know each other – and all the time being themselves, without following any of their professor’s advice. Things get personal for Garfield when he overhears Jon, carried away in conversation with the girl, refer to him merely as “his cat”. “Yesterday, I had a name”, Garfield complains to himself, seeing his best buddy and confidant relationship with Jon slipping away. Garfield lapses into a dream of what will happen if Jon marries, a toddler arrives, and the abuse he will endure as the toddler grabs at him and chomps upon his tail. He marches outside, seizing Jon by the collar and trying to shake some sense into him. The girl, taking her first notice of Garfield, reaches out to pet him behind the ear. “She’s trying to get to you by getting to me”. Garfield warns in thought and pantomime – but a few scratches in just the right places, and even Garfield finds himself being won over, resting in her lap as she scratches his back above his tail. However, the girl has pushed her luck, and an old nemesis of hers arises – an allergic sneezing fit when she is around cats. The two humans are heartbroken at this development, but Jon stays faithful to Garfield, giving his pet a hug. Garfield remarks at the value of having seniority. The two humans realize they can’t be a serious part of each other’s lives, but promise to see each other from time to time. Garfield still wants to ensure that things will stay this way, by promising to himself that their meetings will be chaperoned – riding along with the couple as Jon drives her home, not inside the car, but stuck to the rear window by suction cups on his feet and hands, just like so many plush Garfield ornaments decorated real-life car windows of the period.
My Generation G…G…Gap (Looney Tunes (unreleased, direct to video), Porky Pig, 3/31/04 – Dan Povenmire, dir.) – Hard to say if this one should have ever been produced. It was scrapped for theatrical release when box office on Looney Tunes: Back in Action failed to reach expectations (undeservedly). And it is definitely a departure for Porky, perhaps more jarring than Goofy’s 1950’s transformation to the “everyman”. Somehow, Porky is married? With a hip teenage daughter? (Where did Petunia fit into all of this, as she is never seen nor mentioned in the film.) Porky drives his daughter to her first rock concert, waiting outside the arena at a local coffee shop – where he sees a news story on TV about how out-of-control the concert tour has gotten at its previous venues, and sees a live shot from inside the area of his daughter wildly riding on the shoulders of a burly hunk. Porky spit-takes, and races for the arena, convinced that the performance is unsuitable for the likes of his young girl. A bulky gate attendant with a build reminiscent of construction worker Hercules from Bugs Bunny’s “Homeless Hare” refuses Porky entrance without a ticket, and even the influence of a talking Abe Lincoln on a five-dollar bill Porky offers the guard fails to impress him. Porky scolds Lincoln: “Y-y-you didn’t even try.” Yet, a couple of shapely girls get past the guard just on their good looks without any pass. Porky tries the same thing in drag, but just gets socked in the mush. Porky resorts to hiring a helicopter to lower him to the arena roof – however, the pilot is still giving him instructions when Porky jumps – and has not yet attached Porky’s safety cable. Porky falls through some high-tension wires, then crashes through the arena roof – in three dissected sections.
Inside, Porky lands inside an open guitar case next to the stage. The performance in progress has a rocker using guitars to smash everything on the stage – and Porky is the next “instrument” wielded. Bruised and battered, he is discovered by the guard. Running backstage, Porky ducks into wardrobe, and emerges wearing rocker’s garb, a mohawk wig, eye makeup resembling a member of Kiss, and two-foot tall platform shoes. Thinking he has spotted his daughter waiting around a dressing room backstage, Porky mistakenly demands that the young lady come home with him. She turns to reveal that she is a total stranger – and the other girls in the line would like to be taken home as well. Porky finds himself in the traditional predicament of all rockers – pursuit by an over-stimulated mob of women. He runs right into the guard, who fails to recognize him, and informs him that he should be on stage. Porky is deposited in the spotlight, while an almost stone-quiet audience tries to guess who he is. Porky tries to back away, but jostles a tall speaker, upon which someone has carelessly left a paper cup full of water. The water lands on a transformer, producing a short circuit, which makes its way up the cord of the microphone next to which Porky is standing. ZAP!! SIZZLE!! Porky engages in the most electrifying series of screams ever presented on stage, while a drummer in the back-up group behind him provides accompanying rhythmic beats. The whole stage blows up, and Porky is revealed next-to-naked. His daughter wails from the audience, “Daddy, how could you…” But the incident provides Porky with a new career, depicted in a mock TV commercial for a mail-away record album featuring 22 or so rock hits of other artists performed by a stuttering pig. As the list of hyphenated song titles scrolls across the screen, we fade out on Porky singing “B-b-b-bad to the bone.”
World Wide Wabbit (Warner, Wabbit (Bugs Bunny), 9/22/15) – Yosemite Sam’s been in prison for 20 years, but finally tunnels his way out into the big city and freedom. “I’m free, I’m free…I’m broke”, he observes from his empty pants pockets. Conveniently, he has come up just outside the doors of a bank – the easy answer to his cash problems. He observes he has no firepower, but, setting up a running gag for the film, realizes that his pointing fingers pack as much ability to shoot up his surroundings as a pair of pistols. Thus, he marches into the bank, telling everyone to reach for the skies. The modern bank, however, is something absolutely new to him – no tellers, vault, or long lines, just Bugs at an ATM machine. So how do you hold the place up? Bugs tries to explain to him that everything’s gone digital – lots of ones and zeroes. Sam states he wants lots of bills with ones on them – followed by a lot of zeroes. Bugs continues that there’s nothing here to give, as its all on the Internet. “Okay – Hand over the Internet!!”, screams Sam. “Oh, boy”, mutters Bugs, realizing he’s dealing with a hopeless boob. Bugs again begins by informing Sam that the Internet isn’t something you just had over, and is hard to explain. He asks Sam to imagine a big delivery tube. “A big tube – got it!”. jumps Sam to conclusions, then checks outside for a kid’s drinking straw, an inner tube floating at a pool party, and even a girl’s tube top. “Eh, no”, cautions Bugs before he can touch it. Sam finally spots the biggest tube he’s ever seen, and runs into a subway tunnel, to be quickly run down by a train. 
Bugs explains again that “tube” was merely a metaphor, and that digital information is in the cloud. Of course, Sam commandeers a hot air balloon to reach it, and Bugs makes sure he promptly falls out of its basket. Sam orders Bugs at trigger-finger point to take him to the Internet. Bugs leads him through a dark ventilation shaft, into a room where a game of turning on and off a pull-string light switch results in an unexplained change of locale and/or costumes with every pull of the switch (including lion’s dens, train tunnels, and even a gold room to which Sam just can’t return by turning the switch on and off again). Enough shenanigans, declares Sam, shooting away the pull string with a shot from his finger. Bugs finally tells him that the Internet is directly above them. Sam climbs a stepladder and saws a hole in the ceiling, then climbs up. “I’m on the Internet”, he shouts with jubilation – until he looks at his surroundings, and discovers he’s made his way right back into his jail cell, with a mob of police standing ready to capture him. As the sounds of police brutality echo from the hole above Bugs, Bugs climbs the stepladder himself, sticking a cell phone with camera up through the hole, and declaring “You’re on the Internet now, Doc.” As the live video records, the groggy voice of Sam is heard to say from the beating, “I’m up to a million hits already.”
Hareplane Mode (Warner, Wabbit (Bugs Bunny), 10/15/15) – Bugs is crossing the street, when Yosemite Sam careens down the road, texting while driving. The result is inevitable, with Sam’s car a wreck, and Bugs thrown onto the sidewalk. Sam has no concern for the victim he just collided with – only for his Smart phone, which bounced out of his convertible onto the pavement. Sam blames the rabbit for carelessly walking into the road when he could see Sam was texting, and threatens to sue when he notices a hairline crack in the screen of the phone. “I’m gonna sue the pants off ya”, he shouts, until Bugs points out he’s not wearing any pants – and also points to a billboard, advertising a new model phone available today. “Ya done me a favor”, Sam acknowledges in making him need a new phone, and Sam approaches the line in front of the “Phone Home” store, shoving all others to one side to be first in line. Who should be behind the counter in the store but Bugs, disguised as a typical teenage sales clerk, ready to seek revenge on this menace to society. “Gimme, gimme, gimme”, insists Sam, while Bugs deluges him in paperwork to sign and other red tape. Bugs demonstrates new security features, like a self-defense mode available at the push of a button, causing a gorilla fist to emerge from the phone screen and sock Sam in the jaw. Bugs sets a ringtone to a setting marked “Lion attack”. It goes off, emitting the sounds of a purring kitten. “That don’t sound like no lion attack”, complains Sam – until it signals a real lion to maul him. Bugs suggests switching to vibrator mode, but Sam insists it be nice and strong so he doesn’t miss any calls. Bugs sets the vibrator to “Apocalypse”. At a board meeting, an incoming call vibrates Sam right out of a skyscraper window to a 40-story drop. His mere leaning against a tree and a building when on the ground during phone rings brings down on his head a bee hive and a grand piano.
Sam returns to the store, demanding to return the phone. Bugs states be can’t understand why Sam is having issues – “That never happens with modern technology.” Bugs convinces Sam to keep the phone or be faced with the shame of using an older model, and resets Sam’s vibration lower. But Bugs isn’t through. That evening, he calls Sam, impersonating someone informing Sam that he’s won a grand sweepstakes prize, but interrupting the conversation with voice impressions of static, as if the signal is breaking up. Sam tries desperately to keep the connection going, first moving the phone all around the room for a stronger signal, then outside, then into the desert, and next the mountains. He finally re-establishes the call, shouting “Hello, hello…”, and brings down upon himself an avalanche. Then, the previous ring tone gets reactivated, and Sam is mauled by lions again. A bedraggled Sam returns to the store, again demanding a refund. Bugs pretends to be willing, but holds up the phone, dripping from melted snow from the avalanche, and states that he can’t take the phone back due to water damage. Sam insists that there’s no damage and he can prove the thing is working right, but everything he presses activates the gorilla punch, until he finally knocks himself out. Removing his disguise, Bugs remarks that this new model still had a few “Bugs” in it, then turns to the audience as if another customer, closing as he did in “Rabbit of Seville”: “Next!”
Virtual Mortality (Warner, Looney Tunes Cartoons (Bugs Bunny), 11/25/21 – David Gemmill, dir.) – After all these years, Elmer is determined as ever to know the feeling of victory – of finally catching that wascally wabbit. His latest efforts have him axe-swinging over Bugs’ rabbit hole (his latest cartons don’t allow him to use a shotgun – but is axe-swinging any less violent?). Between swings, Bugs asks if he’ll ever give up. Not until he’s felt victory – just once. An idea hatches in Bugs’ head, appearing in the form of a light bulb – but a swing of the axe fractures the bulb’s glass. Nevertheless, the idea remains in Bugs’s noggin, and he runs with it. He and Elmer could go on like this all day, with Elmer accomplishing nothing. Or, Elmer could achieve the feeling of victory – right now. “I’m wistening…”, says a skeptical Elmer. Bugs reminds Elmer that they are now living a modern era of technological marvels, and demonstrates what he means by disappearing into his rabbit hole to tinker loudly with some tools within. Bugs emerges from the hole carrying an old football helmet, fastened to which are a set of yellow safety goggles, and a snorkel. Elmer asks what it is, and Bugs displays it as a virtual reality helmet. With this, Elmer can experience the virtual reality of capturing him – something that in all likelihood will never occur in the real world. Still not sure what to believe, Elmer is at least willing to try the device on. Bugs “activates the simulation function”, by clunking Elmer a resounding blow on the back of the helmet with a hammer. As Elmer’s blurred vision comes into focus through the goggles, he can’t believe the clarity and detail he sees – of course, of the real forest before him. But Bugs reminds him he is viewing a virtual world that “ain’t real”. To prove the point, he hands Elmer a lit “virtual bomb”. “Wow! It wooks so dangewous!” marvels Elmer. Elmer asides to the audience that if this was real, he’d be freaking out about now. But since it’s virtual, he can be fearless. KA-BOOM! Now Elmer marvels at how real the virtual pain feels.
Bugs giggles to himself at how good a setup that was, and too bad its over so soon. But the rabbit hasn’t counted on Elmer’s recuperative powers, and in a few moments, Elmer has him tied up in rope, thinking he has “virtually caught” the wabbit, and now gets to virtually cook him and find out how good he virtually tastes. As Bugs is twirled on a spit over an open fire, he realizes things are being carried a bit too far. So, in his usual manner, he bluffs, convincing Elmer to not settle for such a small prey in this virtual world, but to go for an even bigger “virtual rabbit” – like the one over there. Slipping out of his bonds, he points out a grizzly bear eating honey from a hive, with his back facing Elmer. Zipping around behind the honey tree, Bugs extends one hand out to simulate, with two fingers, long ears protruding from the bear’s head. Elmer takes the bait, and approaches the bear, grabbing his fur and ordering him to come along quietly. When the beast doesn’t respond, Elmer kicks him. “I’m talking to you”, Elmer shouts, then reminds the beast that this is virtual reality, and Elmer’s in charge. The bear comes face to face with Elmer and snarls. Elmer again marvels at how vicious-looking these virtual wabbits are. Soon, he is experiencing that remarkable virtual pain again.
The Pain In Spain (Disney, Timon and Pumbaa, 11/3/95) – In their worldly travels that set the theme for their television series, our heroes wind up in España. A billboard in the countryside advertises an upcoming bullfight in the big city featuring El Toro – a bull so mean, the sign includes a scoreboard to keep track of the number of matadors he has gored. Timon gets into a bragging mode, boasting of what he could do if he were to face Toro himself. To demonstrate, Timon dives into their traveling suitcase and comes up dressed in a matador suit. He asks Pumbaa to use those useless tusks and charge at him. Pumbaa does one better, having just happened to pack in the suitcase for just such an occasion a bull costume to wear. Timon asks Pumbaa to go way back before starting his charge – so far back, that Pumbaa disappears beyond the horizon, and has to call Timon from a pay phone to ask if this is far enough. Pumbaa takes a few paces backwards to rev up his feet motors – and repeats the mistake of Ferdinand, backing into the sharp needles of a cactus. As with his Disney bull predecessor, Pumbaa charges with such force as to mow Timon down, and repeatedly trample him about six or seven times on repeated passes. (Timon sees miniature bull horns circling around his head, like so many tweeting bords.) Also as with Ferdinand, Pumbaa’s moves are observed by two bullfighting scouts, who capture and cart Pumbaa away as the new attraction for the bull ring – news that is not taken well by El Toro, who is given the heave-ho from his employment as nothing but a has-been, and swears revenge. 
Timon makes a flamboyant entrance into the ring in matador suit, and entertains the crowd with bad stand-up comedy lines about bulls while Pumbaa prepares for his own entrance. But Pumbaa’s entrance will be delayed – by the return of El Toro, who has “beefed” himself up for the event with a crash body-building course to prove he is still the champion. He attempts to dispose of Pumbaa by flushing him down a toilet, then appears in the ring. Timon isn’t quite sure what hit him, and thinks his pal is overacting – until Pumbaa escapes the plumbing and charges in to try to save his friend. Timon goes through the usual delayed reaction at finding himself in the ring with two bulls, and then Timon’s question, “If you’re Pumbaa, then what Pumbaa is THAT Pumbaa?”. The answer is obvious. Our heroes find themselves cornered, and Toro charges from a long distance, allowing for him to engage in transportation changes every time the camera cuts away to view him – from drag racer to diesel truck to streamlined train to Nasa rocket. Pumbaa finally convinces Timon to fight, reminding him of his boasts and that “You’re the brave one.” Timon asks just how he should do it – perform a flamenco dance? This is precisely what he ultimately does, bamboozling the bull similarly to Bugs Bunny’s impromptu dancing in “Bully for Bugs”, while planting snapping mousetraps on his nostrils, smashing clanging cymbals upon his snout, and having Pumbaa blast him in the face with the sour notes of a tuba. Timon backs the bull away from him, using a plunger to prod him instead of a sword, while Pumbaa rolls a cannon up behind the bull, Timon using the plunger end to stuff the bull inside. The cannon is fired, and the toilet plumbing is pushed into the ring, allowing the bull to land in the same predicament in which he had placed Pumbaa. The film quickly comes to a close as our heroes bow before the crowd and are strewn with flowers, Pumbaa shouting, “Ole”. 
Bull Running on Empty (Warner, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, 11/11/95) is sadly perhaps one of the weakest episodes of this series I have encountered. Made in an early season when one episode spanned the entire half-hour, it provides us with material that would have felt labored in running length even had it been cut to 10 to 12 minutes. Tweety and Hector seem to be given virtually nothing to do (although Tweety inexplicably comes up with a pair of thermal binoculars to give Granny to ultimately locate the stolen item), and Sylvester performs only two functions: mimic for one sequence his “scaredy cat” behavior from the classic cartoon of the same name in observing and keeping out of harms’ way the rest of the gang from the systematic destruction of Granny’s hotel room by saws appearing in the floorboards – and spending the entire remainder of the cartoon running from the bulls of Pamplona. (Sylvester complains, “I’ve heard of a running gag, but this is ridiculous.”) The “mystery”, when unraveled, makes no sense (and not in a funny cartoony way – just isn’t thought out in any manner). A museum artifact known as the Pamplona Periscope is missing, stolen from a hole cut or gnawed through the wooden base of its display case, leading to a crawl space in which only rats seem to reside. A caretaker of the bull ring seems to have had his apartment ransacked, and the ring is left locked, leaving the bulls running in the annual festival with no destination to run to (and free to endlessly pursue Sylvester). Attempts are made to keep Granny out of the way, by sawing her entire hotel room out of the building, then later locking her in the Pamplona public library. All of this boils down to the revealing of a supposedly old (and smelly) adversary of Granny’s – a crook living in the sewers called the Spanish Mole, who has used trained rats to commit theft of the Periscope and his other dirty work. A mere butt from Sylvester’s pack of bulls brings him to justice. It seems that he had disguised himself as the town’s bull ring caretaker for years, living under their noses (yet no one seems to have previously noticed his smell). And just when it seems Granny will reveal the Mole’s master plan to the populace, posing to them the questions why he waited until now to pull his crime, and why he locked the bull ring, Granny performs the ultimate cop-out to reveal how little the writers have thought this through, remarking, “Beats the heck out of me. I was hoping you’d fill me in.” For the quick half-smile this line delivers, it hardly justifies the existence of this episode. 
Very few gags instill any life into this lame venture. One decent laugh is the museum curator’s telephone call from a restroom phone to “The World’s Greatest Detective”, a caricature of Sam Spade who is too busy playing tiddly winks with pennies to respond to the call for help. So instead, the curator takes note of graffiti on the restroom tile, one providing a telephone number and reading, “For a good detective, call Granny.” Granny somehow arrives in Spain via a second-hand rocket car, which jets them there in record time, but continues to sputter with knocks and pings after the ignition key is turned off, Granny remarking that it’ll stop – eventually. Of course, upon escaping from Granny’s runaway hotel room, Sylvester winds up with a red blanket, and an alarm clock ready to go off, waking the bulls from exhausted slumber for another day of chasing Sylvester. The bulls ultimately charge through the locked door of the bull ring in seeking out Sylvester, and Tweety and Hector provide Sylvester with a red jogging suit, ensuring that the running will continue round and round the arena ad infinitum. 
Critters (Warner, Batman, 9/18/98) – One Enoch Brown (affectionately, “Farmer Brown”), an old-timer of country stock who looks and talks like he stepped out of “American Gothic”, but is in reality a highly-skilled biochemist, puts on a presentation with his attractive young country daughter (whom Bullock later refers to as “Elly Mae” for her resemblance to Donna Douglas of The Beverly Hillbillies) at an agricultural expo. Brown presents his solution to world hunger – growth hormones, which have produced a cattle specimen of proportions worthy to provide a meal to King Kong. The bovine is startled by flash photography in the same manner as the legendary ape, and breaks loose, with Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne present in the front row. Bruce finds the creature chasing him, and pulls down a large red theater curtain, which drapes over the beast’s eyes like a cape, causing him to crash into the wall and stun himself, while Brown administers a sedative to leave him dreaming of green pastures. Gordon praises Bruce for his quick thinking, but Bruce covers for his uncharacteristic bravery, informing the Commissioner that he only pulled down the curtain to try to escape through the window.
Brown receives an injunction to cease his experiments and remove all live specimens from Gotham. Brown protests that this will mean financial ruin, but the judge responds, “You should have thought of that before you started creating these monsters.” Brown exits the courtroom, muttering, “I’ll give them monsters.” Before long, the city receives a “trial run” of giant aphids (or are they some form of mantis?), genetically altered to be immune to insecticide, but self-destructing to provide a warning. Then, a massed attack of Pterodactyl-like giant chickens, and a rampaging cow and bull bigger than the previous prototype. Batgirl and Robin, on prowl patrol in the batmobile, find themselves in the middle of the stampede. “Holy cow”, utters Robin, as Batgirl responds, “You had to say it.” Batgirl leads the cow into a construction yard, then lassos its legs with a batarang and rope, tripping it into a vat of cement mix. The bull of course invades a china shop, but is lured out by Robin waving his cape in matador fashion and shouting “Hey, Ferdinand.” The bull gives chase, as Robin leaps through the plate glass of a building window, and the bull tries to do the same, getting his head caught within the concrete framing. Batgirl assists, commandeering a garbage truck and driving it up against the bull’s hindquarters to prevent it from extricating itself. Robin looks out upon the scene from an upstairs window, and can’t resist the remark, “That’s a lot of bull.” 
Of course, Brown is behind it all, operating from a new secret island lair outside the city limits. He demands a payoff of 50 million in unmarked bills, or the bugs come back for good. Batman and the Commissioner pull a switch, with most of the bills consisting of blank paper, and one of Batman’s homing devices concealed on the stack. The showdown at the island lair contains no further bullfighting, but attempts to place the bat-trio and Bullock in a silo which is really a rocket for launching into Gotham the hive of mutant bugs. Batman not only tricks one of the insects into ripping open the rocket door so as to allow for an escape of the heroes, but aims the armored car in which the money drop-off was made on a collision course with the rocket doorway before liftoff, sabotaging its flight and killing-off the bugs in the explosion. Brown and his daughter are arrested for an anticipated prison term of 10 to 20, with Bullock offering them the encouraging word that maybe he can find them a nice prison farm.
Pokey Mom (Film Roman, The Simpsons, 1/14/01) is one of two Simpsons episodes to include bullfighting. The setup for this one is both brief and odd. While driving hope from an apron festival, Homer spots a sign advertising a prison rodeo at a local penitentiary. The Simpsons attend the event in a front row of the grandstands, watching various inmates get thrown violently in the events. Among them is a prisoner who gets thrown and wedged into the fence on another side of the arena by a bucking bull. Marge wonders where the rodeo clowns are to keep the bull away from the helpless prisoner. They are still in the dressing rooms, fussing over their clown makeup. So Marge flails her arms wildly, trying to attract the bull’s attention away from the inmate. The waving has no effect. Homer calmly informs Marge that to get a bull’s attention, you need to wave something red at them. So, he picks up Lisa in her red dress, and dangles her precariously over the railing, waving her as a ready target for the bull’s wrath. But Homer isn’t a cruel parent, and pulls Lisa back to her seat as the bull’s charge toward them begins. Now, Homer says, all they need to do is wave something in calming blue at the beast to quiet him down. Homer reaches for Bart, but is aghast to find that Bart is not wearing a blue shirt. This is hardly a surprise, as Bart, who always wears red, points out, “Dad, I don’t even OWN a blue shirt.” The bull continues unabated, smashing into the grandstand, knocking Homer over the railing, then head-butting Homer halfway across the prison yard into the side of a guard tower. Unaware of what caused the impact vibration, the guard above responds reflexively, launching a volley of tear gas bombs into the stands, and dispersing the crowd.
Million Dollar Abie (4/2/06) is another roundabout script that seems to throw together several short and disparate ideas to fill out a half-hour timeslot. Homer sets his mind to spearheading a campaign to bring the NFL’s latest expansion team to Springfield. The campaign works as if by a miracle, and a new stadium is built, the whole town painted in the jersey colors of the soon-to-be Springfield Meltdowns, and all the streets renamed for various football terms and phrases. This renaming disorients the NFL commissioner in finding directions to the stadium to publicly sign the contract, his old road map only showing the street’s old names. He stops at the Simpsons’ house to phone for directions, finding Grandpa Abe to be the only one home who did not go to the stadium. Grandpa becomes mistakenly convinced that the stranger is a hoodlum intending to rob the house and prey on the elderly – so knocks the commissioner out with a blow from a golf club, and keeps him tied and gagged in a chair until late in the evening, when everyone at the stadium has given up waiting and gone home. The family arrives to discover Abe’s blunder, and release the commissioner, only to hear him swear that he will never return to this crazy town – and neither will the expansion team.
Abe is treated as an outcast by the town for losing the franchise. Another resident of the retirement home suggests he visit a physician specializing in assisted suicides, to put himself out of his misery, as well as satisfy the urges of the town to kill him. Grandpa ultimately consents to death by a suicide computer (looking much like a giant smart phone) to cut off his vital systems. Things do not go according to plan, as the police break in for a raid two minutes before Abe is to expire, announcing that the assisted suicide law has been repealed. The doctor swears, “I’ll kill you” – that is, once the repealing law is itself repealed. Grandpa revives in an emptied room, and thinks he’s dead. He wanders around in a hospital gown, ignoring busy crosstown traffic and taking other risks, believing he has nothing to fear. However, he spots the Simpson family in a restaurant, and thinks Homer or Bart went berserk and killed them all in a murder spree. They inform him that he is not really dead, and are shocked to find that he nearly suicided. But Abe declares he’s through with thoughts of suicide, observing that these few moments when he felt there was nothing to fear were the happiest moments of his life. He resolves to spend the rest of his life in such fearless manner. So, when a town meeting is called to figure out what to do with the empty football stadium, and the proposal is raised to turn it into a bullfighting arena, Abe volunteers to be the town’s first matador.
Abe trains in the backyard, using as a bull Bart on a bicycle with a set of horns strapped to the bicycle basket. Abe is too fast for Bart, but Homer is not, and nearly gets speared in the rear while bending over, then turns around to walk right into the horn points, catching him painfully at a key spot between the lower limbs. Lisa, as usual, is completely opposed to the idea – not so much for Grandpa’s safety, but because of the pointless slaughter of helpless bulls. She serenades her pleas for an end to the plan outside the stadium, self-accompanied on Spanish guitar, while the townsfolk merely admire her as cute but ignore altogether her message. Grandpa makes his debut in full matador garb, performs multiple “Veronica” cape passes, and tires the bull out, who lays on the dirt prone and exhausted, while Grandpa, with only momentary hesitancy, follows the crowd’s verdict of “thumbs down” to the bull, and with only the bloodletting kept offscreen, finishes the beast. That night, Grandpa stands admiring himself in the mirror, while Lisa enters, asking him how he could do it. Grandpa explains that for the first time in his life, people were cheering him for what he did, driving him to follow through. Lisa remarks, “I was cheering for you all the time, Grandpa – till now.” As she exits, Grandpa contemplates how she always knows what to say to get to him. At the next bullfight, Grandpa’s performance remains the same as the debut, with the bull again falling to the dirt in exhaustion. But this time, when Grandpa pulls his sword, he tosses it away across the arena, leaving it sticking in the arena fence, then walks to the corrida gates, opening both the main exit and the door holding back all the remaining bulls. Springfield experiences its first-ever running of the bulls, as they stampede down Main Street and everywhere they can find anything red or anyone engaged in selling meat. Only Abe and Lisa rise above the situation, in lawn chairs suspended in mid-air by helium-filled toy balloons. Lisa congratulates Grandpa on turning over a new leaf – but Grandpa’s woes may not be over yet, as two bulls rise into the sky on either side, also suspended by balloons. “Uh oh” moans Grandpa, for an abrupt cut to credits. 
What Goes Around (Dreamworks, The Penguins of Madagascar, 9/19/09) – The Penguins leave the zoo on a secret mission to replace the dolly of a little girl (which they have accidentally caused to be lost down a sewer grating at the zoo). Rico just happens to possess an identical doll as one of his private treasures, and is sweet-talked by Skipper into sacrificing it to prevent the thought of the never-ending weepy-eyes of the little girl. But once the mission is accomplished and the substitute doll left for the little girl to find, the problem remains of returning home cross-town to the zoo – particularly when a psychotic male animal control officer with high-tech capture van spots them on the street, and declaring them strays, says “They’re mine.” (This character may be said to predict the equally determined French female officer who would later appear in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.) 
Throughout the episode, Rico feels dejected that his own dolly was sacrificed to make the girl happy. Private keeps reassuring him that good deeds don’t go unrewarded, and that what goes around, comes around. Yet, the penguins’ luck seems to keep going from bad to worse as the control officer remains hot on their trail. The penguins seem finally cornered, with the van blocking their path to the zoo. The officer wise-cracks that he knows why penguins are from the antarctic – they can’t take the heat. This angers Rico, who coughs up, from his never-ending belly full of useful objects and supplies, a bullfighter’s hat and red cape. He waves the cape before the van, taunting its driver to advance. The van charges Rico at full speed, but the penguin nimbly dodges, again and again, creating a needed diversion. Meanwhile, the other penguins swing down on ropes as the van passes, each of them armed with a monkey wrench. When the van pauses briefly at the end of each charge, the penguins use their wrenches to loosen bolts in the hubs of the van’s wheels. By its final charge, the van’s wheels fall off, capsizing the vehicle on its side. Rico mutters one word of clear dialog: “Ole!” 
While the remainder of the film features no bullfighting, a final stand by the control officer at the zoo gates leads the penguins to notice he is standing just under a pipe connected to the zoo’s sewer line, prompting Rico to spit out a tool large enough to sever the pipe, in hopes of deluging the officer with the pipe’s foul contents. Yet nothing comes out as the pipe is cut. The officer lassos the birds, and calls the office to arrange for a nice tight-fitting cage for the four of them. Then, a rumbling and whistling is heard by Skipper. Looking up, the pipe is vibrating in threatening fashion, and Kowalski realizes something has been blocking the pipe, and it’s gonna blow. Out shoots, with the speed of a bullet, the lost dolly of the little girl, right in the officer’s face. As the doll bounces back, landing at the feet of Rico, the long-anticipated sewer water spews all over the helpless control officer, placing him out of commission. The penguins are able to return to headquarters safely, while the animal control officer is dragged away for causing seven blocks of destruction in his wake, and his remarks about wild penguins treated as the frantic ravings of a lunatic. And Rico hugs his new dolly in replacement of the one he gave up, proving that the universe eventually catches up in providing the return good luck for a deed well done.
Al Rojo Vivo (translation: “Red Hot”) (Disney, Mickey Mouse Cartoons (TV), 3/27/15 – Dave Wasson, dir.) – A Mickey episode with dialog entirely in Spanish, set in Pamplona, Spain for another running of the bulls. Mickey and Minnie watch on the sidelines, dressed in special white outfits of local design for the occasion – that is, until the wide – er, rear – of Pete looms in front of them to block their view. When Mickey politely asks that Pete step aside, all he receives is a kick in the gut from Pete’s peg leg, landing him in a barrel, and rolling him out into the middle of the street, where he receives a good trampling by a wave of bulls and the members of the crowd running ahead of them. Minnie is hung helplessly by her skirt upon a lamppost, while Pete tries to steal kisses from her. Mickey is peeved, and turns red from head to toe – not a good thing when you are in the middle of a bull run. One of the bulls who has passed him looks over his shoulder, stops, and his eyes turn as red as the color of Mickey’s anatomy. Minnie shouts a warning to Mickey, and the mouse turns white again – this time from fright. The color change is not soon enough to stop the advance of the raging bull, and Mickey flees for his life through the crowd, who parts a wide path for Mickey and the bull to pass.
Mickey ducks behind a parked van. However, its color is “Rojo!” (red). The bull’s horns emerge, right through the vehicle’s side. Mickey seeks refuge behind a flower cart – also full of “rojo” flowers. More destruction. Wherever Mickey runs, his surroundings seem to provide such objects as a red motor scooter, a red guitar, etc., and finally a whole neighborhood where almost everything seems to be red. Mickey spots one place in the neighborhood not red – a white door – so performs a transformation act, pulling off his black ears and blending into the scenery in camouflage fashion, while the over-stimulated bull tears up everything else in sight. The bull finally departs, and Mickey returns to his old, casual whistling self. But not for long, as it seems that part of the local festivities include a block-wide food fight – with red tomatoes! Mickey is plastered from head to toe with the dripping redness. The bull returns on cue, chasing Mickey through what seems a tidal wave of tomato juice resulting from the fight. He looks down at himself, to also remark with shock, “Rojo!”, as he too is now dripping red everywhere. Before the bull can ponder the question whether he should charge upon himself, who should backtrack to catch up with him but the herd of other bulls. Mickey and the first bull now race side by side, fleeing from the stampede of angry bovines behind them. Finally, Mickey decides he’s had enough, slams on the brakes, and holds up a cautionary hand to the “red bull” beside him to pause for a moment. Pulling out a large red handkerchief from his pocket, Mickey quickly wipes off the tomato goo from his own person, and then from the bull, restoring them to natural colors. The confused bulls behind them skid to a halt, realizing they have nothing more to charge at. Mickey grabs up all of their tails, and gives the herd a few small judo flips to show them who’s boss, then provides the herd with a new target, tossing the tomato-soaked handkerchief onto Pete. Riding atop the head of the lead bull, Mickey order a charge, and the herd knocks Pete for a loop that sails him entirely out of a long shot of the city skyline. Mickey accepts the applause and cheers of the crowd, and releases Minnie, who plants a kiss on his cheek. The bulls all stand behind them, cheering Mickey as their temporary friend. Mickey begins to blush from the kiss, which might be bad enough as the color red begins to flush through his cheeks. But even worse, the pants of his white outfit fall down, revealing that he is wearing his traditional red pants underneath! A scream from Mickey at knowing what’s to come, and a quick cut to credits. 
