Mexican Joyride (1947)

 I really enjoy returning back to some Looney Tunes nostalgia, I love the Daffy Duck screwball cartoons from the 40s, he was one of my favorite cartoon characters when I was a teenager. This one used to be one of my favorites of the obscure Looney Tunes cartoons. I always loved the chaotic energy in this one, and the bull is a very likeable character.

The animation was mostly done by Art Davis's staff. They're extremely talented and I always was drawn into this style of animation, as I stated in my previous review of Chuck Jones's Scaredy Cat (1948) I love how unlimited it feels, you could draw basically anything you want, but I do understand restrictions. This short film is the best for it's wild takes, smears and of course Mel Blanc's acting.

I piled some unique frame grabs from this cartoon that have some great individual drawings in them, they feel like what I wanted to do with my animations. 

The bull has great construction and poses. 

Love it when cartoons go badass. 

It's been a hidden staple for the longest time.

Daffy running it gets even more closer.

A very underrated scene of Daffy in a Mexican restaurant, and the inside of his mouth catches on fire. Hilarious.

Really great human designs, like the details of the wrinkles, here's Daffy performing a simple hand slap.

Reminds of Tex Avery with this scene where everyone leaves immediately except for Daffy because of the bull. By that time Daffy is in charge to fight.

I have some more great scenes from this cartoon but each is one singular shot. 

I love Daffy's facial expression.

This is really well-drawn. Daffy's eye pokes right at his approaching enemy.

I have not watched this cartoon at least a couple of years. It hasn't been quite a bit since I last watched Looney Tunes, I keep coming back to it often, especially the Foghorn Leghorn shorts.

This title card is really nice. 

Bacall To Arms (1946) Cartoon Insanity

 

The title of the post is not a joke. Cartoon Insanity will be a series of posts throughout the upcoming future. 

There's this cartoon I've been thinking about for months. The animation is so rubbery and vivid that I need to talk about it.

It's called Bacall to Arms (1946) it's a Looney Tunes short planned by Bob Clampett, but was finished by Art Davis. As you can tell by what might be happening well...

Right away we get our first reference to Metro Goldwyn Mayer, one of the kings of Golden Age animation. What is this?! The lion is screeching while I guess his baby cub is biting onto his tail. What is he doing with his foot? This is definitely something Clampett or either Art Davis would approve.

 

Various other gags appear before the feature film starts in the movie theater. After that is some stellar frame shots of actress Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.

This was an attempt to reenact To Have and Have Not (1944).

I like the colors scheme in these scenes. It's not the usual typical clean black and white colors we get in the actual real movies.

The best moments are The Wolf's reactions. He's in similar vain to the wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) directed by Tex Avery. I'm highly sure that Clampett and possibly Davis loved Avery's MGM cartoons. 

Incredible drawings!

 

I would've loved to see a fully length short film of these two characters, maybe even just the art style, that would've been cool and inspiring. 

There's this walk cycle I admire of Bacall with her cigar and there's flames in her heels.

We get to see more funny and janky movements of the wolf's reactions. I'm definitely thinking Rod Scribner did alot of these scenes.

When The Wolf acts more enthusiastic, there's these simple linear gradient backgrounds. 

 

And also a ton of smears.

While I love the comedic energy, the designs and the more toned-down scenes of the live action style characters, the rest of it is not as great or thrilling as I hoped it would be. This may be just a standard cartoon with not much cohesion but it's still got some funny moments, despite the re-used animation from another Looney Tunes short almost a decade prior.

Seriously it feels like the movie theater is packed with 1930s style characters and 1940s characters at the same time.

This Dog's Design Is Incredible

 

There's alot of really fun and extremely appealing cartoon characters. There's characters I love for their design like George Geef, Cyril Proudbottom, The Kitty Kornered Cats, and Tex Avery's Wolf. But there's also this unnamed dog. Let me talk about this fantastic lookin' character.

Let's start with 20 frames of him and his funny walk cycle. 

His simple design is what I love about cartoon characters. They don't need them to dress like humans do. 

I'm a big huge fan of facial expressions. This dog has some fun ones in particular. 

Looney Tunes's dogs always were the best moments in the shorts. For example, Hare Ribbin' (1944) You should see my own review of Hare Ribbin' on my blog page. It comes to show you, the expressive animation like that was made in the 40s. I thought back then when I was little, the 40s was like the 1800s or something.

These were meme-worthy back in 1948.

And as I was saying about 1948, the dog appeared with the goofy gophers, who don't get alot of recognition and love. The short is called Two Gophers From Texas released in January 1948. It's directed by Art Davis, my favorite overlooked animated directors of all time.

It's a simple cartoon, really. It's not a masterpiece. This expression in particular is so silly. The dog is kinda breaking the basics of movement. His expression stays still for a few seconds...

AND THEN...

falls.

When I came back watching this cartoon, the walk cycle was just too perfect. Here are some frames.

There's also another dog similar to the dog I was talking about and he appears in another goofy gophers cartoon called A Ham In A Role (1949). It's another good one and his design is also stellar, and was directed by Robert McKimson, another awesome animation director.

Before this reading is over, I made some characters recently and it's my own versions of Jack and Jill. 

I wanted Jack to sound like Goofy.