Insect to Injury

A bunch of insects eating the wood house of Popeye. The war. And , after huge effort, lost of each part of house , the so useful spinach giving not only streght but a lovely ironed idea. Nice end because the victim it is the pipe itself . But not all is lost. Short, just charming.

Insect to Injury (1956)

*** (out of 4)

Popeye has just completed building his dream home but things take a sour turn when a group of termites show up and they want to eat anything they can.

Fans of the Popeye series will find this short to be another winner as there are plenty of laughs throughout as well as some good action. Of course, the various highlights surround the termites doing the damage to Popeye's house as he frantically tries to stop them. This here leads to a nice sequence dealing with a lawnmower as well as some creative moments after Popeye eats his spinach.

This is a unique cartoon in so many ways. First, as has been mentioned, none of the other series characters are in this one, just Popeye vs. the bugs. But besides the very inventive story and fun gags, we see some beautiful backgrounds and colors and slick animation. This is the last great cartoon from Famous before the franchise went down the toilet the following year.

The Paramount/Famous Studios' Popeye worked best as a hero when he wasn't fighting Bluto (or some other guy) over Olive Oyl. Bluto (or the other guy) often outclassed The Sailor Man and got lots of encouragement from fickle Olive, so we sometimes felt that Popeye was the interloper, horning in on someone else's romance. Not very heroic. But here, in this picture, Popeye takes on a swarm of marauding termites in a battle of wits that would do even the Warner Brothers cartoon characters proud. And we root for Popeye the whole way. A very inventive cartoon and one of the studio's best. I paricularly liked the termites forming a jack to lift the lid off of their trash can trap.

Popeye may have been the most formulaic series in cartoon history, but some noteworthy episodes managed to buck the formula. In most of these cartoons, Popeye is put up against not a threat to life or love, but simply a nuisance. The most common source of irritation in these cases was a "funny animal," a small creature no match for Popeye physically, but unremittingly mischievous. Most of these "funny animal" cartoon were pretty bad, but a few stand out, "Insect to Injury" in particular.

The cartoon opens with Popeye putting the finishing touches on his new house. No sooner is it completed when it is threatened by a army of termites. Popeye is righteously alarmed, but counters the threat creatively and intelligently (in cartoon logic at least). And yet, the termites outwit him time and again, building a genuine sense of drama until the conclusion.

Overall, this story is character driven. Popeye's struggle is quite reasonable, and one cannot help but feel for him. His reactions are amusingly extreme, but never panicked, so he never becomes annoying. The termites, for their part, are genuinely menacing, a sense created by their too-clever to-be-real ways of fighting back. They are further enhanced by the simple (but very effective) theme music that follows them.

"Insect to Injury" is a very different kind of Popeye cartoon. None of the usual supporting characters are there, and the threat is a very different one from those Popeye usually faced. Often, attempts to change the series formula did not work, but in this case, it worked well.