Friday 8 September 2017

Ub's Creepy Aliens

There is nothing like a creepy alien, and Ub Iwerks’ Stratos-Fear (1933) has a bunch of them. Willie Whopper floats toward a weird planet where a scientist with a ray gun turns a cow (with a broom for a tail?!) into dairy and leather products.



A pig becomes ham and pigskins.



Here’s another one who’s a voyeur. His eye is a telescope. He ejaculates smoke from his head when he becomes excited (and the lower part of his body rises up). Could this be any more Freudian?



The other characters use his ears to see through his telescopic eye.



Alas, the ending is a cop-out. It’s all a dream. I thought the idea behind Willie Whopper was he was supposed to make up stories that he insisted actually happened to him.

The music’s good but there’s no music credit.

3 comments:

  1. I've heard of a broomtail horse (a small, poor quality horse, usually wild) but not a broomtail cow.

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  2. I believe Carl Stalling was the musical director at the Iwerks studio at this time.

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    Replies
    1. The score could either be by him or Art Turkisher (whom Yowp profiled in a post last month).

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