Movies - Pigs Is Pigs

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	Movies - Pigs Is Pigs

Pigs Is Pigs, is a 1937 Merrie Melodies
cartoon. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions and The Vitaphone Corporation, directed by Friz Freleng, and originally released to theatres on January 30, 1937 by Warner Bros. Pictures. Animators on the short include Robert McKimson and Paul J. Smith. Carl Stalling served as musical director, and the short features the voice talents of Billy Bletcher.

Synopsis

Piggy Hamhock (a character concurrent with but separate from Porky Pig) is always hungry, thinking of food, eating, and stealing food when he can. When his mother leaves a pair of pies out to cool, he gobbles one down whole; and would have downed the second as well if his mother hadn’t stopped him.

That afternoon, his mother serves spaghetti for dinner. While she and his brothers and sisters say grace, he sneaks under the table and ties the ends of the spaghetti all together. When his mother says “and now commence,” he sucks the entire meal (enough spaghetti for a family of eight) down himself. His mother scolds him: “What’s the matter with you?! Do you want you should burst?!” He listens, but shows that he clearly doesn’t care.

The next morning, he finds himself invited into the home of a kindly old man. The old man presents Piggy with a table laid out with a full-blown feast – complete with a roasted turkey. Overjoyed at the man’s generosity, Piggy sits down, and the man reveals himself as some sort of mad scientist (voiced by Billy Bletcher, better known for the voice of Paw Bear in some later Warners toons), who straps him down and declares, “So, it’s food you want! Ha, ha! (Hic) We’ll give you plenty of it!”

The scene switches to the basement, revealing a bizarre machine built for the sole purpose of force-feeding hungry little kids like Piggy (not that he would need any forcing). As he begins his work, the scientist yells, “So, you love food, aye?”

A mechanical chair (with a robotic arm holding Piggy's nose) carries him to a huge vat (labeled "SUPER SOUP FEEDER") filled with gallons of soup; the mechanical arm pulls Piggy's mouth open to let in a torrent of soup. He is then fed bananas shot out of their skins down his throat like bullets. There follow stops at a gumball machine that doles out olives and at a conveyor belt of ice cream cones. Then comes the main course – a sandwich as big as a king-sized bed (featuring the first appearance of Freleng’s “hold the onions” gag), followed by dessert dispensed from the "PIE-A-TROPE" (pies spun on the spindle of a converted jukebox).

Laughing maniacally, the scientist incessantly continues forcing food into Piggy – shown in montage. After an entire day of this business, the pig is returned up to the mad scientist’s house: transformed into an obese, food-packed, ball. Bulging out of the restraints, Piggy could never in the world have been more content, happy, and satisfied as he was at that moment.

Smiling at the sight of Piggy’s obesity, the scientist pokes him twice and kindly asks “Have enough, my boy?” To which Piggy replies “Y-y-y-yes sir!” The doctor then releases him commenting, “Why, you’re not half full!”

With the sun setting, Piggy waddles his bloated way to the door, passing by the food the scientist had laid out on the kitchen table to bait him. He looks at the turkey and experiences a thrill at the chance of eating even more. He pulls off a drumstick and after taking a bite, explodes. Or rather, he wakes up in his own bed – it was just a dream. He then hears the sound of his mother calling him down to breakfast. He dashes downstairs and starts eating again with gusto.

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General information

The animation appears crude by later Warner standards. And there are some goofs. Piggy’s design includes a set of distinctive birthmarks on him; in the beginning, he has 3 – one on his head, one on his rear-end, and one on his right knee. Throughout the rest of the film, he has only the ones on his head and rear-end. Also, the birthmark on his head keeps changing sides -- see above pictures. At the end, when the scientist is letting him go, he is standing behind Piggy, yet his toe is in front of Piggy’s fat belly.

This film was the second (and last) featuring the Family Hamhock, which Friz Freleng had apparently intended as a series of recurring characters. They made their first appearance in "At Your Service Madame" (1936) – this presented Mrs. Hamhock as a widow to whom her late husband had left a sizable inheritance. Rooted in the concept of morality, each of her 7 children were to embody one of the seven-deadly-sins; Piggy, of course, represented gluttony. Apparently, Leon Schlesinger didn't like this idea and Mrs. Hamhock's children would never appear again after this film. Mrs. Hamhock herself would make one last appearance in what would have been the next short in the series, Wholly Smoke (1938), with Porky Pig cast as her only child.

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