The Four Musicians Of Bremen

"That Old Fairly Tale." The Laugh-O-Gram madness continues with Walt's next toon, The Four Musicians of Bremen. This cartoon is based on a story written by the famous Brothers Grimm (Brothers Grimm is a HORRIBLE movie by the way). The story is about a donkey, a rooster, a cat, and a dog who set out to leave behind their farm animal lives for the fast paced life of musicians. And who can blame em? Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll. The things that matter in life. The destination they choose to begin their new lives is the German town of Bremen. So they head out, and along the way find a house full of robbers. They try to earn some food from the robbers by performing music, but unfortunately they sound horrendous and the robbers run away. And then the 'musicians' end up living in the house, presumably happily ever after. Interesting that they never even go to Bremen...

Well similar to Walt's last attempt at retelling a classic fairy tale, his version of The Four Musicians of Bremen only loosely sticks to the source material. The film opens with a poem appearing on screen which gives us the background to these characters and their ill fated attempts at living the rock star life. We're then thrown into an explosive action scene (for the times anyways) as the four animals flee for their lives from a town (Bremen?) who didn't appreciate their music very much. The townsfolk hurl rocks and bricks and shoes at them. On a side note, one of the angry townies looks straight up like the man from the portrait in Little Red Riding Hood!!! That creepster... first he peeps on mothers making doughnuts and now he's abusing animals by throwing bricks at them. And he is successful as a few of bricks hit the cat in the head. Speaking of reappearing characters, both the cat AND the dog resemble the cat and dog from the last film as well. Anyways, the animals take off and hide by a body of water where the cat decides he's super hungry. So he rallies the group together and they begin playing tunes over the water. The fish are enchanted by the melody and begin dancing right up onto the shore where the cat then attempts to kill them by smacking them with a big piece of wood. The attempts however are unsuccessful and the cat ends up diving into the water after the escaping fish, and he runs into an unfriendly swordfish. Gore flashes across the screen as the swordfish hacks an innocent guppy into two separate flailing pieces (not enough of this in modern cartoons, if you ask me). The swordfish chases the cat onto land, and then chases the whole band of animals through the landscape, into a hollow tree, and eventually over a cliff side just like Gandalf and the Balrog. The animals smash into a house below which is filled to the brim with what I assume are robbers. The robbers run outside to their armory and begin firing cannons at the house where the musicians are holes up. Eventually the cat heads to the roof where he ends up mounting a flying cannon ball and, using his tail to direct it's flight path, attacks the robbers and chases them off. The ending is intense because the cat ends up falling out of the sky as he falls off the cannon ball, and despite the rest of his bands efforts to save him, he smashes into the ground. We are then confirmed that this is in fact a similar or the same cat from the last film because we see all nine of his lives fly out of his body when it impacts. But the heroic dog grabs one of the departing lives and shoves it back into the cat, saving it's life. The end!

Again, another wacky Laugh-Gram-Cartoon but I must say it's incredibly amusing. The ridiculous violence is probably the most captivating feature we're treated to here. I usually get pretty bored watching black n white cartoons with repetitious gag-reels, but this one keeps up pace which is pretty refreshing. The animation is also really above par, strongly resembling some of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons that Walt eventually went on to create. The backgrounds are also nicely painted, a change made since the previous film's creation. I'm not sure if it's just because I have a soft spot for the absurd and the over-the-top violence, but I actually really like this cartoon. In my opinion this is a far better cartoon in which to see Disney's beginnings. The drawings are decent, it's fast paced, it's good animation. I liked it. And I'm pretty interested to see how many of these reoccurring characters will show up in later cartoons. The cat really stole the show this time and it's clear Disney had a soft spot for the guy- after all, we were treated to a full thirteen hours (or so it felt) worth of watching that cat make doughnuts in Little Red Riding Hood. Perhaps he'll serve as a main character as these go on. I just pray we see no more of that creepy old portrait man... though I'd like to see more of the pervert wolf guy.