Alice's Day At Sea

Like I mentioned in my last post, while "Alice's Wonderland" spelled the end for Laugh-O-Gram Studios, Walt ended up taking the film to California and getting investors for an entire series of adventures to come. This series would come to be known as the "Alice Comedies" and would largely follow the same formula set up in their pilot run. Live action elements would be melded with cartoon chaos, and fun would ensue. And I DO use the word "chaos" intentionally. While they are intended for kids and are pretty fun cute little bits of animation, many of them are dark in tone and feature some perilous scenarios that you (perhaps unfortunately) don't see in today's children's entertainment.

I don't intend to go over every single Alice Comedy like I did for the Laugh-O-Grams, but I will hit up a few key episodes, as they do deserve their place in Disney History. While they may be generally considered obscure, they do interestingly enough feature a character that is Disney's longest running character still around today- Pete. But we'll get to that later. FOR NOW we set sail with "Alice's Day At Sea."

The film opens in the "real world" in Alice's yard. Her dog- who looks suspiciously like the Tasmanian Tiger seen in in the final footage ever taken of one in 1933 and NOTHING like the stupid dog that seems to appear in all of these cartoons -is snoozing away when he is rudely awoken by his alarm clock. The dog seems to ignore the alarm at first, so the frustrated clock- who has an animated face to show his distress -jumps off the shelf and onto the Dog's head. This gimmick works to get our Tasmanian Canine out of bed but he vindictively takes the clock and drops it off in the trash can. He then puts on his own harness, calls up to Alice's window to wake her up, and then goes and gets a small car to drive her around town. Apparently he is Alice's driver.

I really don't get why all the dogs in Disney's films so far seem to double as chauffeurs and butlers. But I must say, it's a lot more amusing to see in live action than it is in animation. It's also a lot more amusing when the dog looks like The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is does.

The duo end up going to the beach where Alice meets a salty old sailor (presumably) who is whittling a piece of wood near the pier. Lacking any inhibitions she approaches the man who proceeds to tell her stories of giant cephalopods sinking ships. A little fun fact for all of you, I actually have a phobia of octopi. They are the snakes to my Indiana Jones. They terrify me. It seems that Alice actually has a similar problem as the story, while captivating her, does actually induce some crazy dreams. Similar to her last "adventure" Alice ends up finding a boat and curling up in it, taking a ciesta, and slipping into a crazy dream.

In her dream she is again in the world of Cartoons, this time a passenger of a wayward ship at sea during a wild storm. After a couple eternities of her ship being tossed around, it sinks like a rock to the bottom of the sea. While initially tragic, it turns out this isn't a big deal as Alice swims on out and finds the sea to be a pretty rockin' place. There are fish playing songs, some crazy dancing (on both Alice's and the fish's parts), a zoo belonging to "King Nep" himself, and even a family of catfish! And oh, how clever! Walt has animated them to look just like the cats from all previous cartoons. That cat just won't die... well, except for in his/her debut where he/she ate those doughnuts Red's mom made... and actually, the cat isn't the only returning character. The lion who provided Alice's last adventure with a main antagonistic force makes a cameo appearance here as a "sea lion" in King Nep's Zoo. However, Sea Lion seems a lot less dangerous than Normal Lion because he doesn't eat his way out of the bars and cause mass panic. Oh, there's also a sea cow that gets milked.

Okay so then things heat up. We see a cave off in the distance and two creepy eyes peeking out of the darkness. Gradually, dark inky tentacles slip out of the cave and drag a beast of an octopus out into the light. He looks around rather nefariously and takes off to go murder some fish. One fish is distracted by a bottle of "xxx" alcohol when the octopus sneaks up on it, grabs it, and smacks it against the rocky bottom killing it. Then it slinks up over the fish's corpse, chops it in half, and begins feasting. I am positive that were I a young child, this scene would have left me pretty shaken. I envy the boys who grew up in the roaring twenties and were made tough men by watching tough cartoons!

Anyways, Alice ends up meeting a huge fish that chases her around trying to eat her. She hops in some sort of sea car and tries to escape but still ends up being devoured. The huge fish then takes off after what appears to be a narwhal. As he enjoys feeling full, Alice and the Narwhal have some sort of altercation in which the Narwhal's tusk gets thrust through the huge fish's stomach and pokes up out through the skin. Huge fish dies, and an injured Narwhal on crutches hobbles out of it's mouth (followed by Alice's sea car also on crutches). THANKFULLY, Alice emerges uninjured. But UNTHANKFULLY, the giant fish carcass behind her stirs. It seems being impaled from the inside is not enough to kill this Chordate (science joke)! Alice takes off and hides from the behemoth behind a big rock- which turns out to not be a rock at all but ACTUALLY be the evil octopus. He lunges out before Alice can get away and entangles her in his squiggly amorphous tentacles, ripping her hat off her head! Alice can't escape and dies.

Okay, she doesn't REALLY die. It was all a dream. We're snapped back into the real world where two sailors see Alice having a night terror while being tangled up in a fishing net. They rush to her aid, wake her up, free her from the net, and then it pretty much ends. But not before we're treated to a closeup of one of the sailors who seems to have some sort of horrible skin condition on his face... gross. But Alice is unshaken and the cartoon ends.

I can't say I'm really a big fan of the Alice Comedies so far. Wonderland was pretty disconnected and this one suffered similar problems. But what I CAN say I like is the mayhem atmosphere that permeates these cartoons. Like I said, if I were a young child I might not be such a fan. But then again, maybe I would. I'm not sure. But I sure do get a kick out of the action and find THAT at least pretty entertaining.