Trevor Writes

Milk and Money (1936, dir: Tex Avery) brings back the father-and-son dynamic last seen in Porky the Rain-maker (the father clearly tells us that his son is Porky in this one) and introduces mischievous little Hank Horsefly. Hank has a liking to the Porkys, and when he uses his stinger it causes either a little trouble or helps the characters along. Porky plows the field with his slow-horse, and one sting from Hank on the horse's bottom, causes the horse to run, which helps them finish the job in seconds. Their cruel landlord, Mr. Viper, who slithers across the ground and might as well be twirling his mustache to further exude his villainy, wants to evict Father Porky and Little Porky unless they can pay up a large sum of money which they obviously do not have. After Viper leaves, Father explains to Porky that their outlook is looking "pretty dark, son. pretty dark". The screen literally dims as this is said, with heavy shades of grey clouding everything in ...

Alpine Antic s (1936, dir: Jack King) is a Looney Tune more-so in title than in spirit. It opens with a musical number that establishes the premise: wild antics at a skiing resort. It has one brief sequence of ingenuity during this opening, wherein three snowmen walk on screen singing a sing, then unknowingly walk in front of a fire and melt as their cue comes to an end. It doesn't cut away and shows us the gradual melting frame-by-frame, a bit that is very well drawn. It also subverts the Disney aesthetic, if only slightly. To take the wholesome image of jolly snowmen singing a song, and then place them by a fire and watch as their bodies die. It's morbid for a G-rated audience. Jack King struggled - and largely proved unable - to shed his Disney sensibilities. After all, it was the studio that gave him work on an Academy Award winning film (the 1933 short The Three Little Pigs won Best Animated Short). There is a montage of a variety of animal-based folk engagin...

Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Tom Palmer and Earl Duvall all left Warner Bros in the span of one year. Friz Freleng, whose animation work with Warner dates back to Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930), has been promoted to Merrie Melodies director, and How Do I Know It's Sunday (1934) is very much cut from the same cloth as its predecessors. Similar to I Like Mountain Music (1933) and We're In The Money (1933), except this film is set in a grocery store and it's a variety of food products that come to life to sing and dance. It goes through the same motions, but it displays a little more imagination than the earlier cartoons. In a couple instances, it plays with cartoon dimensions in a fun way, as seen when an Eskimo child drawn onto a bottle (he is a part of the bottle label) begins to move, while still part of the bottle, he casts a fishing line into a nearby bottle. The fishing line then drops inside a kitchen sink where a fish is caught (this sink being part of thi...