Porky's Railroad (1937) User Reviews

Morse code

[wmfg · 5/10 · 3 March 2006]

Clearly this cartoon has been around a long time, produced prior to my birth. However in about 1997 I had an occasion to be viewing this piece in the company of several small children. In the midst of this viewing, I caught what I detected to be Morse code signals. I wasn't sure at first but as I carefully listened to this piece (on VHS tape), the more I was convinced that I was right. The problem was complicated because the Morse was somewhat hidden beneath a rendering of "California Here I Come." Nevertheless, taking time to be sure, I found that the real message was different from the message being show to those in a theater watching the cartoon. In the picture Porky, in a race against a new and modern train, was alerted by telegraph that a cow was on the tracks ahead. To convey this message to the film watching audience, a hand came to the screen taping a message on a telegraph key. There was this Morse code sound and the audience would have assumed the sound was a representation of a message to Porky that he should be careful. However the real message of the code was an invitation to contact the producer in Hollywood and receive a picture of Porky. At this late date it is fair to say that there is no way to know if anyone ever did this. In the days when this cartoon was being viewed by the theater going public, few in the audience would have had the opportunity to get a copy of this and go over it many times to weed out the truth of the hidden message. This didn't really become easily available to the general public until the development of VHS tapes. I view this as a simple little joke by the cartoon producers who probably had a long laugh in their offices for many years. A similar Morse code message can be found in The Lone Stranger and Porky produced in '39. Were it not for my skill at Morse, acquired as a condition of being a ham radio operator, this hidden message would probably never have come to my attention. I have no reason to think I was the first to note this message. Nevertheless it was an interesting experience to discover something few others would have noticed.

Good, though not great, Frank Tashlin Porky cartoon

[llltdesq · 7/10 · 23 December 2006]

This cartoon is another "my old (fill in the blank) can beat your new (fill in the blank)" plot, in the vein of John Henry versus the mechanical drill. Because I want to discuss some of the details of this short, this is a spoiler warning:

This is an interesting little short, though there's very little that's all that special, save for Frank Tashlin using some tricks usually reserved for live-action film rather than cartoons. This is about a race, between Porky and a bully, with Porky using an old, broken-down old engine on its last wheels against a modern locomotive. As Porky is the hero in this picture, it's fairly apparent who will win in the end, but the gags make an obvious trip a fun and scenic journey.

Along the way, there are quite a few sight gags, including one which kept the short from being seen in its entirety for quite a while. A bull has a strong supporting role in a couple of scenes and has a hand (or rather, a couple of horns) in the final outcome of the race.

This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is well worth seeing. Recommended.

maybe Porky really represented people's hopes during the Depression

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 19 September 2007]

One of the many cartoons from the days when Porky Pig was the top Warner Bros. cartoon star - though Daffy Duck would soon overtake him - "Porky's Railroad" looks to me like a parable of many American's hopes during the Depression. We see how Porky is the simple little guy with his ordinary train going about things as he's always done, but he gets replaced by a big guy, much like how the banks foreclosed on many people's homes during those years. So, Porky's only hope is to race the big galoot: he's the underdog against seemingly improbable odds.

Of course, I just might be reading too far into this cartoon. I don't know what specifically director Frank Tashlin wanted to say here; he may have just intended it as a way to pass time. Whatever the gist is, it's still a pretty enjoyable cartoon. Not their best by any stretch, but worth seeing.

California, here comes Porky!

[slymusic · 22 June 2009]

Directed by Frank Tashlin, "Porky's Railroad" is a delightful Porky Pig cartoon in which Porky is the engineer of his own locomotive, the 15th Century Unlimited, which he nicknames "Toots".

Here are my favorite sequences from this cartoon. Wonderfully voiced by Mel Blanc, Porky struggles in coaxing a cow to not sit on the railroad tracks. At the opening of this film, Porky operates his slow, broken-down train to an equally slow accompaniment of "California, Here I Come"; he adds a pepper shaker to the engine, and the train suddenly SPEEDS, and so does the music. And when Porky's train jumps the opened drawbridge, I am reminded of the live-action comedy "The Blues Brothers" (1980), in which a humble automobile does the same thing!

Catch "Porky's Railroad" on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4 Disc 2, a disc that specializes in the directing style of Frank Tashlin.

Not Porky or Tashlin at their best, still a decent cartoon though

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 12 October 2013]

The work of Frank Tashlin is always worth a look. Porky's Railroad is one of his weaker Porky cartoons, and a disappointment after the brilliant Porky the Fireman. The weakest asset with Porky's Railroad was the story, which is agreed rather feeble, structurally it's thin and the pace is lacking in crispness. Porky's Railroad does have a few inspired moments, but the gags mostly are forgettable and not all that funny marred by their predictability and dull timing. Tashlin was an underrated animation director who a vast majority of the time showed signs of masterful technical and directorial brilliance, you can see this in cartoons like Plane Daffy, there is evidence of this brilliance but the pace and gags don't really serve him all that well. The slow motion shot at the start is an oddity, unusual for Tashlin. However, the animation is very good on the most part, the camera angles generally do impress and there's little wrong with how everything's drawn and shaded. The music sounds beautiful and is very characterful, as to expect the synchronisation from sound to visual works very well, in Porky's Railroad the best example is to the train starting up and accelerating very quickly. As well as the shocking and poignant ending, that is also the best gag/highlight of the cartoon, though the jumping off the drawbridge was also quite nice. Porky is a good lead character, not the strongest one but a credible one, while Mel Blanc's characterisations are without fault. Billy Bletcher gives nice support too. All in all, decent but could have been better. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Kinda cute.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 30 November 2021]

"Porky's Railroad" is a Looney Tunes cartoon that offers few laughs, though it is entertaining. In this short, Porky is the engineer of an old steam engine...one that clearly is outdated. The plan is to replace him with a new Streamliner engine. However, before this happens, there's a race between one of these modern trains and Porky's...with rather predictable results.

For a 1937 Looney Tunes cartoon, this one is pretty good, though considerably less fun to watch than Looney Tunes' later work. Not bad...but nothing special here.

Good Enough Early Porky

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 14 January 2019]

In this one, our blubbery friend is an engineer on an out of date train. After many efforts to barely survive a trip, Porky bets he can beat a guy with a brand new, silver streak train. There are several pitfalls along the way, but something Porky does early in the cartoon becomes his salvation. This is a pretty typical cartoon with only a couple clever events.

Capitalism and Technology

[MarceloGilli · 8/10 · 15 November 2006]

This is a very good cartoon that I intend to watch many times more in the future, but for now I will publish these modest comments based on my experience of having seen it only once. What strikes me as shocking about 'Porky's Railroad' is its absolutely -- even brutally, I should say -- honest depiction of the soul of man under capitalism -- to paraphrase the title of that famous book by Oscar Wilde -- which I unfortunately have not read yet. The first shot establishes the state-of-the-art in trains -- one that would look modern even by today's standards. Then, the film switches to Porky's obsolete -- and barely functional -- model. It is interesting then how the film establishes Porky's character as sentimentally attached to his old train, but not anti-technology at all: for him, machines have precedence over animals. The race that ensues is the necessary conflict that precedes the shocking -- and of an unbridled cynicism -- ending that carries to the last consequences the truism that sentimentality has no place in a technological capitalist society -- Porky wins the race but is not allowed to keep his train; instead he is promoted to machinist of the new one, and is soon bursting with joy. Obsolescence happens to trains as well as to people -- the old machinist goes to the 'garbage can' just as Porky's old train.

Tashlin can't save a weak script

[phantom_tollbooth · 3/10 · 9 January 2009]

Frank Tashlin's 'Porky's Railroad' is one of the lesser black and white Porky Pig cartoons. Tashlin directed many of the finest of these early Porkys but sometimes the script would let him down. This is very much the case in the interminably dull 'Porky's Railroad', although Tashlin makes a few odd choices himself. The cartoon opens with a lot of on screen captions and Tashlin accompanies them with some weird use of slow-motion. There follows a string of crummy gags (broken up by a rather lovely aerial view sequence) before the main storyline kicks in, with Porky taking part in a race with a more powerful train. This feeble plot, despite a surprisingly sad ending, throws up few moments of interest and, despite some unusual camera angles and a gallant attempt to inject some pace, Tashlin never manages to make 'Porky's Railroad' come to life. The result is a pedestrian pig picture, one of several lacklustre cartoons with the generic title 'Porky's...fill in occupation'!

Decent Porky Short

[Michael_Elliott · 28 March 2016]

Porky's Railroad (1937)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent, if nothing overly special, short has Porky Pig traveling around in his 15th Century train when a newer, faster 30th Century challenges him to a race.

PORKY'S RAILROAD is pretty slim on story and I'd also argue that there really aren't too many laughs either. The short manages to be slightly entertaining thanks to the very good animation, which is certainly the highlight. I'd say that Porky is in fine shape and manages to hold your attention as he talks to his train and keeps trying to make it do better than it actually should.