Jungle Jitters (1938)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Nice effects though.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Jungle Jitters (1938)** (out of 4) Rather bland cartoon from Warner takes place in Africa and it starts off as a group of cannibals are dancing and then they turn into a merry-go-round where they then play a game trying to pull the nose ring out of one man's nose. From here the story focuses on a salesman who shows up at a home where the cannibal at first want to eat him before deciding to marry him off to an ugly queen. JUNGLE JITTERS is best remembered today for being one of the "Censored 11" from Warner, which of course got pulled off of television due to their racial content. Overall, this one here really isn't all that offensive but then again, that's going to be determined by the one actually watching since we've all got our own lines that we don't think should be crossed. Overall there are a couple funny moments in this one including the scene where the salesman shows up and the cannibals look at him and see him as a turkey. The ugly queen is certainly one of the ugliest creatures ever drawn in these animated movies and it makes for a fun ending. There's even a Clark Gable joke thrown in for good measures. Still, there's no question that there simply aren't enough laughs to keep this one from being better.

Really, when I look back on all the Warner cartoons I've seen, I QUITE ENJOY this one......and I'll take it any old day over: (*big, long sigh*) "Feed The Kitty," "Boyhood Daze," "Much Ado About Nutting," "It's Hummer-Time," "Half-Fare Hare," "China Jones," "Scent-imental Over You," "Old Glory," "Tom Thumb In Trouble," "Those Wonderful Dames," "The Coo-Coo Nut Grove," "Prest-O Change-O," "Feline Frame-Up," "Kiddin' The Kitten," "The Aristo-cat," "Wacky Blackouts," "The Big Snooze," "Rabbit Hood," "Cat Feud," "Scaredy Cat," "A Waggily Tale," "Hare-Abian Nights," "Tweet Dreams," "Tom-Tom Tomcat," "Daffy And The Dinosaur," "The Good Egg," "Fifth Column Mouse," among many others. (Watch this list for future additions.) And if you want to e-mail me and tell me I'm lower than scum for preferring it, feel free to e-mail me. I won't care, though.And as for the present cartoon?The opening gags involving the cannibals are of the most blatant sort imaginable; but they don't take much away from a rather engaging central story of two white folks who end up at the altar. The queen's an absolute howl, and the nerd salesman is a transcendental bore--to the cartoon's advantage.Let me put it this way: They're about as much an insult to Caucasians as the cannibals are to blacks......so it really evens up.

I have to laugh at the typical liberal reviewers here, the PC Police types who want to ban anything which remotely might offend a minority. Talk about Nazi mentality! Excuse me, but the white character in this film is the most stupid idiot of them, more than the natives from Africa....yet you don't hear a peep out of the "reviewers" about that. I am referring to the "utensil salesman," the guy with the freckles, straw hat and buck teeth. Of course, all the lily- white Libs only see what they want to see. Cartoons exaggerate all characters, all races, all animals, fish, birds, anything!In this story we have a bunch of cannibals (who I guess, should wear three-piece suits to make the PC Police happy), who want to eat the salesman. The humor comes in when they try out his strange objects for sale, such as a vacuum cleaner. We see a guy who screws two lights bulbs in his ear, puts a shade on head, and he's all set for some reading! Good stuff, clever, and similar to cartoons I've seen over several decades involving all kinds of people and animals.Those who saw this cartoon in the late '30s would "get it" more than people today, with the references to Clark Gable and Robert Taylor, the parody of a radio personality of the day "Elmer Blurt," and the popular song, "Too Marvelous For Words" (or something like that).Lighten up, and enjoy the cartoon for its humor and nothing else. If it's hilarious: great, if the jokes are lame, move on. I found it pretty humorous and enjoyed this Looney Tunes effort. Those who are "Looking For Comedy in PC World,"to paraphrase a recent Albert Brooks movie, apparently don't laugh much.

I'd heard no end of horror stories about how 'Jungle Jitters' is allegedly so mind-bogglingly racist that it has been banned from polite society for all eternity. It turns out that this cartoon's major crime is that it isn't very funny. The single most racist gag involves a black man who looks like Stepin Fetchit but with enormous lips. He eats a persimmon, and his lips pucker until they're normal size. Elsewhere there are moronic gags involving African natives (all male) with nose rings and metal bands elongating their necks. (Apparently the gang at Termite Terrace have got African men confused with Burmese women.) I was surprised that there weren't any plate-lip gags ... but, really, most of this toon is just so stupid and unfunny that it's not worth the credibility of being called racist. Some other Hollywood toons from this same period are far more racist, maliciously so. Step forward, Chuck Jones's Inki.After the initial gags, we get two interesting examples of Dorgan's Syndrome, a term I invented. Dorgan's Syndrome (named for comic-strip artist Tad Dorgan) is when a comic-strip character or cartoon character (almost invariably male) is drawn to look like an exaggerated human (fully clothed), but very minor details -- such as floppy spaniel ears or a black button nose -- indicate that he's actually a humanised animal, nearly always a dog. (Tad Dorgan drew comic-strip dogs who were so completely anthropomorphised, you have to look carefully to see they aren't comic-strip humans.) Into this cartoon jungle comes a commercial traveller who appears to be a white man, except that he has a dog's nose. The African natives (who are clearly human beings, at least by cartoon standards) want to put him in a big cauldron and eat him. Before anybody cries 'cannibalism', how can they be cannibals if they're humans eating a dog? The talking dog's flesh tones resemble a caucasian human's, so I guess he's 'white'.Now we veer into H. Rider Haggard territory, as it turns out that all these black men are ruled by a white queen ... a very old queen, in fact, wearing Mammy Yokum high-button shoes. She too appears to suffer from Dorgan's Syndrome, as she looks nominally human but her mouth and nose are drawn to resemble a chicken's beak. (An old biddy?) She takes one look at the dog and starts screeching 'A man!'. She's surrounded by black men, but apparently she's been waiting for a talking dog with caucasian flesh tones. While the dog is talking, the hen imagines him morphing into Clark Gable (very unpleasantly drawn) and Robert Taylor. It shows how defeatist the makers of this Warner Brothers cartoon were, that they had to invoke two MGM contract actors as examples of male sex appeal. Couldn't they have used Warners actors Cagney, Raft ... even Dick Powell?This whole toon is too dumb to bear much scrutiny. When the African men look at the dog, he morphs into a fried chicken. But their queen IS a chicken, so why don't they eat HER?A previous IMDb reviewer, Randy H Farb, observes that the travelling salesman in this cartoon is a parody of a radio character named Elmer Blurt. He's correct, but Mr Farb has misspelt the name of the radio actor who invented the character: that would be Al Pearce, not Pierce. Al Pearce's radio character Elmer Blurt was nicknamed 'the Low Pressure Salesman'. As Farb notes, quite a few Warners toons featured parodies of radio or movie actors. Which brings me to the one good thing about this cartoon: the dog character (an imitation of Blurt) is actually fairly interesting in his own right, and could have been quite effective in a funnier cartoon. It's a shame that Warners never used him again. Maybe he'll show up in a Tiny Toon. I'll rate 'Jungle Jitters' just 2 out of 10. That's all, folks.