Watch Big Man from the North For Free

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

. . . "Rape me once, shame on you; rape me twice, shame on me." That's pretty much the theme of this Sadomasochistic 1931 Looney Tune, BIG MAN FROM THE NORTH. Its inclusion on Passport Video's 2005 RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER AND FRIENDS disc just goes to prove the Hell-on-Earth and possible Human Extinction Event we're all in for now that "Mad Dog" Putin has installed his Russian KGB Rump Puppet as Leader of the Free World to its slaughter. The fraudulent Corrupt Capitalist Rump Disciples at Passport Video stuck this Looney Tune on their DVD sight unseen because they ASSUMED any BIG MAN FROM THE NORTH just HAD to be Santa Claus (rather than, say Satan, or his wide-bodied Earthly Potentate, aka bankrupt New York Values Casino Owner Rump). In Reality, the FIRST "big man" shown here is a Canadian Mountie sergeant, who chews tobacco as he also smokes a pipe. A minute into this cartoon, his deputy Bosko rips off the seat of his pants, exposing his butt crack. Six minutes later Bosko blows off all the clothes of the other "big man" shown here--an outlaw into whose Buttopical Center Opening he's just rammed a very long, fully phallic broad sword! Hardly children's "Christmas fare," you Passport bozos. No doubt such spectacular Wrong-Headedness has landed some of the Passporters high-ranking cabinet positions in the Putin-Rump Administration.

Bosko is a Mountie and has been sent to get his man. The baddie, it turns out, is clearly modeled after Disney's Pete (from "Steamboat Willie" and other early cartoons). Along the way, there is some singing and dancing--though what this has to do with the Mounties is beyond me!I have never been a fan of the Bosko cartoons. They were heavy with the schmaltz--lots of overly cutesy singing and dancing and mugging for the audience. Edgy, they were NOT! Now I cannot blame Warner Brothers alone for this--many of the rival studios such as Van Beuren, MGM and Terry Toons were incredibly insipid throughout the 1930s. Cartoons we know and love today (such as MGM's Tom and Jerry and the Looney Tunes crowd) were all cartoons of the 40s--after the happy, singing, cutesy fad had, thankfully, faded. So, in light of this, my score of 5 for "Big Man from the North" is actually very positive--and I was shocked that I didn't hate this short!

I was shocked in a few places watching this old cartoon as a several scenes had guys with their pants down (from the rear, with a crack showing) and, in one instance had a sabre jammed between his cheeks! Ouch!!Anyway, it shows you even some of the cartoons were a bit edgy in this pre-Code era but otherwise it was a simple story of a little Canadian Mountie, "Bosko," being assigned to capture a big, tough crook and how he went about it. He wasn't given any name, but if you've seen a number of 1930s cartoons, you know the little man is "Bosko." What I didn't know, until submitting this review, was that pretty actress Rochelle Hudson did the voice of the female singer in the saloon. There were some decent sight gags in here, several of them duplicated in the first half of this animated short. Sight gags are what cartoons are usually all about anyway. Here, for instance, we saw gags with the three dogs who drove the little guy over hilly terrain to the saloon where the bad man was hanging out. The saloon had a clever scene in which Bosko tried to impress a woman (Hudson's character) with his piano playing. This guy was good: a Jerry Lee Lewis-type who banged those keys!Overall, a pretty entertaining cartoon that was a bonus feature on the "Smart Money" feature film DVD.

A lot of people will be quick to discard this cartoon in favor of another cartoon set in the north, made by Disney a year later called "The Klondike Kid." And even more people will be quick to discard all Bosko cartoons in favor of Mickey Mouse. While Mickey Mouse has more personality in an index finger than Bosko, this has to be one of the best cartoons made by Warner Brothers before 1935. Synchronization is uniformly superb, and this one actually has a little plot, though nothing major. If you want an old 1930s cartoon, and you have a little patience, watch this one. This film runs about seven minutes, it was Drawn by future animation director Isadore 'Friz' Freleng, and Robert Edmunds, and the musical score is provided by Frank Marsales. The print available on the DVD compilation 'Uncensored Bosko Volume One' is a little scratchy, and a re-issue, but is ten times better than any Chaplin Keystone comedy in the public domain, take my word for it.