Who Killed Who?

This is one of two shorts from 1943 that were included as special features on the DVD for "Presenting Lily Mars". Fortunately, many classic MGM films include a few such shorts--and in this case it's an MGM short from Tex Avery--and it doesn't usually get much better than that.

This cartoon is like a cheesy radio murder mystery in cartoon form. Billy Bletcher (with a wonderful gravely voice) and Richard Hyden are the two main voices--but Avery himself provides one of the voices as well (he's unbilled but plays Santa). While the humor isn't among Avery's best, it has a lot of the usual goofy touches--enough to make it worth seeing--even the bad jokes (like the Red Skeleton one).

This is an animated recreation of a crime. It happened in a dark and stormy night. An old dog gets murdered and the bulldog detective arrives to investigate.

This is a spoof of a whodunnit murder mystery. It does everything with a nudge and a wink. It's a Tex Avery MGM cartoon. When the ghost shows up, I was hoping for a Scooby Doo ending. The only issue with that is I don't know the guy at the reveal. If only they could get Red Skelton, he could reconnect with that other joke. This short is stuffed with one joke after another. Most of them are pretty good. I don't know this detective character. I imagine Droopy would be more perfect in the role.

Here's one of Tex Avery's masterpieces for MGM. He starts out by burlesquing Metro's CRIME DOES NOT PAY series openers, then continues with every Old Dark House cliche, complete with organ music and his habit of breaking through the screen, both to comment on the goings on, and to make sure no one leaves the scene of the crime, even an audience member headed to other places.

With both Heck Allen and Rich Hogan providing gags, how could it not be a classic? Although the risque jokes are rarer here, Avery makes it clear that these are not cartoons meant for the well-behaved children that bedeviled the early years of the Production Code. I sometimes wonder how he got away with them, but probably the Hays Office didn't think cartoons were worth keeping an eye on.

This is a hilarious little cartoon. A rich man finds out he is going to be murdered. When the event takes place (pretty much with his permission) a detective comes in to investigate. It turns out that every cliche in the world is tromped on and things are more about process than result. Tex Avery was a master of this kind of stuff. Well worth the time.

What can you say about a cartoon featuring the vocal talents of Billy Bletcher (best known as Pegleg Pete in Disney shorts) and Richard Haydn (character actor) and spoofing everything from detective stories to Red Skelton (twice)? This kitchen-sink cartoon is just great, with the most disturbing household staff this side of Lurch and Thing. Also the best Santa Claus gag I've ever seen in a cartoon. One of the few (perhaps the only) time Tex used full animation in conjunction with live action footage, although he did do two of the "Speaking of Animals" shorts for Twentieth Century-Fox. Well worth seeing. Most highly recommended.