Duck Pimples

This is one of the weirdest and most surreal shorts I have ever seen and it's really a surprise that it came from Disney. Unlike a typical Donal Duck film, this one has a bizarre stream of consciousness that defies my ability to explain it in mere words. Believe me...it's really weird--like the Disney staff decided to try making a short after taking some LSD or something!

Donald is at home reading and listening to the radio. The stuff he's being bombarded with is pretty scary and suddenly the radio show and book start coming to life! Characters from a murder mystery come jumping out of his book and the radio provides lots of appropriate creepy music. It's crazy--and well worth seeing just because it is so atypical. About the only Donald film I've ever seen that comes close to this one in weirdness is "Der Fuehrer's Face". Yes, it's that weird--with very elastic characters, a pre-Jessica Rabbit sort of hot dame and a style that just seems so un-Disney. Well worth seeing.

In this Disney cartoon, Donald reads a mystery book sold to him by an oddball salesman and becomes so involved in that his imagination makes it appear the characters are coming to life, making Donald the center of the mystery caper. What results is this detective-like but unexciting whodunit mystery that features these random characters, including one that resembles Jessica Rabbit.

This is not the conventional humorous, action-flicked and bad luck-plaque Donald Duck cartoon. I didn't get a whole lot of laughs from this one. The attempt at the mystery setting is clever and the animation is great, but the overall story itself is pretty boring, unfortunately.

Grade D-

I'm an one of the old Disney short film lovers, and after I saw this Donald Duck short film DUCK PIMPLES, I couldn't understand a bit, first, the title card didn't make any sense at all, GOOSE was crossed out and wrote DUCK, what in the world does that mean?

That's not more, Donald Duck was listening to a radio and scary stories repeatedly appeared and frighten Donald, his couch even turned into a green monster in his imagination! Poor him! Then he met a mysterious bookseller, who gave Donald a bunch of whodunit novels, PRETTY CREEPY!

Donald was literally enchanted by the scaring stories and the characters even jumped out, moved Donald into a semingly real crime world, it's very violence and creepy when Decetive Hennessey accused Donald the robber and ready to shot him and other scaring characters. When the commotion finally over, Donald started to wonder what else happened, or if it was just his imaginary or stuff.

Anyway, I felt like it was a shame for Disney staff members treated Donald so badly, and it's ambiguous and terrifying, not a typical Donald's short, but still ranted 8/10, less than I ranted Donald Duck and the Gorilla 9/10.

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

It's DUCK PIMPLES for Donald and his overactive imagination when he falls asleep while listening to a suspenseful radio program.

The Duck gets swept up into the search for purloined pearls in this very funny & bizarre little film. The cartoon's backhanded salute to the power of old-time radio drama is more than justified. Clarence Nash provided Donald with his unique voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

Duck Pimples (1945)

*** (out of 4)

Donald is listening to scary radio broadcasts, which soon has his mind working in overdrive as he finds himself terrified of everything that moves.

DUCK PIMPLES isn't your typical Disney short because it seems like something that would have been made twenty years later by someone on an acid trip. If you watch enough movies then I'm sure you've came across that shorts from the 60s where people trip and before long they're seeing all sorts of bizarre images. That's basically what we've got here because Donald's imagination starts going nuts and he sees a rather weird subplot dealing with stolen jewels. The entire short just has a bizarre feel to it so it really stands out in regards to Disney and the type of shorts they were making during this period.