The Blow Out (1936)

. . . exactly WHAT is Tex Avery prognosticating about as he leads Warner Bros.' primary warning division, the Animated Shorts Seers (aka, the Looney Tuners) during THE BLOW OUT blast into America's (Then) Far Future of the 21st Century? Instead of making the obvious choice of tapping 1930s voice artist Billy Bletcher to provide a soundtrack for the Trench Coat Mafia Man bringing his city to a standstill, Warner recruits a lady named Lucille La Verne to make her Looney Tunes debut in THE BLOW OUT, because she's a total sound-alike for the Red Commie KGB Chief's Puppet in the White House, Don Juan Trump. Anyone exposed to the American media during this past month--including CNN, USA Today, the NEW YORK TIMES, the WALL STREET JOURNAL, MSNBC, and TIME Magazine (but EXCLUDING such Racist Chaos-sowing Unamerican Putin organs as Fox "News" and Breitbart)--knows that most Americans (those on Medicare, the U.S. Jews, Medicaid recipients, U.S. Moslems, the LGBTQ community, women relying on Planned Parenthood, seniors struggling on Social Security, any woman possessing female genitalia, Journalists, Handicappers, teachers, immigrants, and anyone with a brain in their head) have felt totally threatened by the Putin-appointed Terrorist in Chief. It's like Don Juan has taken issue with BOYS DON'T CRY and dug up Brandon Teena to rape and kill him all over again by forcing him to Pee amid a mob of Confederate Flag-patched chortling bully jocks! While he's at it, don't be surprised if Putin orders Trump to let THE STATES decide whether Black people should be cotton-picking slaves, whether election ballots may list more than one party, and whether XL pipelines are allowed to spew oil into EVERY lake, stream, and aquifer--as long as it's less than 90% by volume!

The Blow Out was an early Warner Bros. cartoon that was the second made by "supervisor" Fred "Tex" Avery as director. It also starred Porky Pig in his early incarnation with original voice Joe Dougherty (who stuttered in real life). Other voices featured were Sara Berner who was later gossipy switchboard operator Mabel on "The Jack Benny Program", and Lucille La Verne who later voiced the Queen on Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She voices the bomber here. Porky is a kid here trying to buy an ice cream soda but finds he's five pennies short. So when he accidentally picks up a misplaced item from a passerby, he gets awarded one cent. After this gets repeated a few times, the pig finds the bomb-which he thinks is just an ordinary clock-and proceeds to give it back to the one who dropped it who of course keeps running away. Soon the cops follow. You may be able to guess what happens from here on but I'm not going to tell you. Needless to say, the ending is one you've probably expected from Tex Avery if you're familiar with his subsequent cartoons for both Warner Bros. and M-G-M. On that note, I definitely recommend The Blow Out.

Osama bin Laden, you may consider yourself the cleverest terrorist on earth, but you've got nothing on the bomber portrayed in the early Porky Pig cartoon "The Blow Out". The thug here goes around town planting bombs, and no one can catch him. But when Porky - doing good deeds so as to get enough money to buy a milkshake - gives back the bomb, the bomber isn't a bit happy.Still listening, Osama? You've got nothing to worry about in the real world. While George W. Bush doesn't know jack about how to catch you, Porky catches the bomber without even trying.OK, I'll stop pretending that I'm talking to Osama bin Laden. But the point is that while this is a very early Porky cartoon (at this time, he looked like a walking heart attack and Mel Blanc wasn't yet providing his voice), it's still fairly entertaining. I presume that at this this point, the Termite Terrace crowd was still trying to figure out exactly what path their work would take, so we needn't expect the sorts out completely wacky gags that characterized the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons in the '40s and '50s. Worth seeing. As it's not available on video or DVD - that I know of, at least - you can find it on YouTube.

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.