Thursday 9 December 2021

Prohibition in Hell

I’m going out on a limb here, but I don’t think a lot of animators liked Prohibition. The exacted their revenge off screen by going to wherever they could get alcohol, and on screen by making cartoons about getting drunk.

In Hell's Fire, a 1934 Ub Iwerks short, Prohibition is depicted as a man being sent to Hell and forced by the Devil to drink.



When Ub Iwerks’ studio wanted to come up with odd designs, they did a good job. Balloonland is a good example and an even better one is Stratos-Fear. Here, Prohibition comes to a stop and the camera pans over to a reddish elephant, a cow on wheels and other visions of his intoxicated imagination.



Then a snake slithers up through the top of his bottle. Prohibition then makes the stock Iwerks moan that is heard in a pile of cartoons.



No one besides Iwerks gets a screen credit for this Cinecolor red-blue toned cartoon, not even musician Carl Stalling.

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