Pigs Is Pigs (1937)

Such a frustrating disappointment

It is a performances centric movie

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of Friz Freleng's earlier masterpieces in this cartoon. It has a very good story with good character personalities of a greedy little pig who can only think about food but then his food dream turns into a nightmare as I imagine that it was supposed to be rather dark. The Feed-a-Matic sequence was very original to me and this is what influence writers on shows like 'The Simpsons' and even in Walter Lantz cartoons; and even the writers from the Treehouse of Horror episode mentioned that they were inspired from this short. This is the second and final appearance of the Hamhock family as we wouldn't have needed anymore since it could only go worse. The animation here is very appealing as it was animated by mostly Bob McKimson since I can see some scenes he probably did but I'm not going to grasp on the styles. After only two cartoons of the Hamhock family; the characters then disappear from the screen but Pigs is Pigs is easily their best cartoon out of 'At Your Service Madame' and it's even on the '100 Greatest Looney Tunes' book.

. . . "Piggy," with this animated short, PIGS IS PIGS. Warner wanted to underline their warning to America about the Fat Cat Greedheads who had caused the then on-going Great Depression. No matter how much the gluttonous Piggy ingests here, he not only wants--he finds a way to STEAL more. Piggy is shown at the family supper table slurping down all the spaghetti right off his nine siblings' plates into his own insatiable gullet with such a gusto it was adapted by THERE WILL BE BLOOD villain Daniel Day Lewis into his infamous "I'll suck your straw!" scene. Even when Piggy falls into the clutches of an evil scientist, who force-feeds him fuller than a dozen Foie Gras geese, Piggy still is grasping for MORE! Warner tries to warn America NEVER to allow the One Per Center thieves and self-proclaimed Billionaires to ever filch our food again, Lording it over everyone else. These miscreants MUST be neutralized with extreme prejudice, just as the Looney Tuners pigged out themselves at Piggy's pig roast after completing PIGS IS PIGS. We all know how the U.S. Sheep Nation has backslid in the face of the Porkers to date. But as they say at the corner butcher shop, growing a backbone is better late than never.

This was an early animated prototype of Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (which, btw, was released not in the late '60s, but in the early70s, and coincidentally it was the first of his pernament Warner Bros.Studio association!)Other toons used this gimmick too. MGM's "Pipe Dreams" Warner's own "Wholly Smoke" Art Clokey's "Grub Grabber Gumby!"Billy Bletcher was the villain, the very obscure Bernice Hansen, the little pig. The title was the only thing from that 1905 E.P.Butlerbook,"Pigs is Pigs", with a very different storyline than the WB cartoon, but Disney made a film twenty years later of the Butler book. WB was indeed the most cynical of the studios till Jay Ward,Hanna Barbera, then Spumco in the 90s.Soundtrack includes "Fella with a Fiddle" and "When My Dreaboat Comes Home", also much used in WB shorts of the time-"Fella" in "The Cat Came Back", "The Blow-Out",the title short "Fella", and "Little Beau Porky",and "Dreamboat" in "Porky's Badtime Story", and its remake "Tick Tock Tuckered",and "The Birth of a Notion".When the mother pig (talking in a Jewish accent--VERY sneaky WB type joke even for that un-PC period!) (as we see the outside shot of the piggie house!) warns her sonny-boy of indigestion, WE know he might have some nightmare, especially when he finds himself in a different place all of a sudden, especially when a Billy Bletcher-voiced mad doctor appears! But is it a dream, reality, or is it Memorex?(Compare this with PORKY's shorts, or more recent live action comedies about fatness--"Big Momma's House 1 and 2", and this year's smashes "Norbit" and "Hairspray"! (and that last was set back in the sixties..)The ending, like the "A Clockwork Orange" gimmick,is like "Wholly Smoke" (same director,Frank Tash), which DID have Porky.

Despite what the title may imply, "Pigs Is Pigs" does not star Porky Pig. Rather, it features a young swine with an appetite more insatiable than John Belushi's character in "Animal House". His mother repeatedly scolds him, but it does no good. So much so that he goes to another house where a deranged scientist force-feeds him more than any mere mortal can handle (but there's a surprise at the end).I would mostly say that this cartoon seemed like a place holder in between the really great cartoons (Daffy Duck debuted three months after this came out). But make no mistake about it, they do some neat things here. The whole force-feeding sequence looks more relevant today, given the obesity epidemic overtaking our country.Anyway, not the greatest cartoon, but worth seeing.