The Chicken from Outer Space

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The Chicken from Outer Space is a cartoon short by John R. Dilworth that featured the first appearance of Courage, the Cowardly Dog, and his owner Eustace and Muriel Bagge. and his enemy the chicken from outer space. It was very successful and started the Courage the Cowardly Dog series. In 1995, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.^[1] Currently, this film is only seen on reruns of What a Cartoon!.

[edit] Summary

An alien chicken arrives on the farm, hoping to invade. Courage witnesses his arrival and alerts Muriel and Eustace, though they don't believe him. Courage follows the chicken to find him in the chicken coop, strangling the chickens to death. He calls his owners once more, and this time they follow him. Back at the coop, all the chickens have mysteriously vanished, except the alien chicken, which is posing as a normal chicken. Muriel takes a few eggs from it, and begins to cook them for breakfast. Courage fights with the Chicken in several different contests, while Muriel feeds Eustace some of the Chicken's eggs, which transform Eustace into a monstrous Chicken. After many competitions and fights, Courage manages to defeat the Chicken by frying it with its own laser gun. The Chicken-Eustace is defeated in the same way. However, a mouse starts to eat the Chicken-Eustace's ashes. Courage ends by saying "This shouldn't happen to a dog!"

[edit] Notes

• Although some character designs were revamped for the later TV series, Eustace closely resembles his series counterpart.
• Courage has a notably deeper voice.
• This episode was shown as the first episode of the Courage the Cowardly Dog Monstervision Marathon on October 7th, 2007 and still contained the What a Cartoon! style opening and credits.
• It was not included in Courage's TV series, probably because its length didn't match that of the new episodes.
• It was given two spin-off sequel episodes which ended up being included in the series the titles were:

1. "The Revenge of the Chicken from Outer Space"

2. "Son of the Chicken from Outer Space"

• The first/only line in this, "This shouldn't happen to a dog," was again mentioned by Courage in "The Revenge of the Chicken from Outer Space," only he added the word "still" in the sentence. Also, unlike the pilot, Courage was voiced by his usual voice actor, Marty Grabstein at the time "Revenge of the Chicken from Outer Space" was aired.

[edit] References