{"id":36598,"date":"2022-01-21T19:56:24","date_gmt":"2022-01-22T00:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=36598"},"modified":"2022-01-22T19:45:06","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T00:45:06","slug":"the-bootleg-files-half-baked-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/21\/the-bootleg-files-half-baked-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Half Baked Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 792: <\/strong>\u201cHalf Baked Alaska\u201d (1965 animated short in the Chilly Willy series). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On B98.tv.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: <\/strong>Included in an anthology of Walter Lantz cartoons that is now out of print.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> No one is rushing to get it into home entertainment release.
\n
\nCHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> It was briefly available, and hopefully it will come back.<\/p>\n

Among the cartoon characters from the Golden Age of animated short subjects, Chilly Willy occupies a strange niche. This Walter Lantz-created penguin was cute and mischievous, but the character\u2019s films were rarely laugh-out-out hilarious and Chilly Willy never truly occupied the iconic status of other creations of that era. Most people would point to the Oscar-nominated, Tex Avery-directed 1955 short \u201cThe Legend of Rockabye Point\u201d as being a peak in the Chilly Willy series, although most of the humor in that short does not come from the penguin himself.
\n<\/p>\n

If I was forced to pick a Chilly Willy cartoon that came as close to perfection as possible \u2013 and, admittedly, I can\u2019t imagine being in a situation where such a decision was being mandated \u2013 I would not opt for \u201cThe Legend of Rockabye Point,\u201d but instead I\u2019d veer toward the 1965 \u201cHalf Baked Alaska.\u201d While Lantz\u2019s cartoon output rarely came within the vicinity of perfection, this was as close to flawlessly funny as the animator\u2019s studio ever came.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf Baked Alaska\u201d opens in the midst of an Alaskan blizzard, with the misplaced Antarctic denizen standing out in the cold and snow with a shoeshine stand that the very few pedestrians bother to acknowledge. Chilly Willy spies Smedley\u2019s Snack Bar in the midst of the Alaskan snowscape, with the happy-go-lucky canine Smedley making pancakes on a grill in the eatery\u2019s wide front-facing window.<\/p>\n

Chilly Willy ventures in and order a plate of pancakes. Smedley obliges the order and keeps asking his patron if he wants more syrup and butter on his meal. Chilly Willy answers in tiny responses with a quaint little voice \u2013 and anyone familiar with this character since his 1953 film debut might be surprised that the long-silent Chilly Willy was finally given dialogue.<\/p>\n

Alas for the penguin, Smedley demands payment before Chilly Willy can eat \u2013 and the meal costs $60. Remember that this was back in 1965, when $60 was a considerable sum. The penguin empties his pockets to reveal a penniless state, and Smedley dumps him out in the snow and angrily suggests he find work to earn money.<\/p>\n

Chilly Willy is hopeless in every job he attempts to fill. As a piano player in a saloon, he barely bangs out an elementary tune with his index fingers before being ejected. As a barber, he drops a too-hot towel on a customer and shrinks his head. As a blacksmith\u2019s assistant, he smashes his boss\u2019 hand with a hammer. As a portrait photographer, he uses too much flash powder and incinerates his subject\u2019s clothing and hair.<\/p>\n

The penguin sneaks back into Smedley\u2019s eatery just as an oversized and ill-tempered lumberjack enters and demands 200 pancakes. While Smedley hurriedly prepares this mega-meal, Chilly Willy surreptitiously hijacks them for his own consumption. Smedley is unaware of this and serves the lumberjack an empty plate \u2013 which the humorless lumberjack smashes on Smedley\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

Smedley keeps making pancakes, but doesn\u2019t realize Chilly Willy is eating them before they arrive on the lumberjack\u2019s table. The penguin eventually substitutes parts of the iron stove for pancakes \u2013 the lumberjack bites into them and all of his teeth break. Angrily, he being pummeling Smedley, but Chilly Willy stops the assault by donning a constable\u2019s helmet and blowing a police whistle. As the lumberjack skedaddles into the desolate snowy horizon, Smedley praises his unlikely hero and serves him a huge plate of pancakes coated in whipped cream and jelly.<\/p>\n

Under the direction of Sid Marcus, with Daws Butler providing all of the character voices, \u201cHalf Baked Alaska\u201d is a fast-moving and wonderfully inventive cartoon. Chilly Willy is equal parts devious and na\u00efve \u2013 he is willing to engage in the worst possible chicanery to get his way, but at the same time he sees nothing wrong in the chaos he is creating. Smedley, who was the frequent antagonist in the series\u2019 earlier cartoons, is genuinely sympathetic \u2013 although his inflated pancake pricing is excessive, he doesn\u2019t come across as a villainous character and it is easy to sympathize with him as Chilly Willy disrupts his business.<\/p>\n

The lumberjack is especially funny \u2013 he makes his presence known by throwing an axe (and barely missing) Smedley, and his rising temper is portrayed by having his agitated body grow larger and larger with each passage of impatience. <\/p>\n

Universal Pictures put \u201cHalf Baked Alaska\u201d into theaters in 1965 \u2013 this was at a time when the short subject market had mostly evaporated. Incredibly, the film was not submitted for Oscar consideration in the Best Animated Short Subject category \u2013 it was certainly more invigorating than Chuck Jones\u2019 artsy \u201cThe Dot and the Line,\u201d which won the award.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf Baked Alaska\u201d was included in the 2010 DVD release “The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection: Volume 2,” but that has been out of print for years; to date, there has never been a DVD collection of the entire Chilly Willy series. A website called B98.tv has the complete six-minute-plus film online<\/a><\/strong>, and I hope that you can take that brief piece of time to enjoy this truly entertaining cartoon.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to Phil Hall\u2019s award-winning podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, with new episodes every Monday. Phil Hall\u2019s new book \u201cJesus Christ Movie Star\u201d<\/a> is now available from BearManor Media. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 792: \u201cHalf Baked Alaska\u201d (1965 animated short in the Chilly Willy series). LAST SEEN: On B98.tv. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: Included in an anthology of Walter Lantz cartoons that is now out of print. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: No one is rushing to get it into home entertainment release. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":36599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[99,2078,2882,219,2884,2883],"class_list":["post-36598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-animation","tag-cartoon","tag-chilly-willy","tag-comedy","tag-daws-butler","tag-walter-lantz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36602,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36598\/revisions\/36602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}