Pigs Is Pigs (1937) User Reviews

A 'Clockwork Pig'

[ccthemovieman-1 · 6/10 · 23 May 2007]

Technicolor rears its beautiful head right on the opening shot, one of the prettiest scenes of a straw-thatched house in the country you've ever seen.

This is a story of a little pig who was a big pig when it came to eating. He couldn't stop and even ate all his brothers spaghetti at one meal. His mother chastises him, saying he will regret his actions.

One day some ghoulish-looking guy invites him inside, straps him into a machine and force- feeds him a ton of food. It reminded me of what happened to a guy addicted to violence in the famous late '60s film, "A Clockwork Orange." There, a guy was treated similarly for addiction violence; here, it's food.

What happens to Piggie at the mad scientist's place and at the end of the cartoon is unexpected.

That boy is a P-I-G...oops!

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 9 July 2007]

Despite what the title may imply, "Pigs Is Pigs" does not star Porky Pig. Rather, it features a young swine with an appetite more insatiable than John Belushi's character in "Animal House". His mother repeatedly scolds him, but it does no good. So much so that he goes to another house where a deranged scientist force-feeds him more than any mere mortal can handle (but there's a surprise at the end).

I would mostly say that this cartoon seemed like a place holder in between the really great cartoons (Daffy Duck debuted three months after this came out). But make no mistake about it, they do some neat things here. The whole force-feeding sequence looks more relevant today, given the obesity epidemic overtaking our country.

Anyway, not the greatest cartoon, but worth seeing.

Piggy nightmare

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 20 May 2018]

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

'Pigs is Pigs' is not one of Friz Freleng's best cartoons by any stretch, in an uneven "still evolving" period of his long career, and he was yet to be in his full prime and not yet found his style properly. For a relatively early effort, 'Pigs is Pigs' has some interest but it's a bit bland too. It is never what one would call hilarious, Freleng's later efforts show more evenness and confidence in directing and the story is flimsy and occasionally loses momentum, taking too long to get going.

It is also rather disjointed. Things become significantly more interesting in the truly nightmarish and sometimes second second half than the overly-cutesy and sugary sweet first act. Sadly, the two halves do feel like two different cartoons that don't gel properly with each other.

However, the characters are fun, especially the antagonist the scientist while the pig is a decent protagonist. The conflict between them carries 'Pigs is Pigs' and does so very well.

The cartoon is amusing at times when it becomes more interesting and entertaining in the nightmarish second half.

Animation is excellent, it's fluid in movement, crisp in shading, vibrant in colour and very meticulous in detail. Ever the master, Carl Stalling's music is typically superb. It is as always lushly orchestrated, full of lively energy and characterful in rhythm, not only adding to the action but also enhancing it.

Voice acting from particularly Billy Bletcher is terrific.

All in all, interesting but not great. Freleng did much better since. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Pork scratchings

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 24 August 2004]

The Warner Brothers cartoon 'Pigs Is Pigs' takes its title from a best-selling humour book by Ellis Parker Butler, but is not otherwise related to that book. (In fact, the 'pigs' in Butler's book are guinea pigs.)

This very funny cartoon is about a little-boy pig (not Porky) who lives with his young siblings and their mother. (There doesn't seem to be a father pig in this family, so who brings home the bacon?) There are several spot gags dealing with the gluttonous Piggy stealing his siblings' dinners as well as scoffing his own.

Eventually he leaves home and finds himself at the door of a mad scientist (with an elaborate hiccough) who invites Piggy in for some free food. Which, indeed, he gets. But the mad scientist is testing a contraption that resembles the feeding machine in Chaplin's 'Modern Times', only it's more aggressive. The scientist straps Piggy into the machine, which then proceeds to force-feed him huge amounts of food. We get a variation of Friz Freleng's 'Hold the Onions' gag, which showed up in several Freleng toons. At the climax of the story, there's a very impressive montage as the scientist ratchets up the action. When he's finished, he laughs evilly as Piggy finds himself swollen to gargantuan girth. (Great voice work as the scientist by Billy Bletcher, better known for the voice of Paw Bear in some later Warners toons.)

SPOILER COMING. Warner Bros were the most cynical movie studio, and 'Pigs Is Pigs' follows the same pattern as several other Warners cartoons - including 'Now that Summer Is Gone' and 'I Wanna Be a Sailor' - in which a little-boy animal with a moral failing (in this case, gluttony) is taught a lesson and appears to repent but then (hilariously) proves he has no intention of reforming. In the case of 'Pigs Is Pigs', the whole ordeal turns out to be a nightmare ... and of course Piggy hasn't really learnt his lesson.

Kids and adults will both get a laugh out of this toon. 'Pigs Is Pigs' is also interesting for another reason, and from here on this review is adults-only. At approximately age eight, a boy named Bob Flanagan was profoundly impressed by 'Pigs Is Pigs'. Flanagan had cystic fibrosis, and he had to be repeatedly spanked on his chest by an adult in order to clear out his fibrotic tissues. The sadomasochistic aspects of 'Pigs Is Pigs' (bondage, forced feeding, forced body modification, experiments on an unwilling subject) had a highly erotic effect on young Bob, who developed at an early age an interest in masochism. Bob Flanagan grew up to be the adult subject of the 1997 documentary 'Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist'. In his performance pieces, the adult Flanagan often paid tribute to 'Pigs Is Pigs' and its early influence on him. Several of the Warners cartoons by Bob Clampett have extreme fetish content, so it's intriguing to know that somebody found fetish content in a cartoon by the more staid Freleng. I'll rate 'Pigs Is Pigs' 9 out of 10. Don't worry, parents: this cartoon won't turn your kids into Bob Flanagan.

Warner Bros. permanently killed off . . .

[oscaralbert · 8/10 · 18 August 2016]

. . . "Piggy," with this animated short, PIGS IS PIGS. Warner wanted to underline their warning to America about the Fat Cat Greedheads who had caused the then on-going Great Depression. No matter how much the gluttonous Piggy ingests here, he not only wants--he finds a way to STEAL more. Piggy is shown at the family supper table slurping down all the spaghetti right off his nine siblings' plates into his own insatiable gullet with such a gusto it was adapted by THERE WILL BE BLOOD villain Daniel Day Lewis into his infamous "I'll suck your straw!" scene. Even when Piggy falls into the clutches of an evil scientist, who force-feeds him fuller than a dozen Foie Gras geese, Piggy still is grasping for MORE! Warner tries to warn America NEVER to allow the One Per Center thieves and self-proclaimed Billionaires to ever filch our food again, Lording it over everyone else. These miscreants MUST be neutralized with extreme prejudice, just as the Looney Tuners pigged out themselves at Piggy's pig roast after completing PIGS IS PIGS. We all know how the U.S. Sheep Nation has backslid in the face of the Porkers to date. But as they say at the corner butcher shop, growing a backbone is better late than never.

Traumatizing

[s-73027 · 3/10 · 21 February 2021]

This is Freleng's worst cartoon ever. Even worse than Jungle Jitters and Sunday Go To Meetin' Time. Which are also Abysmal

Starts cutesy and turns nightmarish

[phantom_tollbooth · 5/10 · 4 November 2008]

Friz Freleng's 'Pigs is Pigs' is an odd cartoon that starts out unbearably cutesy and then suddenly turns nightmarish. The story of a greedy little pig who falls foul of a mad scientist, 'Pigs is Pigs' starts out looking saccharine sweet and torturously slow paced as young pigs frolic in a brightly coloured garden. However, there's an inspired little scene in which the main pig steals spaghetti from the others and from here the cartoon picks up. The incongruous pairing of the overly cute characters and cloying voice characterisations with the disturbing latter half of the cartoon only serves to make that second half even more freaky. A strange yellow scientist force feeds the pig by strapping him to a chair that keeps his mouth open and firing various foods into it. All the best jokes emerge during this frightening sequence but the pacing still feels a little too slow and ultimately, 'Pigs is Pigs' is an interesting failure. It's definitely worth seeing but in the end it's a less than satisfying watch, despite the refreshing surprise that in a seemingly didactic cartoon the lead character learns absolutely nothing!

"So, it's food you want!"

[slymusic · 17 April 2006]

Piggie is always hungry and constantly thinks about nothing else but food. And no matter how much he eats, it is never enough! In a rather silly nightmare sequence, Piggie meets a jaundiced mad scientist, who devises some intricate mechanical gadgetry in order to force-feed Piggie large quantities of all kinds of goodies, much to the scientist's mischievous delight. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the appropriate title for this cartoon would be "Pigs Is Pigs"? It is definitely far from being my favorite Warner Bros. cartoon, but it still has its good points.

In my opinion, the best moments from this short include the following. The popular song "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" can be heard during the opening shot of the straw house while the little piglets are outside playing, and also during the later nocturnal shot of the house while the piglets are sleeping. Piggie swipes a pie off of the windowsill and spins it around his finger as he eats it; he tries to eat a second pie in the same manner, but the mother pig catches him in time and he accidentally chomps on his bare fingers. And at the dinner table, all the little piglets humorously babble grace while Piggie ties all of their spaghetti strands together, so that he can devour all the spaghetti with one big slurp.

So there you have "Pigs Is Pigs" in a nutshell. If you ever decide to watch this cartoon, it is my recommendation that you have a little something to eat before you do.

Too moralistic for my tastes.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 30 November 2021]

This cartoon features a very greedy pig who looks and acts nothing like Porky. He steals his mother's pies, steals from his siblings and is an all-around jerk. As a result of his greediness, he's punished by a mad scientist who offers him more...though the pig is no longer interested in eating!

This cartoon annoyed me because it was so moralistic...sort of like indoctrinating the audience with a less than subtle message.

You greedy pig!

[Pjtaylor-96-138044 · 5/10 · 22 May 2024]

'Pigs Is Pigs (1937)' is a 'Merrie Melodies' short that's surprisingly grotesque in its own way, focusing on a greedy little piggy who experiences a harrowing nightmare in which he's force-fed food by a variety of complex machines until he's ready to burst. Essentially, the piece depicts piglet torture and it's really bizarre to see. What's worse is that it isn't even all that entertaining. Although there are some inventive, if cruel, visual gags, the majority of the film is just a bit boring. It's moralistic, too, but it doesn't stick the landing in terms of driving its message home. It's just a bit weird, really, and it isn't all that pleasant to watch. It's interesting to see that this is basically where 'The Simpsons (1989-)' got that gag about Homer being force-fed all the donuts in Hell and still being hungry for more, though.

Pigs is HOGS!

[gcarras · 25 July 2007]

This was an early animated prototype of Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (which, btw, was released not in the late '60s, but in the early70s, and coincidentally it was the first of his pernament Warner Bros.Studio association!)

Other toons used this gimmick too. MGM's "Pipe Dreams" Warner's own "Wholly Smoke" Art Clokey's "Grub Grabber Gumby!"

Billy Bletcher was the villain, the very obscure Bernice Hansen, the little pig. The title was the only thing from that 1905 E.P.Butlerbook,"Pigs is Pigs", with a very different storyline than the WB cartoon, but Disney made a film twenty years later of the Butler book. WB was indeed the most cynical of the studios till Jay Ward,Hanna Barbera, then Spumco in the 90s.

Soundtrack includes "Fella with a Fiddle" and "When My Dreaboat Comes Home", also much used in WB shorts of the time-"Fella" in "The Cat Came Back", "The Blow-Out",the title short "Fella", and "Little Beau Porky",and "Dreamboat" in "Porky's Badtime Story", and its remake "Tick Tock Tuckered",and "The Birth of a Notion".

When the mother pig (talking in a Jewish accent--VERY sneaky WB type joke even for that un-PC period!) (as we see the outside shot of the piggie house!) warns her sonny-boy of indigestion, WE know he might have some nightmare, especially when he finds himself in a different place all of a sudden, especially when a Billy Bletcher-voiced mad doctor appears! But is it a dream, reality, or is it Memorex?

(Compare this with PORKY's shorts, or more recent live action comedies about fatness--"Big Momma's House 1 and 2", and this year's smashes "Norbit" and "Hairspray"! (and that last was set back in the sixties..)

The ending, like the "A Clockwork Orange" gimmick,is like "Wholly Smoke" (same director,Frank Tash), which DID have Porky.