The Blow Out is a 1936 Looney Tunes short directed by Fred Avery.
Title[]
The title has a double meaning: a "blow out" is slang for a party and could also suggest a bomb "blowing out" its intended target.
Plot[]
A criminal bomber is using a time bomb disguised as alarm clocks to destroy places, with a $2,000 reward for the capture of the mastermind. While the citizens tries to track down the bomber, the criminal is in his hideout, planting several explosives inside an alarm clock that will be enough to blow up an entire city.
Porky Pig, craving for an ice cream float, heads to the local diner and tries to get an ice cream float for 5 cents. When Porky realizes that ice cream sodas cost 10 cents a piece, he tries to order a smaller cup for half the price, which fails. He sits on the curb, sulking, while a passerby drops his cane. Porky picks up the cane and hands it to the man, and he is pleasantly surprised when the man gives him a penny for a tip. He excitedly runs around town, picking up dropped items for people and collecting coins from them. Porky eventually finds a nickel on the concrete, but a dog takes it.
As the mad bomber plants the time bomb onto the central of the city, Porky discovers the alarm clock. Not knowing it is a bomb, the porcine runs after the criminal in attempt to hand him back the alarm clock. The bomber runs from the bomb, but Porky follows him throughout the city at every block until the bomber accidentally runs right into the back of a paddy wagon. Porky manages to give back the clock to the criminal in the police car just as it explodes on them. The city rewards Porky the $2,000 for capturing the criminal, which he spends it all on ice cream floats.
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Notes[]
- This is the first solo Porky Pig short.
- Author Thomas Pynchon refers to the cartoon involving "Porky Pig and the anarchist" several times in his novels The Crying of Lot 49 (Vintage, 2000, p. 63) and Gravity's Rainbow.
- The short marks the first use of the premise of a person tracking someone and always waiting for that other person wherever he turns up, which would later be expanded and exaggerated by director Tex Avery in the Bugs Bunny and Cecil Turtle short "Tortoise Beats Hare" (1941) five years later, as well as the Droopy cartoon "Dumb-Hounded" over at rival studio MGM seven years later. This premise would also be exaggerated by Bob Clampett in the Daffy Duck short "Draftee Daffy" (1945), nine years later; coincidentally, Clampett also worked as an animator on this short.
- While the Mad Bomber is being pursued by Porky, they pass a building with a sign containing the message "LOONEY TUNE TONITE".
- Vitaphone release number: 7262
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries
- ↑ http://texaveryatwb.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-blow-out-toon-terrorism-and.html
- ↑ http://likelylooneymostlymerrie.blogspot.com/2012/03/128-blow-out-1936.html
- ↑ (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media.