- Pantry Panic
Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = Pantry Panic
series = Woody Woodpecker
caption =
director =Walter Lantz
story_artist =Ben Hardaway L.E. Elliott
animator =Alex Lovy LaVerne Harding
voice_actor =Mel Blanc
musician =Darrell Calker
producer = Walter Lantz
studio =Walter Lantz Productions
distributor = Universal Pictures
release_date = flagicon|USNovember 24 ,1941
color_process =Technicolor
runtime = 7'
movie_language = English
preceded_by = "The Screwdriver "
followed_by = "The Hollywood Matador "
amg_id = 1:304322
imdb_id = 0151893"Pantry Panic" is the third
animated cartoon short subject in the "Woody Woodpecker " series. Released theatrically onNovember 24 ,1941 , the film was produced byWalter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures.Plot
In the cartoon, Woody (voice of
Mel Blanc ) stays behind to swim while the other birds in the forest migrate south for the winter. Just after the other birds leave, the cold of winter sets in instantly, to the point that Woody's swimming hole freezes instantly solid just after he jumps in ("Must be hard water", he remarks). Woody doesn't worry, because he's stored up plenty of food. However, a snow storm enters his house and makes off with all of his possessions, food included.Two weeks later, a title card informs the audience that "his food all gone, starvation stares Woody in the face!" Cut to a shot of Woody, seated at his dinner table, having a staring (and cackling) contest with "Starvation", personified as something vaguely resembling the
Grim Reaper . A month later, a hungry cat happens upon Woody's cabin, and conspires to eat the woodpecker. The famished Woody, however, plans just as quickly to eat the cat, and the two spend much of the remainder of the short trying to decapitate, bake, broil, and season each other. After several minutes of battling, a moose appears in the forest, and the starving cat and woodpecker chase after it, kill it, and eat it (the latter two happened offscreen).Sitting near a pile of moose bones with full bellies, Woody and the cat appear content. However, the cat looks over at Woody and remarks, "Y'know, I'm still hungry." "Yeah," replies Woody, "so am I!" Brandishing knives, the two go right back at each other's throats as the cartoon fades to its end title credits.
Production notes
Like most of the early 1940s Lantz cartoons, "Pantry Panic" carried no director's credit. Lantz himself has claimed to have directed this cartoon, which features animation by
Alex Lovy andLaVerne Harding , a story byBen Hardaway and Lowell Elliott, and music byDarrell Calker ."Pantry Panic" was the third cartoon in the "Woody Woodpecker" series (thus featuring an early garish Woody Woodpecker design), and the fourth short to star the character. It is the last short to feature Mel Blanc performing new dialogue for Woody, although his recording of Woody's trademark laugh (and the "guess who?!" line which often precedes it) were used in the "Woody" cartoons for the duration of the 1940s Storyman Ben Hardaway would perform Woody's voice for the rest of his 1940s appearances.
Today, "Pantry Panic" is the only "Woody Woodpecker" cartoon in the
public domain . As such, it is freely distributed, and can be downloaded from theInternet Archive and seen onYouTube .References
*Cooke, Jon, Komorowski, Thad, Shakarian, Pietro, and Tatay, Jack. " [http://lantz.goldenagecartoons.com/1941.html 1941] ". "The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia". Retrieved March 4, 2007.
External links
* [http://www.archive.org/details/woody_woodpecker_pantry_panic Download "Pantry Panic" from the Internet Archive]
* [http://cinemaniacal.com/video/woody-woodpecker-pantry-panic Pantry Panic] at [http://cinemaniacal.com Cinemaniacal.com] - Viewable and downloadable in a variety of useful formats.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb3VgXaiuqQ Watch "Pantry Panic" at YouTube]
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