Here’s an example from The Tree Surgeon, a 1944 MGM cartoon under the direction of George Gordon. The cartoon stars a donkey as a doctor trying to cure the ills of a tree that doesn’t want to get a shot. He shakes the surgeon off a limb.
The vitamin somehow turns the donkey into a quasi-tree.
About half-way through the cartoon we learn a termite is causing all the woes for the sick tree. It ends with the donkey again turned into a tree and the termite getting set to snack on him. I was going to say another Cartoon Rule is “termites always win,” but that wasn’t the case in the Woody Woodpecker short Termites From Mars.
Arnold Gillespie, Mike Lah and Ed Barge are the animators here. No story or background credits.
As a kid I found the image of him turning into a tree (especially what happens to his feet) really creepy. It makes me think of the Pleasure Island scene from Pinocchio. Only that scene was meant to be creepy, and this scene was meant to be funny.
ReplyDeleteThey should have went to black and then come back a second later so it could show that he completely ate the poor donkey alive as he is setting all bloated and full on some saw dust the only thing that's left of the poor donkey and then he burps
ReplyDelete