tmpj Review of Injun Trouble

Injun Trouble (1938)

A Comparison between "Injun Trouble" and its remake, "Wagon Heels"...both by Bob Clampett

[23 July 2011]

Though mostly all of the Warner's animators have made cartoons that I like, Bob Clampett, for me, still stands head and shoulders above them all. His cartoons have probably been remade more than any of the others. Take "Porky In Wackyland" for example. It was remade by Clampett to fit a Fats Waller type character in "Tin Pan Alley Cats"...but the actual remake of "Porky In Wackyland" was done in the 1950s, long after Clampett's departure from "Termite Terrace"...it was done by either Chuck Jones or Friz Freleng, both of whom remained with Warner's until the animation unit was shut down. Some historians heap praise upon Tex Avery as the "hail fellow, well met" of Warner animation...and while I must admit his cartoons are uproariously hilarious, Tex appealed to basic instincts of humor. What distinguished Clampett was his overall panache, and his humor made you laugh...but it also made you think, and often what you would think would be funnier than what was going on in the cartoon. His surrealism was Dali based, and some of his cartoons, such as "Porky's Hero Agency" capture the strangeness of dreams and of times gone by in an unforgettable way. Though I should probably castigate Clampett in today's climate of 'political correctness' for his portrayals of Indians in "Injun Trouble" and "Wagon Heels", I have chosen to try to go the high road and look at them as products of their times. It is difficult to do at times, because the racism was so overtly manifest and 'in your face', but these cartoons, like other films, serve as reminders of how far we have come, where we are now, and where it is that we have to go to achieve fairness and balance. With that in mind, I can begin my comparison of "Injun Trouble (1938)" and "Wagon Heels" ,1945. First, "Injun Trouble" was made in glorious black and white, as were all Looney Tunes offerings until 1944. "Wagon Heels" was released in Technicolor. The voices in "Injun Trouble" were Mel Blanc and deep voiced "Billy Bletcher", who was a veteran of cartoon voices long before Blanc...at least as far back as Disney's "Three Little Pigs" ( which also featured Pinto Colvig, another famous but now nearly forgotten voice over artist). The design for Injun Joe was simpler...he is clearly native and musclebound, but more in tune with a Robin Hood type model. Injun Joe in "Wagon Heels" is a no holds barred model, whose very looks are intimidating to the point where his very appearance suggests he is on the war-path...or soon will be. In both instances, he does not walk around trees, but walks through them. The gags with the trap and the bear work OK in "Injun Trouble", but in "Wagon Heels", the humor is lacking by simply having the bear reduced to infancy and claiming he is "only 3 and a half years old". The trap gag in 'Wagon Heels' works better because Mel Blanc used the voice of the injured dog bitten by Injun Joe. The voices in the remake are supplied only by Blanc who, by this time, had been put under contract by Warner's. Billy Bletcher would appear again, but not very often...and was out of the picture before 1950. The gag of Injun Joe jumping off the cliff to detour and ravage the wagon train does not work as well in the first cartoon, because he parachutes safely to the ground. In the remake his presence is made more forceful by landing upright and shaking up the entire terrain...not to mention cutting off "Sloppy Moe" from a branch, declaring him "...a screwball". In the remake, the potential scalping of the wagon master works better dramatically than in the original, though I wish Clampett had kept in the buzz-saw carvings of the Statue of Liberty and the city-scape in the remake. The cornering of Porky on the cliff by Injun Joe does not vary much...but the interaction of Injun Joe and Sloppy Moe is markedly different...the voice of Billy Bletcher was effective in the original and I missed it in the remake. But when Moe reveals the secret at last, he tickles Joe with his hands and his beard in the first cartoon...Joe goes over the cliff and get trapped in a tree trunk with Moe still tickling away...as Moe and Porky shake hands and the picture begins to iris out, Injun Joe stops the action and literally begs for more tickling, which makes him completely hysterical. In the remake, Joe, tickled only by hand, goes over the cliff, and the impact from his dramatic, forceful fall drags the map over and changes the cartography from "Injun Joe's territory" to the "United States of America". Joe disappears into the deep sinkhole his fall has created and is not seen again...the story ends with Porky and Sloppy Moe in a patriotic salute, with Sloppy Moe's beard tickling Porky under the chin...as the picture fades and Looney Tunes credits and the theme take over. Though there is much I like about "Injun Trouble" and am sorry Clampett left some things out, I have to conclude the remake is better...better animators and techniques, Technicolor, and there is considerably more hilarity overall in "Wagon Heels" than in "Injun Trouble". R.I.P., Bob Clampett, and thank you for the gifts of laughter your cartoons have given to us all.