Pantry Panic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pantry Panic

Woody Woodpecker series
Directed by Walter Lantz
Produced by Walter Lantz
Story by Ben Hardaway
L.E. Elliott
Voices by Mel Blanc
Music by Darrell Calker
Animation by Alex Lovy
LaVerne Harding
Studio Walter Lantz Productions
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) Flag of the United States November 24, 1941
Color process Technicolor
Running time 7'
Preceded by The Screwdriver
Followed by The Hollywood Matador
IMDb profile

Pantry Panic is the third animated cartoon short subject in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on September 14, 1953, the film was produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures.

Contents

[edit] Plot

In the cartoon, Woody (voice of Mel Blanc) stays behind to swim while the other birds in the forest migrate south for the winter. Just after the other birds leave, the cold of winter sets in instantly, to the point that Woody's swimming hole freezes instantly solid just after he jumps in ("Must be hard water", he remarks). Woody doesn't worry, because he's stored up plenty of food. However, a snow storm enters his house and makes off with all of his possessions, food included.

Two weeks later, a title card informs the audience that "his food all gone, starvation stares Woody in the face!" Cut to a shot of Woody, seated at his dinner table, having a staring (and cackling) contest with "Starvation", personified as something vaguely resembling the Grim Reaper. A month later, a hungry cat happens upon Woody's cabin, and conspires to eat the woodpecker. The famished Woody, however, plans just as quickly to eat the cat, and the two spend much of the remainder of the short trying to decapitate, bake, broil, and season each other. After several minutes of battling, a moose appears in the forest, and the starving cat and woodpecker chase after it, kill it, and eat it (the latter two happened offscreen).

Sitting near a pile of moose bones with full bellies, Woody and the cat appear content. However, the cat looks over at Woody and remarks, "Y'know, I'm still hungry." "Yeah," replies Woody, "so am I!" Brandishing knives, the two go right back at each other's throats as the cartoon fades to its end title credits.

[edit] Production notes

Woody believes he has trapped the cat in this scene from Pantry Panic.
Woody believes he has trapped the cat in this scene from Pantry Panic.

Like most of the early 1940s Lantz cartoons, Pantry Panic carried no director's credit. Lantz himself has claimed to have directed this cartoon, which features animation by Alex Lovy and LaVerne Harding, a story by Ben Hardaway and Lowell Elliott, and music by Darrell Calker.

Pantry Panic was the third cartoon in the Woody Woodpecker series (thus featuring an early garish Woody Woodpecker design), and the fourth short to star the character. It is the last short to feature Mel Blanc performing new dialogue for Woody, although his recording of Woody's trademark laugh (and the "guess who?!" line which often precedes it) were used in the Woody cartoons for the duration of the 1940s Storyman Ben Hardaway would perform Woody's voice for the rest of his 1940s appearances.

Today, Pantry Panic is the only Woody Woodpecker cartoon in the public domain. As such, it is freely distributed, and can be downloaded from the Internet Archive and seen on YouTube.

[edit] References

  • Cooke, Jon, Komorowski, Thad, Shakarian, Pietro, and Tatay, Jack. "1941". The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 4, 2007.

[edit] External links