BIG MAN FROM THE NORTH (1931)

Ah, snowstorms! How I don't miss them! I have made it through my first winter away from Alaska, and I didn't miss the snow and ice for one second. I'm sure that I will miss the snow eventually (my love of sledding is too intense), perhaps even as soon as this October, but I will never miss the ice. (A note to the Duke: it is one thing to not be afraid to fall on the ice, and I will forever be that in my heart; but once the knee goes on you and the slightest slip can cause it swell it to the size of Fat Albert, physically, you have to practice a little restraint...) Now that I am mired in March in OrCo (a better way to refer to the OC, now that it has become annoying to hear the initials), and the rain has been pouring for weeks now, I have started to think about my lost Alaskan winter, and really begun to ponder when I will start to miss the freezing white stuff.

And then I watch Big Man from the North, a Bosko movie that actually has a plot, rudimentary though it is, and I see the opening snowstorm -- nay, blizzard -- and I go, "Nope! Don't miss that... at... all!" You see, I don't drive. Not one bit. So, I've had to do more than my share of pulling up the ol'hood, ducking my head down, defogging my glasses every hundred yards or so, slogging through the buildup on the sidewalks where the graders scoop everything from the streets, and hoping against hope that a stray wisp of subzero wind doesn't sting my ear or nose with a nasty case of frostbite (I've actually frozen the tip of my ear -- twice). Mind you, it's pretty dangerous driving in a car in a snowstorm, too, and it's my own choice not to drive, so I'm not looking for sympathy here. I'm only stating that when I see a blizzard now in a film like Big Man from the North, where the wind performs a John Bonham-like thrumming on the door of the cabin, and the characters struggle to keep it closed while the snow tries to finagle its way inside -- well, I really do think about my Alaska days, and while I never lived in a cabin like in the film (and don't even start in on the igloo thing), I have already spent all the time that I wish in snowstorms. Soooooo -- nope! Don't miss them at all...

But I can watch them in this flick, safely from the not-yet-crushing heat of an OrCo spring day, and be taken to an Arctic world where our little happy-go-lucky Bosko is a deputy Mountie who is much put upon by his sergeant, in a manner that many police sergeants tend to be. At Big Man's start, the sergeant mountie is pacing back and forth worldly while a horrid snowstorm threatens to tear civilization apart outside. At the least, it threatens to tear away the "Mounted Police" sign outside the cabin (along with a sapling next to it.) To calm his nerves, with each pace, the sergeant spits a huge black loogie in the direction of the wood-burning stove in the corner, and it sizzles when it meets the metal surface.

Suddenly, he opens the door to the cabin, and in comes his little deputy Bosko, though it is certainly a wind-aided effort when he does enter. As he is swept in, Bosko struggles mightily against the wind and even performs a Chaplinesque windwalk (if you think the filmmakers haven't seen The Gold Rush, you are wrong), but before long, Bosko is sent flying against the wall opposite the door. However, on the way to the wall, Bosko grabs the seat of the sergeant's pants and tears them off his body. As the sergeant pushes for all he's worth to close the door against the blizzard, Bosko gets up to help his boss, but once again, the wind is too much for the little deputy, and he grabs the sergeant's seat a second time, and this time, with nothing else to grab, he tears off a huge chunk of the sergeant's underwear! Bosko is sent crashing once again into the wall. Finally, the sergeant manages to shut the door, though there is a hesitation on his part as he watches the wind try to force it open again.

He then turns on Bosko, who gets up and salutes him, and then shakingly hands the sergeant the torn-off pants. "These yours, Mr. Sergeant?" The sergeant takes his pants and puts them on, and then goes behind his desk for his big dramatic moment. On the wall behind Bosko is a wanted poster reading "$5000 Reward -- Wanted: Dead or Alive", and on it is a picture of a gruff-looking individual, who could easily almost be Peg Leg Pete, were this a Disney film. The sergeant pulls the poster off the wall and pushes it roughly in Bosko's face. "Get your man!", he bellows, and Bosko can only ask meekly, "Who? Me?" The sergeant orders simply and brusquely, "Go!", and Bosko is sent out into the storm. (The Bosko films are not known for the wit of their dialogue, but at least the language is direct and to-the-point informational.)

He fights his way to his dog sled, where three mushing dogs await. They are overjoyed to see Bosko and also for the chance to pull the sled, and they bark happily at the sight of him. Two of the dogs are rather big, and because this is a cartoon where wacky visuals count for everything, the dog in the middle of the run is tiny and black, possibly a terrier of some sort, and about a sixth of the size of the other two dogs. So, when they bark, it is with the larger barks of the big dogs interrupted by the cute yip of the smaller one. After Bosko yells "Mush!", the dogs take off, and with every few paces, the little dog gets stretched out on the line between the other two bigger dogs. When they come to a depression in the landscape, following true the Bosko tradition of such things, the legs of all three dogs stretch to fill the gap in space, with their bodies remaining level with the horizon. The sled comes to a steep slope, and the group begin sliding down it. A pair of boulders obstruct their path, but the bigger dogs are not bothered by them; the little dog, however, is not so lucky and hits each rock, spinning about each time helplessly. When they reach the bottom of the hill, there is the side of a log building sitting immediately in their path, and Bosko, the dogs and the sled all crash into its side. Bosko is shaken but fine, but the dogs are another matter. They have mashed up into one huge mutant potpourri of a dog, with a big round body with all three heads sticking out of it at odd angles (but with only four feet... curious...) But, the dogs are true to their profession and set themselves on sniffing out the villain; so, the canine mash-up stretches out like a giant tri-noggined dachschund, with a head at each end and the little dog's head sticking out the middle of its back, turns the corner, and sniffs its way out of the picture.

Bosko turns around the corner of the building he has crashed into, and it turns out to be the town saloon. Eyeing another copy of the Wanted poster to reacquaint himself with his target, he spitshines his badge on the seat of his pants, proudly attaches it to his puffed-out chest, and then pulls out two huge pistols from inside his pants (where Bosko apparently keeps all of his belongings). Prepared for action, he strides into the saloon looking for the villain, but his attention is instantly diverted by Honey, who is playing a saloon girl. She is singing, or rather, she is la-la-la-ing on a tabletop next to the piano, and Bosko falls in love at first sight. The song she is la-la-la-ing is called Chinnin' and Chattin' with May", a hit song from 1930, and the lyrics are as follows:

"Love is great in the moonlight
All our rides are okay
But I spend my whole evening
Chinnin' and chattin' with May

Though we talk about nothin'
We've got plenty to say
And I'm always so happy
Chinnin' and chattin' with May

She'll say, "Night-Night"
Then I'll give her a kiss
I'll say, "I like
Conversation like this"

Never go to a movie
Never go to a play
I get my entertainment
Chinnin' and chattin' with May"

But when the talented songstress Honey tackles it in her distinctive style, the song comes out like this:

"Yah-da-da Da-da-da-da
Yah-da-da Da-da-da
Yah-da-da Da-da-da-da
Yah-da-da-da da-da-da!
Bo-Bo-Bo-Bo-Bo-Bo-Bo!"
(repeat)

Bosko is overwhelmed by her talent and beauty. He puts his pistols back into his pants (which is generally the opposite thing of what you do when falling in love), and jumps up on the table to join Honey in the song and dance routine. Bosko punctuates the music with little kazoo-like bursts from holding his fingers to his lips; when the song ends, the audience, made up entirely of various woodland creatures, prospectors which are really dogs with beards, and cows banging mugs on tables, breaks into applause, including a pair of beavers who slap their tails together repeatedly. "Watch this!", orders Bosko, and he jumps down to the piano, spins about on the piano stool, and begins playing a solo. As he gleefully pounds on the keys (at one point, even punching them), Bosko is joined by three beavers, who perform their version of a tap-dance routine by rhythmically slapping their tails on the counter of the bar. Bosko begins to scat the next verse, but then has the scat scared out of him by the sudden and violent appearance of the Pete-like villain, who smashes through the saloon doors, guns a-blazin'! (My earlier mention of his resemblance is partially backed up by the fact that he, too, has a peg for a leg.)

The villainous cretin pegs his way to the bar, and then pounds on it impatiently for a drink, and Bosko, as scared as anyone in the saloon, sets his resolve to bring the creep to justice. The little deputy throws his arms about his own chest and puffs it up; when he lets go, to his surprise, it drops clear to the floor. Bosko yells "Hey!" at the villain, and the murderous swine takes one look at the size of the would-be hero and laughs uproariously. "You is arrested!", commands Bosko, but the villain just laughs again. So, Bosko pulls his pistol out and points it at him, but when Bosko pulls the trigger, a cork pops out of the barrel meekly and falls to the floor. This gives the villain the chance to pull his own gun, and Bosko shivers when he sees that the gun is easily the size of Bosko himself, but our hero eyes the lamp overhead and manages to spit the lights out at the last second. (Yes, I said he spits the lights out...) The flame from the light falls and hits the ground, snuffing itself out, and causing the bar to plunge into darkness.

The blackness is interrupted by numerous shots from all directions, and then the lights mysteriously go back on, and Bosko is gone. The villain searches all about the place but is unable to find the lad. Suddenly, Bosko pops up out of a hole in the floor brandishing a machine-gun. As he is behind the villain, Bosko shoots the cad multiple times in his keister. The villain growls and pulls out a huge Bowie knife. He charges at Bosko (which makes for a rather scary visual, the angle being somewhat unique), but the small deputy is too quick and easily avoids him, and the villain ends up getting his head trapped in the doorway to the saloon, dropping his knife as he does. To Bosko, who picks up the weapon, the knife is more the size of a cutlass, and he makes good use of it, plunging the blade deep into the rear of his trapped foe! (Is this a shocking turn? And how...!) The villain howls with pain, and the action causes him to pry himself loose. He pulls the blade from his butt, and makes to charge at Bosko once more. Bosko, however, has other plans, for he has found a shotgun perched on the wall of the saloon, and he fires it straight at the villain. There is a loud explosion, and all of the villain's fur is blasted off his body! The huge and scary villain, once all of his cover has been blown, is revealed to practically have the body of a scrawny chicken. He yowls, and turns to run away, but his pants fall down when he does, revealing his naked behind as he scurries off into the snowy night. Bosko runs to the center of the villain's fallen gunbelt, and the entire bar cheers the courageous hero, and the film irises out.

The plot is nothing more than your basic melodramatic mountie action, but it is something, even though most of the film is devoted to the usual body-stretching gags and the contracted inclusion of a Warner Bros. song in the musical sequence. Honey is even forgotten at the film's climax, where it would have been appropriate for her to congratulate her suitor-hero with at least a hug, if not a kiss. And the savage storm that opens the film? It apparently has subsided by the time Bosko takes off in the dog sled, and the last trace of snow in the flick is a trace of it on the corner of the saloon when Bosko enters it. Once he does, the film could then take place in any bar in any western film -- albeit with beavers hanging out inside. And, was Peg Leg Pete such a great villain that other companies couldn't help but replicate him?

I'm toasty warm nowadays. Far, far from the world that I used to know, full of snowstorms and icy streets and window-scraping and endless shoveling... and snowball fights, hot chocolate, sledding, skiing, snow angels, snowmen, snowforts...

Crap... I'm starting to miss it already...

Big Man From the North (Warner Bros. Looney Tunes, 1931) Dir: Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

HOLD ANYTHING (1930)

If real goats ate all the things that goats do in the cartoons, we would have no refuse problem in the world at all. We'd have one hell of a lot of goat crap, which would lead to unprecedented levels of methane in the atmosphere, and probably an uptick in disease and death, but at least we wouldn't have all that junk laying about the place anymore. We'd trade one form of pollution for another. Just tons of goat leavings... Oh, and tons of goats, too. Obviously, their numbers would probably increase as well, and with all of the junk gone, the goats would have to eat all of the working machinery on the planet. When that has disappeared, because the goats had naturally been already running rampant on the vegetation of the earth at the same time they were eating all of the cars, the goats would then evolve into pure meat eaters, take out all of the other life on earth, and would eventually make their way to man on their menu, who were already having enough problems with the predators, giant chupacabras (the alleged Mexican goat-suckers), perhaps, that went on the increase with the dramatic increase in the goat population. (Fact: giant chupacabras do not care who they suck. Which leads to an interesting tangential theory regarding Paris Hilton... but enough of this...) Then, when man is gone, and after they have overrun the chupacabras, the mutated goats have no choice but to turn on each other on their goat-forsaken barren planet...

Watching Hold Anything, the third Bosko film from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising in their run at Warner Bros., I am struck by the notion that no matter how much you like a particular goat, the worst place to let him hang out with you is at a construction site. Since there is no more recognizable job from the 1930's (apart from the mobster or the suicidal stockbroker) than the riveter, Bosko is cast in exactly that noble profession, scraping the skies and operating unpredictable and dangerous machinery far above the city streets, all the while walking on thin metal beams without any support. In this effort, Bosko is not aided by a entire crew of musclebound, sweaty guys, but rather by a pack of mice. Tiny little mice. Tiny little mice who bear a remarkable resemblance to Mr. Mouse over at Disney. (Perhaps it is an intentional tribute/slap, or perhaps it was merely the way that mice were drawn in those days.) Oh, yeah... and a goat who likes to try and eat things he shouldn't.

Bosko is happily riveting the day away, all the while whistling while he works. He occasionally picks up a hammer, banging it on the rivets and beams or running it along a chain, to add some percussion to his merry little tune. Meanwhile, in another part of the structure, the little Mickey mice (at this point, wearing small caps) are busy constructing a wall out of bricks. They are smoothly efficient as a construction unit, and when Bosko begins to blurt out a military beat with his rivet-gun, six of the mice stop laying bricks and start marching in time with the song. They carry their hods over their shoulders as if they were standard issue military rifles, and when they dance over an up or down step in the bricks, their legs stretch out or shorten accordingly, but their bodies always stay at the same level.

At the close of the march, the mice depart except for one who lags behind. Unfortunately for him, he falls to a beam down below and lands flat on the surface of a handsaw. Bosko is there to pick up the saw, and he begins to warp the saw and bounce the mouse about on top of it, all the while playing some eerie but beautiful music on the saw. After a few bounces, Bosko cruelly turns the saw sideways -- and cuts the head off the little mouse! He continues to bounce the two halves of the mouse on the saw, and the mouse's body struggles to reach his head, but Bosko eventually bounces them back together. Down below, we are introduced to the goat who likes to eat everything, and here she is, hoof on hip, casually tossing metal nuts up in the air and swallowing them like they were popcorn or grapes. The mouse bounces off of Bosko's saw and falls straight down into the goat's open mouth. His landing causes the goat to fall down on her bottom, and she looks flabbergasted when the mouse opens up a door on her stomach, and walks out unharmed. The mouse tips his ears at the goat as if offing a cap, but then the two of them are interrupted by a bossy Bosko.

"Hey!", he yells, "Send up that beam!" The mouse points at the beam to make sure it is the correct one, but the goat wants nothing to do with actually working. She starts to walk off sheepishly. The mouse, however, has other ideas, and he goes after the goat and drags her back to the beam by the tail. Mr. Mouse ties a rope around the poor goat's torso and turns her tail. The goat cranks around like a winch, causing the beam to go easily sailing up to Bosko, who hops onto the metal elevator and begins to play the ropes attached to it like a harp. The song he plays is called Don't Hold Everything, from a show called Hold Everything, and the connection to the name of the cartoon is due to the second line of the song. The song goes:

"Don't hold everything
Don't hold anything
Just let everything go!
Don't be blue at all
That won't do at all
Just let everything go!

Troubles are thin
How can you win
Holding it in?
Let go!
That's the ticket!
Don't hold everything
Don't hold anything
Just let everything go!"

No wonder carefree Bosko loves the song... and as he flies through the air upon the beam playing it, he notices the beauteous Honey, who is apparently employed as some sort of typist, perhaps in a pool. Bosko calls to her and gets her attention, and then he does a sharp little tapdance to show off to her. She is delighted with his act and runs back to her typewriter. She careful taps out some words, then pulls the sheet and holds it out towards Bosko. It reads, "Gee, you're swell!" Bosko is overjoyed, dances a little bit more, and then tilts the beam over the window, but there is still a dangerous gap in the air to cross. But with Bosko, this problem is easily solved, for he simply plucks out a few more notes on his rope-harp, but physically tangible ones this time, which forms a stairway down to Honey. Bosko climbs into her office, and then sets her onto the windowsill, taking her seat at the typewriter. He pulls some sheet music from his pocket and slides it into the machine. He begins to type out letters over the musical notes on the sheet, reading Don't Hold Everything, and when he hits each key, the song progresses slowly on the soundtrack, note by note. Honey happily dances about on the ledge of the building to the music.

The goat, meanwhile, is not so happy with this development. She is still tied up to the airborne beam, with the rope wrapped about his body as the mouse left it. The goat blows a raspberry at the enraptured couple, and then walks straight out of the ropes (we never hear or see what happens to the beam that she was holding aloft.) Marching up to the steam whistle, she eats the lever and then bites off the whistle itself. However, as she does this, she fills up with hot air, puffs up like a balloon, and starts turning all about as she floats up into the air. (The balloon effect is enchanting to watch.) The goat drifts up past the window where Bosko is still typing out music, and Bosko latches onto the goat's tail at the last second. He lands on one of the building beams, and just as the goat is about to float away for good, Bosko begins to squeeze her, playing another chorus of Don't Hold Everything, though this time the music comes out of the goat like the noise from a fairground calliope. Honey continues her frenzied dance, now swinging her torso, which disconnects from her pelvis, up and around her head twice, melding back to her pelvis just before the next swing occurs.

Bosko and the goat continue the calliope solo, but then the whistle pops out of the goat's mouth, and the musical pair are shot up into the sky as the air is released from the goat's body. At one point, Bosko desperately clings to the goat's udder, and is shot in the face with a barrage of milk! Bosko slips and falls into the brick wall that the mice were building earlier. He breaks into six tiny little Boskos, who dance about as the song finishes, and with the climax of the song, Bosko pulls himself together, and tips his hat to Honey! Iris out!

It's easy enough to look at some of these Bosko films and tear them apart for their simplicity and spareness, not to mention that they rarely make advance technically during the series. There are truly no plots to most of them; merely excuses for the happy, happy Bosko and Honey to cavort about and la-la-la their way through songs, or get in fixes that are then solved with cavorting about and la-la-la-ing their way through songs. (Not a lot of actual lyrics are sung.) But, there is so much charm at work here, and any one of the films has enough truly weird moments in them to make their viewing a pleasure. It is also fun to watch Warner Bros. get up on their feet as a studio (not to mention the early work of then-animator and nascent director Friz Freleng) so historically there is much to muse on in each picture. And, of course, given the pre-Code period, a fun level of raunchiness, even if one has to absorb a certain amount of non-PC references from time to time.

As for the ravenous caprin problem, it seems to me very illogical to allow a cartoon goat on a construction site, even if the building is apparently being put up by a barnyard animal collective. At least keep the creature in the scrap metal bin, with the lock on the outside of the door. As a matter of fact, you really couldn't have any sort of door on a scrap metal bin with a cartoon goat in it, because she would just eat the hinges or the bolts and get out anyway. What you need to do is build four walls too high for the goat to leap over (put her in through use of an airlift, crane, trebuchet, or simpy build the walls around her) and then let her go at it.

Anything to keep the mutant goat problems of the future from even starting...

Hold Anything (Warner Bros. Looney Tunes, 1930) Dir: Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising
Cel Bloc Rating: 7

SINKIN' IN THE BATHTUB (1930)

Ya gotta start somewhere, folks! You start at one point, and you keep on chooglin' (to put it in John Fogerty terms), and pretty soon, it's 75 years later and you have an incredible legacy of animation behind you. For the Warner Bros. Animation Department, it starts with Sinkin' In the Bathtub and a now relatively obscure character named Bosko. I am nearly 100% certain that the average person on the street couldn't pick Bosko out of a pen-and-ink lineup with Foxy, Buddy, Bimbo, Scrappy, Dinky Doodle and Flip the Frog. This is not to fault those who lack knowledge of Bosko and his ilk; these are all characters whose day came and went well over a half century ago, and you generally have to be actively seeking out their company to find them.

Sinkin' in the Bathtub is the first short not only in Warner's long run as a studio of quality animation, but also the first film in the legendary Looney Tunes series, as well. And Bosko was their first star. In fact, he was their main star for the first four years of the studio's output, until Harman and Ising were dumped by Warners and went to MGM, taking Bosko with them. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising did start somewhere else (like Friz Freleng, who animated Sinkin', they broke their animating baby teeth with Disney before that studio had its first early implosion), but the Bosko films were their first chance to really show what they could do under their own direction.

Not that Bosko wasn't a cookie-cutter character clearly modeled, at least in action, after Mickey Mouse, but Sinkin' in the Bathtub puts the stamp from the get-go on the style of humor that would become Warner's virtual trademark for the next 40 odd years. The boldness of a handful of gags in the film is a tad shocking when one thinks thinks how, just a couple years later, Warners would not have gotten away with such references. And what the hell is Bosko? Or rather, who the hell is he? In Sinkin', he is clearly a black character, both by voice and tiny visual clues in his design: at one point, he turns his head, and we see that his hair is outlined in a cartoon version of a short afro. (At least it is trimmed, and not nappy or with little bows, as was a much-used stereotype for black hairstlyes for many years in film. I should point out that Honey has a bow on her head, but she is a girl...) Bosko's vocal mannerisms are obviously patterned after black slang of the period (even though he only says two actual lines in Sinkin'; in fact, Honey has the most dialogue.) But it doesn't come off nearly as patently offensive as other cartoons with black characters. Perhaps this is due to the joyous good-natured charm of the film, or the fact that the film moves along so swiftly that one doesn't have the time to lash out at it. (Subsequent Warner Boskos would either play down some of his more "racial" traits, or do away with them altogether. That is, until MGM reinvented the character years later as a cutesy black child.)

One other element plays a huge part in the look and feel of this film. The "Looney" is given life through its humor, but the "Tune" part? Because the film's were produced only with Warner's insistence that each one feature a ditty from the Warners' songbook (for they were a major music publishing company even then), this film not only has a popular song of the day parodied in its title, but also throws little bits of several other songs into the viewer's ears as it progresses. Indeed, at the beginning of the film, Bosko is not singing, but rather, whistling in the bathtub, but he is whistling Singin' In the Bathtub. Bosko uses any and every part of his body and tub to play along with the tune, including plucking his toes and nose, clinking a glass, banging on the side of the tub, and playing the stream from the shower spout as if it were a harp. He jumps out of the tub, and the tub itself has to get in on the fun. It stands up on its four feet and begins to shake with the music, then after rubbing itself dry with a towel, it pulls the toilet paper (!) roll off the wall. As it prances and skips through the bathroom, it shreds and throws sheets of the toilet roll as if they were flower petals in a springtime frolic, complete with Spring Song on the soundtrack. The tub finishes off its act by slapping both sides of its anthropomorphized rear end, and then settles back into its normal tub-itudinous state.

Bosko is seen standing naked (sans glands, of course) on a towel. He puts his pants around his feet and pulls a hair on top of his head. The pants immediately pull up high around his waist, and after Bosko turns the shower's direction out the window with his hand, he slides out into the day on top of it. He pulls an enormous harmonica, which if stood on its end would equal Bosko's height, from his pocket and plays Turkey In the Straw while he makes his way to his garage to retrieve his car. After he Shave-and-a-Haircut's the ending of the song, he throws the harmonica up in the air, and it bounces on the ground and then falls back into his pants. He looks into the garage, but the car is absent. He turns around to see the car coming out of a distant outhouse. He shames the car and whistles for it to come over; the car buttons up the flap on its pants and runs over to meet him. Bosko turns the crank on the car's front and twists it like a licorice stick; the car then unwinds itself back to normal, and the pair take off on their adventure.

As they roll along (merrily, I might point out), Bosko plays Tiptoe Thru the Tulips on his harmonica, and honks the car's horn occasionally for emphasis. Not surprisingly, they drive up to some actual tulips, and as Bosko picks them, the car literally tiptoes through them. After he has picked a bouquet and placed it in the horn, they drive to the doorstep of Bosko's girlfriend, Honey. She, too, starts the picture tra-la-laing her way through Singin' In the Bathtub, but when she sees the camera spying on her, she pulls the blind. Her silhouette is then seen climbing out of the tub and pulling her clothes in off the line. She emerges on a balcony dressed in only her skirt (like Bosko, she never seems to put on a top, though we do see a bra drying on her line), and says, "Hello, Bosko!" As Bosko nervously asks her to guess what he's got for her, a goat eyes the tulips Bosko is holding tantalizingly behind his back. He devours the flowers, and Bosko, shocked at the disappearance of his love offering, begins to cry. "Don't worry, Bosko", Honey yells down to him. "I still loves you!" Bosko is overjoyed at this news, but the disgusted goat blows a raspberry at him. The goat obligingly turns around, and Bosko kicks the goat's rear right over its horned head; with the sort of skill that even top contortionists don't possess, the goat walks under his own body and twists himself right.

Bosko laughs and runs to the car. He opens the hood and pulls out a pipe, to which he attaches the horn, making himself an impromptu saxophone. As he runs on the walkway to Honey's door, each step on the boards sounds like a xylophonic scale. But, as he blows another chorus of Tulips on the sax, Honey does not like what she hears. She drops an entire tub of soapy water into the horn, and the song changes, naturally, to I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles. Honey is delighted; she hops off the balcony and onto the bubbles gracefully and dances about on them. Not so gracefully, she jumps back onto the balcony, stretches out her body so that her skirt rides up to her chin but her undergarments drop to her shoes, waves her naked torso wildly about for a couple of revolutions, then does Bosko's hair-pulling trick and zips her clothing back into place. She then jumps back onto the bubbles and walks down them to join Bosko on the ground. Both of them dance some more Tulips on the xylophone-walk before jumping into the car and driving off.

They kiss as they amble down the road, but are soon stopped by a cow lazily chewing what one assumes at first is its cud in the middle of the path. After Bosko honks his horn at the beast, we discover what is really being chewed, as a gap opens up in the cow's teeth, and from which it emits an enormous wad of blackened tobacco spit. The monstrous loogie lands on the front of the car and flattens it. Bosko pulls the car back to its original shape, and then walks up to the cow to take care of the situation the Bosko way. He pushes the cow's midsection down to the ground, with the legs staying up and rigid as if they were mere tentpoles, and then Bosko and Honey drive through the cow. The cow angrily cranks its tail to raise its midsection, and then turns tail on the car, huffily swinging its head and also its almost obscenely huge udder at the interlopers.

Bosko and Honey laugh musically at the cow, but then the car runs over a huge boulder, which jolts Bosko out of his seat and onto the road. When he hits the dirt, he breaks into eight tiny Boskos, but pulls himself back together in time to chase the car up the steep incline which it is now riding up. The car strains at the effort, so Bosko puts his back into pushing it, but the radiator gives out and the car flattens. Bosko kicks it back up, and the car reacts like a whipped dog, moving ahead a few steps until Bosko gives it another push. The efforts of both Bosko and the car cause it to take on an almost inchworm-like quality, as it steps stretchingly forward a few more steps and then Bosko pushes it yet again to realign its body. They reach the top, but Bosko doesn't get in the car, and both the car and Honey go flying at top speed down the other side. Bosko races to catch up, and grabs the exhaust pipe, which stretches out to a ridiculous length. Bosko hangs onto it as if he were water-skiing, but a series of large rocks cause our hero to crash and fall about over the tops of them. Since the rocks get smaller and then larger in size, we hear the descension and then the ascension of the musical scale. Not so pleasingly musically are the four thin trees that Bosko rides over next, each time running his whole body up and over the tops of them; he then meets another series of rocks, this time grower larger in size and he hits his crotch on each one (though this most likely is not be the intended effect).

He goes flying off of the last rock and lands in front of the car, and is now running for his life from it instead of chasing it. He falls on his face briefly and slides on it, before getting up and falling over another rock. The camera then shows a head-on closeup of Bosko running towards it with the car and Honey chasing him. He takes the opportunity to do his Jolson, yelling "Mammy" loudly and longly. The angle switches back to the side again, and they ride straight through a shack on the side of the hill. When they come out, Honey is no longer in the car, but riding in a wheeled bathtub. The hill runs out, and Bosko and Honey's tub both jump a gap onto a rocky and ominous looking spiraling peak with a road carved like a snake around it. The chase continues, but twice Honey falls out of the tub and lands on the road below, and then bounces back into the tub. They finally reach the bottom, and the camera shows another closeup of the pair as Bosko leaps off a cliff to escape and Honey rides helplessly behind him, with both of their mouths yelling "Oohhh!" as they pass and fall. Bosko ends up hanging on a treebranch over a pond, and Honey's tub is dunked straight down into the water. The splash that she makes causes a huge waterhand to rise up and grab Bosko from the branch. The hand places him in the now floating tub. He is reunited happily with his lady love. Bosko grabs to cattails and moves their craft along by playing Singin' In the Bathtub on the tops of a row of lilypads. Bosko and Honey then embrace, and laugh merrily as the film irises out.

The film never stays still for long, and there are so many little bits of business that an attentive viewer is rewarded most delightfully at the torrent of fun images in the picture. Paying attention also has its drawbacks, and there are two minor things that nag at me: 1) When Bosko gets dressed and then leaps from his window, he is very clearly wearing only pants, with his entire torso completely black; when he emerges from the window, he has white sleeves on (which he wears for the remainder of the film), and with this addition, the black section of his body now looks more like a vest; and 2) when the car exits the outhouse, it is clearly of two different colors, or rather, shades, but once he and Bosko take off, the car immediately turns completely white in hue. Whether these events are intentional or not, I have no way of knowing. If they are mistakes, then neither defect takes away from the fun of the film for even a second.

It's a good thing that they decided on the bathtub theme for the bulk of the story, because they almost could have named the film after any number of other songs, at least judging from the profusion of tunes let loose in the film. (There'll Be A) Hot Time In the Old Town Tonight is even played over the opening credits (they still hadn't gotten to the WB theme of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down yet), in addition to all of the songs I've already mentioned. I'm fairly certain they just looked at a list of song titles and picked the ones from which the animators got the best ideas for stories.

But, as I said at the beginning, ya gotta start somewhere, folks! It didn't matter what it was, or what the name of the film turned out to be; what mattered is that the film worked, and while Bosko never became a huge star, the series at least was successful enough that the WB animation department could soldier on until their golden age. In retrospect, it's amazing to think that so many great characters and films were riding on one little film series. Of course, the same could be said for Disney's first films, too. But in the end, one has to say "Thank goodness for small favors..."

Sinkin' In the Bathtub (Warner Bros. Looney Tunes, 1930) Dir: Rudolf Ising
Cel Bloc Rating: 7