The crowing doesn’t impress the farmer (you’d think the old guy would have been used to it by now) who throws an alarm clock at the bird to silence it.
In this Ub Iwerks’ adaptation of the fable, the rooster and other rejected animals join together to throw burglars out of the farmer’s house. The cartoon ends with some gags (?) showing the animals rewarded by enjoying a lazy life, concluding with the rooster who needs not crow any longer, thanks to 1935 entertainment technology.
Carl Stalling gets a musical credit but no animators receive mention on the screen.
The Iwerks cartoons have to be the record holders for Most Consistently Un-Funny Animated Films. I mean, you can see what are apparently supposed to be gags throughout the cartoons, but those gags usually seem to end up just lying there.
ReplyDeleteOh, definitely. The Iwerks cartoons are full of "gags" that just aren't funny. Honestly, most of the gags in his cartoons aren't funny. The man must have been missing any comic sensibility. That's a big part of what makes his cartoons so wearisome for me to sit through.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Iwerks himself had a lot to do with the stories of his cartoons. Bugs Hardaway worked for him, as did Otto Englander. I don't know if Frank Tashlin had anything to do with stories during his stop there.
ReplyDeleteIn Leonard Maltin's "Of Mice and Magic," in the chapter on Iwerks, there's some mention of Ub's ideas about comedy. One of his former employees is quoted that Ub's idea of a funny gag was for Flip the Frog's car to have sixteen cylinders under the hood instead of eight.
ReplyDeleteI like your use of a parenthetical question mark after the word "gags" every time you discuss an Ub Iwerks cartoon.
ReplyDelete