The Blow Out

"The Blow Out" is one of the darkest shorts I've seen from Looney Tunes from the 1930s...if not the darkest. It's about a mad bomber and not only is he up to all sorts of unsavory stuff, but his voice and look are incredibly creepy! It's probably NOT a great film for little kids because of this....or at least you might want to watch it with them.

After you see and hear the bomber, the story cuts to Porky Pig....and back in 1936 he looked very different from his later and more familiar incarnation. He is much more rotund, not especially cute and the voice is much different. It is important to note that this is the first Looney Tunes cartoon STARRING Porky, though he'd already been in a few others before this as a supporting character. How do the bomber and Porky relate to each other in this one? See the film and find out for yourself.

I actually LIKED the darker and nasty aspects of this cartoon. Too often in the 1930s, Looney Tunes depended on cute characters and saccharine singing...none of which is evident here, thank goodness! Also, for Looney Tunes the artwork is pretty good, though not even close to the quality of the industry leader at the time, Disney. The overall quality of the Looney Tunes/Warner Brothers cartoons would increase tremendously in the 1940s. Still, despite not looking amazing, it is, for the time, among the best the studio had to offer.

The Blow Out (1936)

*** (out of 4)

A mad bomber is terrorizing the city by blowing up various buildings. Also in town, Porky Pigg wants an ice cream soda but he's five pennies short. He notices that doing good deeds gets him a penny so he goes around town being nice but soon he runs into the bomber.

THE BLOW OUT is certainly the best film that Porky Pig appeared in up to this point. The idea of a kid's cartoon having a terrorist bomber might seem odd today but it was perfect for the time and there are actually a lot of nice gags here. The highlight of the film is certainly watching Porky do the various good deeds to get the penny. I thought it was rather funny seeing how excited he got when he was one penny closer to what he wanted. The animation was extremely good as well and the short ends on a high note with a great action sequence.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

Also have much admiration for Tex Avery, an animation genius whose best cartoons are animated masterpieces and some of the best he ever did. 'The Blow Out' is fairly early career Avery, but it's a good, very good even, early Avery cartoon. For Avery, 'The Blow Out' is fairly tame with his uniquely wacky style being more obvious from the 40s onward, a sense that he was still finding his style. Porky is fun and appealing, but there is a vast personal preference for Mel Blanc voicing Porky than Joe Dougherty, who didn't sound as natural as the character.

However, the animation in 'The Blow Out' is characteristically great with the inventive and atmospheric use of shadow being particularly striking. The music score is energetic and lush.

Only Avery could make something entertaining out of a very serious subject like terrorism. The material here is not as imaginative or as hilarious as the material when he properly found his style, but it's still well timed and funny while never including anything that will offend.

The pace throughout is lively and the characters are a lot of fun. Dougherty as Porky aside, the voice acting is good especially Lucille La Verne (best known as the evil queen in 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs').

All in all, good well-made fun but Avery is not at his best. 8/10 Bethany Cox

A mad bomber is at large at the beginning. We cut to Porky, who needs another five cents to buy a soda. This is about our enterprising guy trying to work the public for the five cents. Soon, he and the bomber become entwined and the show takes off from there. Well done early Porky cartoon.

This is an early Tex Avery, with Avery still feeling his way. The cartoon is actually more cute than menacing and Avery seems to have more fun with the villain than with our hero, the rather hefty Porky (this was a formative cartoon, when they were still fiddling around with character design and Porky carried a good deal more weight then), with Porky's role limited to one running gag and the payoff at the end. This is a cute cartoon and there are quite a few sight gags, but pacing is slower and the gags are more repetitive in nature and form than later Avery shorts. Avery taking baby steps. But I like this one a lot, personally. The original black and white is far superior to the later colorized version (usually true, but in this case, the use of shadows originally makes colorizing this one an especially bad idea), so try and catch the black and white. Well worth watching. Recommended.