Orchestra From Another World

If all of Ub Iwerks’ cartoons had the imagination behind the Willie Whopper short Stratos-Fear (1933), who knows how much longer he would have been in business. This is a great cartoon, filled with wonderful oddities reminiscent of Walter Lantz’s Mars (1931) and Warners’ Porky in Wackyland (1938).

Here’s a sequence where other-worldly musical instruments play themselves (with a Harpo Marx stand-in making music from a lyre bird).



The only lame part of this is the ending. Willie is supposed to make up stories. Instead of being creative and having Willie invent some fantastic story of how he escaped from the alien world, they just make it a dream. Booo.

Fans of old cartoons can thank Steve Stanchfield’s company for rescuing Willie from the pit of obscurity a few years ago and restoring his cartoons, especially an excellent print of the colour version of Hell's Fire (1934).